“a gripping police procedural … impeccably Oulipian in conception and execution.” David Collard, TLS
“That all these stylistic fireworks can illuminate several rich plot lines, each with multiple twists, which an attentive reader will enjoy disentangling, is the best vindication of experimental prose.” Anna Aslanyan, Financial Times
“rich, riveting … White is always convivial company … His books [are] characterised by stylistic innovation, a feeling for place, a love of rogues and rebels. ” Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian
“Tony White’s latest novel begins for all the world like a police procedural, following the delightfully named sleuth Rex King as he investigates the grisly murder of man in a Covent Garden theatre. […] Enjoy it as a noir entertainment or as an evocative picture postcard from the past.” Houman Barekat, Spectator
“The Fountain in the Forest can be read with all the pleasure you might expect from a knotty police procedural, a knowledgeably detailed, intriguing and compelling police procedural at that. The story drives ever forward, even when it takes you backwards in time to take a look at the roots of the crime in question. Even when it flip-flops between two distinct time-streams and character identities within the space of a single sentence, the sense throughout is of a steady and satisfying accretion of significant information, i.e clues – exactly what you’d hope for from any good thriller. […] Read, and enjoy.” Nina Allan
“It is absolutely terrific … it can be enjoyed at the level of a thriller, and yet it does all these other fascinating things, and best of all it’s the first in a trilogy … It’s such a good book.” Andy Miller, Backlisted Podcast
“The Fountain in the Forest smartly maps an experimental, Oulipo-inspired structure onto a well-executed police procedural.” Thom Cuell, Bookmunch
“The Fountain in the Forest is a mystery built on mysteries […] it has heart and tenderness and leads us to the most unexpected places and at the centre of all this puzzling is a thriller with deep hooks.” Nick Garrard, STORGY
“A truly intriguing venture into the crime genre by the talented White.” Maxim Jakubowski, Crime Time
“The Fountain in the Forest is fascinating, beautifully written and really original.” Literary Review
Take a piece of A4 paper. Fold it in half (reducing it to A5 size), then twice more (A6; A7). A little more unfolding and refolding, interrupted by one snip of the scissors, and there you have it – a booklet of eight pages. Stitch it and trim the edges. Now all you have to do is cover it with suitable words and pictures … I read the A7-sized Shklovsky’s Zoo by Joanna Walsh (published earlier this year by Tony White’s deliberately lo-fi and generous-spirited Piece of Paper Press) as a complimentary complement: it’s not about reading the book itself but trying to get hold of a copy, as well as a writing residency, Kafka, the narrator coming adrift (a relationship has ended, and the fellow writing residents aren’t exactly her cup of tea). Or it’s about those things and it’s not … That seems like plenty to find tucked away in a few pages made from a single sheet of paper.
