#PaperbacksFromHell ‘Victims’ by Shaun Hutson

About the book…
Some people are born to be murder victims. Frank Miller, blinded in a bizarre accident but then given the transplanted eyes of a murderer, finds he can spot potential victims. In the end, Miller himself becomes the target for the slaughterer. Will he stop the carnage or become a part of it?
”Some people are born to be murder victims. Fact, not fiction.”
‘Victims’, a Shaun Hutson paperback from 1987 was one of the second hand beauties included in my Abominable Book Club parcel in December. I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that this book made me feel so icky that I had to read it in the bath.
From the faux lecture at the beginning positing the notion that some people are born to be attracted to murderous ends as surely as some as some are born to murder,to the back story of Frank Miller-ex crime scene photographer to special effects man-I genuinely felt queasy. Re-arranging corpses at crime scenes to make them more aesthetically pleasing whilst wiping ‘slicks’ of brain matter from your shoes, and his dubious manner of creating life like prosthetics really combined to make me glad when his eyes were damaged during the filming of Astrocannibals.
Leaving aside the ethics of transplanting body parts in the 80’s, much as Frank’s doctors do, he has his sight restored in one eye via a donated one…only problem being, neither doctor tells Frank that his eye is from a killer.
This used to be one of the novels I would devour when I was dropped off at my nan’s house and forgotten about amongst the melee of siblings and cousins, I would hide behind the sofa in the parlour and go through my uncles pulp horror collection at far too young an age.
Only now, all these years later, I am reading this again not looking for the ‘mucky bits’ but trying to find the redemption factor in amongst the gore and the overwhelming violence against women.
This is nothing new, the trend in the 80’s of violence, gory deaths and sex has always been a part of the horror scene and considering that this is reflected in an unchanging figure on women being murdered since those days, what is there to pull from this book?
We have an unlikeable protagonist with scant regard for human life.
A detective desperately trying to track down a serial killer who, as the book begins, is on his 6th victim.
And then we have a plucky female tv news reporter who relentlessly hounds the police in their investigation. She exists as a tool to be lusted over, a cypher, as most of the females in the book are.

It is useful to remember that in these pre-internet and pre-phone tapping scandal days that sitting down to watch the news was the only way to know what was going on it the outside world. These people came into your living rooms and were household names, they were known and trusted .

I had hoped this character would turn out to be the redeeming one of the novel but as I hit my stride it was clear she was just another bit of ‘skirt’…
The framing device did not really fool me, anyone who reads my reviews knows I hate giving away spoilers but in this case I will make an exception.

If you don’t want to know then look away ….
…..
….
NOW!
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.
.

It was a pretty obvious ‘twist’ that the ‘effects’ repeatedly brushed off as ‘trade secrets’ were the spoils of grave robbing.
And when it came to a “baby” which was exploded in a microwave,I tapped out.
Skipped to the end,no shocker over who was the culprit,this book left me feeling used and dirty.

And I only read half of it.
If there was some kind of allegory between stage and real violence,or the power of the media to make a monster, who knows,maybe that is what the author intended.

But to constantly belittle and abuse in the name of being gory and horrific was beyond me.

If this kind of shock and horror is your thing,then knock yourself out,Hutson will succeed with aplomb in twisting your stomach.

But for this reader, sometimes things are better left far behind in your rear view mirror. Including this novel.

About the author…
British horror novelist, including horror and urban thriller novels.
His novella Slugs was made into a movie, although Hutson didn’t like the movie. He also appeared in two horror movies himself.
Hutson is a Liverpool F.C. fan.
Links-http://www.shaunhutson.com/