By James Keen
“I’d say you’re exaggerating a bit.” – Matt Husk
Matt Hults’ Husk has a preface that outlines what readers can expect from his first novel, and while it heaps praise on the text, it’s not an entirely accurate reflection of what readers are about to read. Some have compared this book to other books that might have the same pulp feel. First, this is an old-school pulp horror novel, with all the pulp horror stuff. But it’s definitely not a groundbreaking horror novel that has the same cult resonance as Joe Lansdale’s The Drive-In. What readers get here is a familiar mix of genre fiction, lots of gore, some twisted humor (though some of it may be unintentional), and a narrative that seems to be trying to exceed the number of chapters in a James Patterson pulp novel, which may be particularly appealing to readers with limited attention spans.
Husk begins with a bang, as police lay siege to the home of suspected serial killer “Kale Kane”—“this pervert is a cunning bastard,” one character describes him as, a brutal yet creative killer who seems to have more mysterious interests than your average sociopath. After the initial blood and violence, Hults jumps forward five years, with the story primarily told from the perspective of the Wiess family, but before long the author begins to expand the novel’s cast of characters.
Hertz takes the standard pulp fiction archetype of the troubled middle-aged detective and gives us Frank Atkins, who, tormented by his experiences with Kane, has gone into anonymity following a public outcry, with “the local press seemingly relentless in its efforts to smear his name”. Frank is jolted out of his self-imposed depression and introspection by a new investigation by young female detective Melissa Humble, who is searching for the connection between a new series of strange and violent unexplained murders. Hertz’s story, which is punctuated by a teenage romance between the bumbling nerd Tim and his popular love interest Mallory Weiss, and by various subplots of divorce, romantic rivalry and ritual human sacrifice, is somewhat one-dimensional, and I hope I have done the author no disservice by suggesting here that this was his intention. The book’s narrative style is more cinematic than it is a literary precursor to the horror novel; there are obvious visual echoes of films such as Nightcrawler, a remake of Creepers, and Dan O’Bannon’s black comedy Return of the Living Dead, as well as several nods to Clive Barker’s novella Hell’s Heart that hopefully give the reader some idea of the overall tone of the book. Herz seems to be trying to do a wild amalgamation of what we’ve seen and read before. The author successfully develops his own version of these horror novel standards, and a quick glance through Herz’s scenes is a lot of fun, but other than one thrill this reviewer experienced while investigating a farmstead at night, this is definitely not a book to be feared.
If you like well-written, entertaining horror stories that are full of gory creativity, this is a good book to read, but if you want a reading experience that doesn’t feel predictable and contrived, this might not be the book for you. Herz is an interesting writer, but if the purpose of this book is to scare and unsettle the reader, the overuse of archetypes and obvious character manipulation are its downfalls.
Order your Husk right here.
grade: 2.5/5
