This is one of quite a few hidden gems. I don’t care much for the author’s other novels, but this one is something else. Hutson was a horror writer of some renown, but this novel never gained much attention, for some reason.
Shadows is diabolical and diabolically funny and
well written. It’s the best gallows humor I’ve ever read. People on the train looked
at me with anxious eyes when I started cackling in earnest.
It’s very original and have an approach to the
horror genre I’ve not seen anywhere else. I would say this is Hutson’s best book.
He wrote quite a few horror novels. I expected him to come back from the dead at
some point and prove everything he wrote about to be true, but he still hasn’t.
The story is about astral projection, including
some related themes. It’s very hard to guess what happens next, and those we believe
are the villains are shown to be somewhat beneficial, and the other way around.
We don’t really know what is truly going on until the last few lines of the book.
Remarkable.
Seemingly unrelated events are woven into a cohesive,
explosive whole.
Among other things, added to the pervasive horror,
this is also an exposure of British society that is quite revealing. The horror
and the mundane go hand in hand, blood to blood. The author masterly leaves out
crucial information later revealed as a natural part of the story. Yes, the suspense
is there all the time, even in the first, fairly quiet part of the book. Then,
he takes it a step further. I love such authors. It keeps growing more intense,
and the ending is a great payoff, discarding the Hollywood ending like wet dirt
on the shoes.
