Hinton Hollow Death Trip by Will Carver

Evil comes calling to the small town of Hinton Hollow, quite literally. It stalks the streets and visits the residents, infecting them, prodding their insecurities, nudging at their secrets and desires and coaxing out the malevolence suppressed within. It forces them to show their real selves and act in ways they might not otherwise. Except they might very well because the wickedness already resides deep down inside.

This is an unusual novel in that it is narrated by Evil itself, a dispassionate though omniscient narrator. Evil is frustrated with humanity, a reluctant actor whose actions are in direct relation to those of its subjects. If they are good, it can be proportionately so, its wickedness so much less. If they are bad, as they so often are, it must up the ante. Humans are bad, awfully so, and so Evil has no choice but to provoke the people it touches to ever greater depths of depravity

This novel follows on from the events of the author’s previous title, Nothing Important Happened Today, and Detective Pace who’s returned to his home town of Hinton Hollow from London features strongly. I have to confess that I hadn’t realised Nothing Important Happened Today was the second in the series, and Good Samaritan was a previous outing for Pace (so at some point I’ll have to read that novel). Pace is a flawed character who has done wrong through weakness despite his best efforts, and Evil torments him in Hinton Hollow Death Trip as a consequence.

Hinton Hollow Death Trip is not a book for the faint-hearted. This is a challenging read. While Evil does not infect children for they are too innocent, the adults it does can harm them and in Hinton Hollow they do. Whether it be a mother who in a shocking and devastating act fails her offspring, or the man who kills them to prove a twisted point, children suffer terribly within these pages. Animals, too, are innocent but all too often the victim of humanity’s aggression. This novel holds no punches. Children and animals are harmed within this story and while there’s none of the graphic violence and torture that there might be in some serial killer novels (though some of the shooting scenes are brutal) this is disturbing stuff.

This is a great book and an imaginative, in some ways almost experimental, read. It won't be to everyone’s taste, but it’s thought-provoking and original.

4 out of 5 stars