I'd Like a Side of Nausea With That, Please: The Killer Next Door

The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

Alex Marwood’s gristly thriller The Killer Next Door holds back no punches when it comes to the grimier, slimier aspects of humanity.  A group of residents in South London rent rooms from “The Landlord,” a portly man who has no qualms about invading personal space.  The residents – Vesta, Hossein, Collette, Cher, Thomas, and Gerard – all have their quirks, of course, but the most interesting have to be Thomas, Collette, and Cher.

Thomas is referred to as “The Lover,” a quiet, pensive man who also happens to be a serial killer.  The pungent odors from his hobby of mummifying the women he “loves” permeate through the old house; the residents dismiss it as odd, but not alarming.  Thomas presents one side to the world: a hard-working, sensitive guy who is eager to help his neighbors.  Inside of his apartment, however, he engages in some rather distasteful habits – let’s just say those habits regularly clog up the drains.  Marwood does not shy away from vivid descriptions of Thomas’s diversions; for instance: “Jecca left the house in a series of carrier bags, flesh falling from bone like a five-hour pot roast…Katrina, her body cavities cleared more studiously, was a steep learning curve.  His incision, down the front of the abdomen the way a pathologist would do it, left the trunk loose and floppy, and her nose was ruined by his clumsy attempts to remove the brain with the crochet hook. The parichistic entry, via a slit in the left-hand side, though it means having to plunge himself arm-deep in viscera, produces a neater, more human-shaped final product” (93).

Collette, also known as Lisa, is on the run from her former boss after she accidentally witnesses a horrifying incident.  Three years and a duffel bag of money later, she stumbles upon 23 Beulah Grove.  Collette only wants to keep a quiet profile and periodically visit her mother in the nursing home; unwittingly, she is drawn into a series of crimes and intrigues far beyond her imagination.

Cher drinks, smokes, and steals; her days pass by in a yellow haze of fear, hunger, and longing.  She is only fifteen years old and is determined not to return to the foster home, even if it means robbing men much larger and stronger than her.  Her heart, though, is pure, and she forms an unlikely friendship with Collette and Vesta.

When a culminating event brings the residents together, they learn more than they bargained for about some of their neighbors.  Marwood is a master at sketching out characters, then filling them in subtly with unique details.  If you can handle a bit of gristle and fat, then definitely dive into this contemporary thriller fiction.

My only qualm is that there is a plethora of British terms throughout the novel – of course, that makes sense since the novel is set in London.  At times it was distracting and frustrating to not know what certain terms meant in context…but that is my own failing, not Marwood’s.

What is The Cure For Dreaming?

The Cure For Dreaming

by Cat Winters

Consider this: what if you could tell a person’s true nature just by his appearance?  Emotional vampires would present with fangs and a ghastly pallor; feeble, miserable individuals flicker in and out of existence.  Cat Winters’s The Cure For Dreaming explores this question and more in her latest historical fiction novel set in Portland, Oregon, in the year 1900.  The daughter of a cruel dentist, Olivia Mead is called onto stage at a show to be hypnotized by the young, yet famous, Henri Reverie.   Her furious father enlists Reverie’s help to browbeat Olivia into her proper role as a woman, forcing her to “see the world the way it truly is.”  When Olivia realizes she cannot voice her dissent, and that she can truly see peoples’ natures, she must take her future into her own hands with the help of Reverie – all set within the backdrop of a dynamic suffragist movement.

Winters combines the history of women’s rights in the early twentieth century with a spell-binding story of a young woman caught at a crossroads between family and self.  A strong female protagonist, realistic dialogue, and well-written prose allow the reader to become immersed in Olivia’s rather unique (and sometimes frightening) world.  Aesthetically, bibliophiles and novices alike will love the old-fashioned introductory chapter photographs with leading quotes.   A timeline of “When and Where U.S. Women Gained Full Suffrage” and Recommended Reading are included.

"[T]his grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore..." - Bellman & Black

Bellman & Black

by Diane Setterfield

Bellman & Black explores “The Butterfly Effect” on a gothic, morbid scale; Will Bellman’s seemingly unintentional act of animal cruelty as a young boy has lasting and spreading effects as he continues to age.  Throughout the novel, the “rook” (a crow, essentially) is cast as the harbinger of death, interspersed by factual tidbits about the rook’s eating habits, scientific names, and so on.  The juxtaposition of the rook as a death symbol with these reminders of the unavoidability and impersonality of nature serve to remind us that death does become us all.  So why was Will Bellman targeted?

Will takes over a family business and his life becomes consumed with entrepreneurship; the book does become immersed in the details of his businesses, which I personally found engrossing.  However, for each bit of happiness Will experiences, the rook flits through the pages, bringing another round of death and sadness for Will.  Instead of properly dealing with his losses, they propel Will to work harder, shunning any kind of pleasure for the sole purpose of work.  At each funeral Will attends, he meets a man simply named Black.  They go into business together; the terms are vague.  The business consumes Will and he becomes determined to “pay back” Black his portion of the profits.  The ending, while not necessarily a surprise, is still a bit of a letdown—while Will is not a warm and fuzzy character, he is not a moral reprobate.

Which brings us to the crux of the problem with Bellman & Black – why did the simple act at the beginning of the novel, something that, truly, was not fully intended in a malicious manner on Will’s part, bring about such devastation in the end?  Will killed a rook—so everyone he loves dies.  I feel that Setterfield wants us to dig deeper into the allegory of the novel; one small act can wreak larger havoc, yes, but if a person does not boldly face a problem or an issue, Setterfield seems to say, it all becomes exacerbated.  If only Will had taken small moments to enjoy his pleasures more (as evidenced at the very, very end of the novel, when he went through just the very few happy memories he had).  If only Will had been, yes, a bit more selfish and lived his life more for himself instead of being regulated by the external world.

All in all, this novel is more profound than what it seems. I also found the minutiae of running a mill and starting a goods business quite fascinating; it fed into the larger theme of small gears making everything else tick (or break, as it were).