Renegades

Shaun has thrown in all the things which will keep the reader turning pages. Talk about sensory pleasures.

I guess there are a couple of ways of writing an effectivehorror story; firstly there is the subtle Barker, King or Herbert style of weaving a plot to draw in the unwary and then hitting the reader with a fiendish twist. The second method is perhaps more akin to the scattergun technique, piling horror upon horror until the poor reader is almost begging for mercy. Renegades falls smack bang into this second category and is about as subtle as a zombie with piles. Just when you think Hutson has plumbed the depths of depravity and dumped the foulest cocktail imaginable in front of you, a turn of the page invariably adds the wretched cherry on top! Without including any spoilers here, suffice it to say that the plot concerns the IRA, a man and woman anti-terrorist...a creepy abandoned church containing something nasty, a perverted couple seeking the ultimate thrill etc etc. You get the picture? Renegades employs quite a few clichés from the genre, but who cares? The plot merely provides a ghastly carcase on which Hutson drapes a series of increasingly nasty tableaux for your delectation. If you have the stomach to persevere, you'll find a hefty dose of (very) black humour and some genuinely clever twists and turns. Some extremely sexually explicit scenes might raise an eyebrow (!) or two. Best of all, Hutson sends the genre up mercilessly and must have written this with his tongue painfully and permanently embedded in his cheek. Devotees of the chiller genre will absolutely love this. Me? I felt like I needed a bath afterwards, but am happy to acknowledge a very effective horror novel.