Scary Blokes and Super Geeks

by Zack Wilson

 

A review of ‘Home Before Dark’ by Charles Maclean

This thriller reaches out to touch, with slightly slimy fingers, on a whole host of very contemporary and mainly middle-class fears. With its echoes of Ken Bigly, Madeleine McCann and, most pertinently perhaps, Meredith Kercher, the novel evokes the paranoid fears of the comfortably off, of the 4X4 driver on the school run. The fear that white, wealthy and powerful people have of losing control of their lives and destinies, of falling victim to ‘the other’, an outsider so clever, so sly that they reverse their seeming social impotence and use mysterious skills to strike back at their perceived oppressors and, like a parasite, to control and damage the lives which society’s accepted logic says should be safe.

The internet is central to the novel. It also, of course, plays a central role in every contemporary news horror story. Whether it be paedophile rings or Islamic terrorists, every 21st century monster uses the internet to entice, control or bully their victims and then to publicise the results. ‘Home Before Dark’ puts that technology in the hands of a highly skilled and truly sinister serial killer.

The novel at first has a slightly artificial atmosphere, its situations feel forced and slightly unreal, the overacted scenes of a Hollywood movie. There are no working-class characters beyond stereotypes and the family of central character and occasional narrator Ed Lister are so ridiculously privileged it’s sickening. No one seems to have a normal job: it’s a world of Harley Street psychiatrists and houses in three continents, of upmarket art studios and conservatoires.

Lister is himself almost the ultimate in contemporary globalised capitalist. Cool enough in his head to drink expensive Scotch and smoke cigarettes, as well to have supposedly worked with The Clash in New York back in the 80’s, he is now a dealer in landscape views: properties that overlook marvellous landscapes, thus commodifying what one can see of the world and making it disgustingly exclusive.

His nemesis, the killer Ward, is also disgusting, but in a slightly different and much more brutal way. Only slightly different, for there are many pointed similarities between Lister and the man who killed his daughter. Indeed, the writer seems at somewhat laboured pains to establish that they are two sides of the same coin: ‘Ed’ and ‘Ward’, don’tcha geddit?

They are both grudge bearers, men bent on revenge for real and perceived wrongs. They are narcissists, somehow believing themselves exempt from the rules and values that shape most people’s lives. They are obsessives, driven obsessives who twist reality to suit their view of themselves. Lister even falls in love online (with a ghetto girl who wants, somewhat unconvincingly, to be a concert pianist) and convinces himself that the relationship is different and special, just like the relationship that Ward had in his head with Lister’s daughter. They are both deluded stalkers, though neither sees themselves in that light.

Lister, however, although he drifts close to the edge of the abyss of obsessed psychosis, doesn’t quite fall. Ward, on the other hand, is swimming in inky depths of insanity.

Ward might not be that different from other fictional psycho killers were it not for two things. He is a consummate computer technician and, very interestingly, synaesthetic.

Synaesthesia is, according to Wikipedia, ‘a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway’. It means that Ward experiences the world as shape and colour and taste and sound and smell all at once, sounds triggering shapes and colours in his head, tastes catalysing images, all senses merged and at times producing, as in the delightful phrase ‘words with an iron shape’, wonderful, beautiful language that both describes and clashes with reality. ‘Words with an iron shape’ occurs whilst Ward is engaged in the act of murder, and is at once opaque and precisely descriptive, just like the best poetry.

Ward’s brain is not merely wired up differently to most people, it is also supercharged. His computer skills are well beyond the ken of most of us. He is a very, very dangerous geek. The only other character who gets any kind of handle on him and, indeed, sparks his ultimate downfall, is the Chinese/Scottish investigator Campbell Armour.

Armour is in many ways the most likeable character in the novel. Hong Kong born with Scottish grandad and a home in Florida, he, just like Lister and Ward, is a truly globalised individual comfortable anywhere in the developed world. Sympathetic and human with his young, clever family and dangerously chronic gambling problem, one senses that perhaps the novel was originally intended as a vehicle for him rather than Lister. Although Armour plays a key role in the plot though, he is ultimately there merely to help put perspective on the novel’s key relationship, that of Lister and Ward.

It is this relationship that provides the novel’s dynamic thrust, even though many of the threads from which it is stitched are somewhat glossed over, or merely hinted at and then abandoned, almost as if it’s too much effort for both reader and writer to explore them. Ward’s initial relationship with Lister’s daughter is one of these threads, as the reasons for his obsessive love for her are never really explained.

Indeed, although the plot is slickly put together and has all the well-planned logical progression of a computer program, it occasionally slides along with just a little too much efficiency, hurrying on from one plot point to the next in an attempt to keep things moving. Characters make stupid decisions like letting strangers into their sleeping carriages on the strength of a knock and their motivations are often skirted around or seem absurd and slightly two dimensional.

One must make allowances with this kind of soda and popcorn fiction however, and the thrills and shocks that it contains will have many readers fully engaged and turning page after page. Maclean is clearly a talented writer, and I wonder if some of his genuinely interesting ideas about obsession and control would have been better served in a ‘serious’ novel that he clearly has the ability to write. That probably wouldn’t sell many copies or have the chance of being turned in to a film though, and this novel has clear potential for both.

A good holiday read then, with some genuinely interesting and chilling ideas at its hear, but unlikely to leave much of a lasting impression beyond a nagging fear about just who might be watching you the next time you’re online, and why.

Please visit: Hodder and Stoughton
 

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~ This piece was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 and was filed under Blog, Featured, Review, Writing. You can make comments on it below. ~