Pretty Little Dead Things [Paperback]

You know that thing when everyone else seems to like something that you just cannot come to terms with ? Like Justin Lee Collins ( about as funny as acute toothache which incidentally I have had recently and it was no fun let me tell you ) or Downton Abbey ( Boring ) or to be pertinent Pretty Little Dead Things.
While other reviewers found this novel disturbing , I found it trite, clichéd and tiresome. Where others found it menacing atmospheric and relentlessly dark I found it atmospheric too , but in a seedy voyeuristic and unpalatable way and relentlessly dark ....... but in a blindingly obvious trawl through a characters grief and through the detritus of a sad desperate society . And it is about as menacing as Rentaghost .
And ghosts are essentially what this novel is all about. The first in a proposed series of books featuring Thomas Usher. We first meet a happy and content Thomas before a tragic accident, which he blames himself for, after his wife and daughter are killed in a car crash. He isn't directly responsible for the crash though he was driving the family car under the influence of alcohol which may explain his continuing guilt and grief.. The scars of the accident leave Thomas, not only psychologically damaged but also with a extraordinary psychic ability. He is able to see ghosts which he does all the time though most of them just sort of hang around and never impart any clear message which to this reader hardly makes Usher the ghost whisperer.
He becomes embroiled in a plot involving murdered women , a missing child , a shady businessman , a weird character who may or may not be of supernatural origin and some menacing hooded figures who Usher definitely does not want to hug and who may or may not be of supernatural origin . All this while rekindling an old romance which he tediously tortures himself about, in-between bouts of sex and general good times so in reality he is not that tortured about it.
The romance is superfluous and slows the narrative down and Ushers interminable downbeat ruminations related in an overwrought first person do not make him the most sympathetic of characters. And I found the plot weak and meandering . Though Gary McMahon does create some compelling characters the plot obfuscates their development in a feeble occult tinged scenario that ambles to an unsatisfactory conclusion.
So I did not enjoy Pretty Little Dead Things ,but in this I am clearly in a minority. To call this dark and disturbing as most reviewers do is beyond me. Matthew Stokoe for instance, really does write dark and disturbing . Compared to something like High Life (Little House on the Bowery) this is moribund trivia. Who would have thought ghosts could be so dull?

I've really got a bit of a soft spot for titles that blend what some would think of as opposing genres. Sometimes, it's a radical new fusion, at others a failed experiment. Here in this offering from Gary McMahon is a tale where crime, gumshoe and the supernatural are set to collide.

It was definitely an interesting read, the characters believable (if not completely likeable) with an acceptable dialogue between the players which when backed up with a bittersweet ending definitely make it something different. Gary should be applauded for his effort which was not only brave but presented a different type of tale to the norm. Yet unfortunately, its nothing that I haven't really read before with authors like Mike Carey, Justin Gustainis and Charlaine Harris each doing this type of tale a little better with more likable characters. I hope that Gary will learn from the errors within this title and improve on some of his weaker area's as I look forward to seeing what he turns up next time. It is a reasonable offering and if you're at a loose end it will keep the reader satisfied to a certain level but currently he's not quite ready to take on some of the more established writers but the promise is definitely there.

After a horrific car accident years earlier in which his wife and daughter were killed, Thomas Usher begins to see ghosts. For a long time he exists in a shadowy half world, as a kind of supernatural investigator, unable to forget his past. But when he takes a job for local gangster Baz Singh, whose daughter has been brutally murdered, Usher is drawn into a nightmare, as the case connects with that of a missing child, a relative of his friend and lover, Ellen.

This story could be considered a supernatural noir, as many elements of the old film noir detective stories are here: the hard-boiled detective with a dark past, the dangerous gangsters, the beautiful but unobtainable woman and the central mystery that twists and turns unexpectedly. However, as the book progresses the supernatural horror elements become more apparent. Some are actually quite amusing modern takes on the horror genre, for example Usher is menaced by hoodie wearing faceless monsters, the original members of a vicious gang that stalked his home town of Leeds decades earlier and enjoyed meddling in the supernatural.

The two main mysteries Usher must solve are the hanging deaths of three young women, and the disappearance of little Penny Royale, a storyline I couldn't help but connect with that of real-life Shannon Matthews. Usher's world is full of shady and downright nasty characters, especially a paedophilic phony spiritualist. But Usher also has a few friends, including a spiritual tattoo artist with almost mystic powers who gives Usher sage-like advice and tattoos on his body the names of all the ghosts he has failed to help. Tattooist Elmer Lord is an interesting character who I would have liked to have featured a bit more in the story.

This is a decent enough book, if you enjoy a dark read, but it never really compelled me to read on. I had an ominous sense early on as to what direction the story would take, although there were a couple of surprises along the way. There are a few graphic scenes towards the end that the more squeamish might not enjoy, but for a horror it was fairly accessible, horror isn't a genre I would normally read. I would also like the author to have expanded a bit upon some of the mythology behind his 'bad guys' as I found them a bit one-dimensional - evil for evil's sake.