A Dark So Deadly is a standalone novel by the successful
Scottish crime writer, Stuart MacBride. I suspect that it will prove to be the
start of a new series. The basic premise is that there’s this department, unofficially
titled The Misfit Mob, where disgraced police officers are dumped. They’re
given crap cases and generally it’s hoped they’ll go away, perhaps resign
through boredom and frustration. One day they happen across a murder and due to
the rest of the force being overstretched they’re allowed to get on with it.
I’m a massive fan of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series of
spy novels. The premise is similar: a department of MI5 where disgraced
intelligence officers are put out to fallow, given crap jobs in the hope
they’ll go away. Herron’s novels are brilliant, so given that A Dark So Deadly
had a similar premise, I thought I would give it a go. That said, I did have my
doubts. Stuart MacBride is one of Scotland’s most successful crime writers and
as such I know of his work. He generally writes serial killer thrillers and
that’s a sub-genre I’m not a fan.
The first thing to say about this book is that the author can
certainly write. That’s not a surprise, considering his pedigree, but he really
can write very well. This is important because A Dark So Deadly is a long
novel, coming in at a whopping 609 pages. This brings me to my first criticism,
the novel is simply too long. I wonder if MacBride has reached that stage of
his career that some successful novelist’s reach, where they can literally
write what they want, where there’s no one at the publishing house anymore who
can reign them in. Stephen King springs to mind as a good example of this. To
my mind, some of King’s novels are far too long and reading them I’ve wondered
whether earlier on in his career an editor might have trimmed the manuscript
down, made it a better novel as a consequence. A Dark So Deadly is like that,
the story could easily have been told in less words. In fact, a couple of times
I almost put the book down. I didn’t because the writing is so good and
MacBride always managed to pull me back in. Even so, I think it’s never good
when a reader feels the narrative start to drag.
Despite the dark themes covered in the novel (more of this
in a minute) MacBride injects a good dose of humour into the narrative. In
fact, at points it’s almost a dark comedy. This again is reminiscent of the
Mick Herron spy novels I referred to. As with the Herron novels, the humour in
A Dark So Deadly helped me warm to MacBride’s Misfit Mob and the characters he
draws are certainly memorable. I would like to say that I would like to spend
time with the Misfit Mob again, that I look forward to the next novel in the
series, but I can’t. That’s because of my second criticism.
I understand that I’m in a minority of crime fiction
readers here, but I just can’t stand serial killer fiction. To my mind it’s
just so tired, unimaginative and clichéd. It doesn’t help that having studied
Criminology at university, and with various friends in the police, I know
serial killers to be extremely rare. And those that do exist don’t generally
kill people in the ludicrously fiendish ways that they do in film and books. In
A Dark So Deadly the serial killer does just that, slaughtering his victims in
a grisly way. While there have been a few serial killers like this – Jeffrey
Dahmer, Ed Gein - the majority have just dispatched their victims in not so
dramatic a fashion. This insistence by writers of serial killer fiction to come
up with ever more devilish a manner of dispatching their victims has always
struck me as not a little prurient and exacerbates my dislike of these novels.
Of course, a valid criticism of this review might be that
I knew what type of novel MacBride writes, that lots of people like it, that no
one forced me to read A Dark So Deadly. And such criticism would be perfectly legitimate.
In my defence, I wouldn’t have chosen to read the book had the premise of the
Misfit Mob not sounded so intriguing. Basically, despite knowing that MacBride
tends to write serial killer fiction, I was hoping for something different and
was disappointed when that’s what I got. But just to be clear, I know many
people reading this review won’t share these thoughts. In fact, it might be the
case that someone reading this review will be attracted to the book, thinking
that they like serial killer thrillers and thus why not give it a go. And I’m
fine with that. It’s just personally, I would have preferred the author try
something else.
So, in conclusion there’s lots to like about
this book. It’s well written, it has a good touch of humour, the characters are
well drawn. While what didn’t work for me – the length of the novel, the fact
that it’s yet another serial killer thriller - may well be to other’s taste.
3 out of 5 stars
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