The Captive by Kit Burgoyne review – a literary novelist tries his hand at pulp horror

<p>A kidnapping goes the way of the occult in a gory, wildly entertaining romp from Ned Beauman, writing under a pseudonym</p><p>As we meet Luke, a nervous footsoldier in a revolutionary cell, he is on the point of carrying out his first proper operation. He and his colleagues – veteran activist Cam, and fire-in-her-belly true believer Rosa – are about to kidnap Adeline Woolsaw, 23-year-old scion of an obscenely wealthy clan who run an outsourcing company called the Woolsaw Group.</p><p>The company’s parasitic, money-grabbing, cost-shaving, data-siphoning activities stand for everything that is sinister and wrong with the conjunction of capitalism and state power. But the problem its opponents have is that the&nbsp;Woolsaw Group’s activities are so far-reaching, and its public profile so blandly corporate, that the public can’t be persuaded to pay any attention to its wickedness: “it’s ‘the largest public service outsourcing company in the UK’, which is so boring your brain just switches off. Which is good for the Woolsaw Group.” The hope of our wee&nbsp;terror cell, essentially, is that kidnapping the Woolsaws’ daughter will wake people up by putting a human face on it.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/16/the-captive-by-kit-burgoyne-review-a-literary-novelist-tries-his-hand-at-pulp-horror">Continue reading...</a>