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Review of a very original tale of murder 1/13/2014 6:46:36 PM
I just read Strangers Are Just Friends You Haven't Killed Yet, and it was as darkly funny, and violently twisted as its title would suggest. Here's my review. It is a rare experience to read a book that is as original, both in the style(s) in which it was written, as well as in the telling of its story, as this one. Reading the clever title of this book, I expected a bit of a darkly humourous send-up of the many serial killer novels out on the market, but this was so much more than that. While it contains its share of dark satire, there is also lots of social commentary and the story even comes across as a morality tale at times.
The book opens with a group of strangers who show up at an office after answering a mysterious ad promising them the chance to win 10,000 pounds. They are all misfits and losers, and are about to be forced into a twisted game of hide and seek in the city of Sheffield, where their naked, bled-dry bodies will soon start showing up. The story jumps from the point of view of one character to another, sometimes told in the first person (with a variety of Cockney and other accents), sometimes in the third. At times, the tale is told in the form of news reports, blogs, witness statements to the police, monologues, dialogues and sometimes plain old narrative. The weakness of this is that there are so many characters that it is a chore keeping up with who is who, especially as there is very little exposition to put the reader into context, and we are left to catch up on the fly. Also, some of these conversations and statements are meandering and touch on the parts of the story only in passing, so that there is some frustration, especially in reading the first half of the book when there seems to be no clear point to the story.
But, if you stick with it, as I did, you will be richly rewarded. The story does come together very well, and the reader begins to appreciate why it was important to see what was happening through so many people's eyes. Even if most characters are not fully formed, the characterizations, where these people come from, how they speak, work and even talk and think about the world around them, is precise and incisive. Eventually, as the story rolls along, there are a handful of characters who are fully fleshed out, and we become caught up in their fates, which are rarely predictable. The author does a good job taking the tale in unexpected directions, surprising me at times when I thought I had a clear grasp of what was going on. He also does a fine job of delving into the minds of this wide variety of people, at times telling a scene from the point of view of a killer, at times of a victim, other times of a casual witness, letting each one express his thoughts in the scene in a specific way.
There isn't a lot of sex in the book, but what there is is extremely explicit, as is the pervasive foul language and brutal violence. However none of it comes across as gratuitous or inappropriate to what's happening. It's all part of the over-the-top story line, the sometimes wild characters and the often hedonistic lifestyles that some of them lead. Over-all, a very entertaining book.
This review was first published on Amazon.com, at
http://www.amazon.com/review/R136DS51VYIQWL
