A Scarlet Letter for our times … Zamyatin’s We meets Lord of the Flies meets de Tocqueville meets cancel culture meets spite and malice meets Jesus. Should words be power? Justice or mercy? What price rage?

Vividly nasty, recalling the smack-in-the-face technique of early Ian McEwan, and so accomplished that it’s easy to forget this is a debut … McMullan has a sureness with violence that puts him in the company of Sarah Moss and Benjamin Myers… Viciously captivating: frightening to be around, impossible to put aside – a bit like other humans, in fact

This is a visceral and disquieting debut novel about the power of words, and should be read by anyone who uses the internet

McMullan makes highly effective use of the rugged landscape, full of unease and portents, in his creepily unsettling debut, a timely tale about the dangers of toxic rhetoric and mob rule

A brilliantly unsettling parable about how we police our societies through violence, language and shame

Innovative and timeless

An extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination, and as original as any novel I’ve read in recent memory … The Last Good Man makes visible the dark matter of our troubled zeitgeist, and the cruelty that animates moral community

A clean, crackling novel … McMullan updates Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to today’s sanctimonious climate … An arresting debut about medieval justice that has plenty to say about the dangers of moral puritanism

An earthy, gripping piece … A serious and seriously good book

McMullan’s skill truly lies in his prose…a startling and evocative tale

An unsettling and startling work of literary imagination … A shocking but compulsive read

Brilliantly eerie

Eerie and atmospheric

An essential and commanding slice of folk horror — a wholly successful exercise in world-building that straddles an uncomfortable line between reality and fantasy