This is my review of Shadows by Shaun Hutson.
Hutson was a great, underestimated author during his lifetime. It pleases me to
honor him now.
He wrote many fairly good novels, but this is
his best. This one is great!
You know early on that this isn’t a
storybook, a run of the mill tale. It’s too cruel, too real life for that. The
characters aren’t exactly model citizens or saints in any way. I see it pretty
much as a hard core, black metal novel without audible music. It offers a hard,
uncompromising look at modern mankind, giving no quarter.
Against a backdrop of the celebrities’
paranormal scene, we’re drawn into a dark and sinister stage. Hutson pulls no
punches when describing either that or a society plagued by corrupt politicians
and officials. One scene of the book, where a politician goes completely
overboard with his distaste for his constituents is particularly memorable.
Hutson excels in gallows humor, not only in his writing of dark tales, a
feature I certainly appreciate.
In a very clever manner we never see the
entire picture, everything happening until almost at the end. Several people we
might suspect of being the villain are revealed to be just unsympathetic and not
the true instigator of the ongoing and deepening horror. We keep guessing until
the shocking end and are left hanging even then.
Hutson, at his best is an entire genre on his
own, as every author should be.
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