Knife Edge by Shaun Hutson
review by Jay Russell
One is hard pressed to think of a horror
writer with a worse reputation than Shaun Hutson. (Actually I could probably conjure one
or two, but why be cruel?) You never know if such a reputation is deserved,
especially when the writer in question sells well, as Hutson apparently does.
Knowing how readily jealousy rears its ugly, green head, and never having read Hutson
before -- having neither deliberately avoided nor sought him out -- I tried to approach KNIFE EDGE tabula rasa, as it were. The least you can say about Hutson is that he is not an incompetent writer. Unfortunately, that's also the most you can say about him.
KNIFE EDGE is a mainstream thriller, set in the course of a single day. Neville, an ex-para, disgusted at the peace which has broken out in Northern Ireland, threatens to set off a series of bombs in London -- one an hour -- unless he is reunited with the daughter in custody of his ex-wife. World-weary counter-terrorism expert Doyle (with the obligatory dead wife for whom he still pines) is assigned the job of hunting Neville down and killing him before he can set the bombs off.
The two play cat-and-mouse around London. A few bombs explode, a bunch of people die. Dumb cops argue as the clock ticks down toward detonation of the Big One. Will Doyle get his man in time?
What do you think?
The tired plot feels like something out of any number of straight-to-video or made-for-TV movies. That is not damning in and of itself, but Hutson has so little feel for character, dialogue, description or nuance, that it's simply impossible to become involved in the suspense.
Everyone and everything in the book is reduced to the crudest and most familiar of cliches. But worst of all is the writing.
Hutson rarely writes paragraphs of longer than two sentences. Most paragraphs consist of a single sentence.
As a stylistic device this has its uses.
But page after page it becomes ineffective.
And tiresome.
VERY tiresome.
Hutson has an ear for simile like Barbara Cartland has an eye for fashion: "...his hair flying behind him like incensed reptilian tails..." What the hell does that mean? Sadly, even the book's premise -- the plot hinges on the establishment of lasting peace in Northern Ireland -- is already stale. And the title is pretty well meaningless as well.
It's no fun writing a review like this, no joy to be had in tearing a book apart. The most depressing thing is that Hutson shows the odd flash of talent, particularly in the construction of one or two action sequences. But these bits are small recompense, indeed, for the chore of slogging through the rest of the book.
Sometimes reputations are everything they're cracked up to be.
