Title: The Essence
Author: Hutchinson, Dave
Published by: NewCon Press
Year: 2025
Date reviewed: 01.26
ISBN: 978-1-917735-14-8

It’s just over ten years ago that I first read a full-length novel by Dave Hutchinson. It was the first in his ‘Fractured Europe’ series, and I’ve been a fan ever since: ‘The Essence’ is now the ninth I have read.

If I were to choose one word to describe to all these novels it would be ‘weird’. In some the weirdness is dialled up high with time-shifts, alternate realities and sci-fi technology. In others, including ‘The Essence’ , the weirdness creeps into the narrative almost by stealth. The story opens with its protagonist, Michael Brookes, in a hospital which

was not, strictly speaking, a hospital. It was more of a rest home for fuddled gentlefolk. It occupied a big house in several acres of grounds tucked away at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac on the edge of Mill Hill. (p7)

It turns out that the not-hospital is run by the security services: Michael, who worked as an economist in a fairly insignificant part of MI6, is there because he had some kind of extreme breakdown at work which seems to have ended with an office room being trashed, but Michael has no memory of what happened. The nice people in the hospital are doing their best to look after him, rehabilitate him and bring back his lost memory. So far so normal. The plot seems fairly familiar.

Michael makes steady progress. His medication is down to two different pills once a day. He’s allowed – encouraged – to make independent excursions first to the local shops, then further afield. At last he’s allowed to go home. He still feels mentally fragile, but they have given him a friendly social worker who visits every few days and he seems to be coping. He’s not back to work yet, but HR want to see him to discuss his work situation. He goes in, and surprisingly finds they want him to go to the Netherlands to find out why there’s been a problem between the British and Dutch intelligence services. He doesn’t feel he’s ready but it seems he’s the only person who can do this. Just a quick visit, out and back, one day. Two days at most.

And so the weirdness begins to build. An attempt to kidnap him is foiled, and he finds himself mixed up with a group of people – they call themselves ‘essenceheads’ – who believe there is some mysterious phenomenon which they call ‘The Essence’ which manifests seemingly at random and interferes with the known laws of physics.

No more spoilers; you must read the book for how this plays out. The action happens in the Netherlands and Poland, both of which Hutchinson knows well. As in his other novels there’s a good cast of characters to keep track of as the story unfolds, and it all moves at a good pace with plenty of action. While the final plot reveal may not come as a complete surprise, the ending itself is completely consistent with Hutchinson’s practice of leaving some things unexplained for the reader to puzzle over and imagine what might happen next.

And in case you’re wondering if it really is weird – does The Essence exist? – you’ll have to make up your own mind. All I’ll say is that there’s a teleporting dog in the story.