The Site (1996)

Author J. Radford Keir
Publisher Pan Macmillan Australia
Length 423 pages
Genre Revenant
Blurb Where Even The Dead Have Secrets
Country

Talk us through it

Ex-Cop Kerry Staines has brought the local bakery in the hamlet of Mallen, one of the few businesses left apart from the Pub. There is hope on the horizon with a modern maximum security prison planned for just outside the township. Unfortunately the site of the new prison is on land shunned by the local Kooris. Never a good sign in a Down Under horror novel, especially when the ghosts of the dead buried there want to exact revenge on the guilty.

Kerry is caught up in a long abandoned crime and seeks to discover the truth before more of the locals go missing. But discovering who the guilty parties are could be a life threatening move. Local gal Stacey is attracted to Kerry, but then again she also has something to hide. About the only thing Kerry can trust is his Siamese cat!

The truth is out there, and it may or may not involve the local Koori tribe.

Review

"I refuse to be dictated to by some dead nympho with an ego problem." - Kerry Staines

Keir's outback novel is a mixture of revenant chills and murder mystery, with a slice of Koori mysticism thrown in for good measure. In between ghostly attacks we will gradually learn what went down and more importantly Keir will ask the reader to try and work out who dunnit. I got that part wrong, but then I was onboard for the haunting aspects and not the mystery that the Author laboriously builds in ever increasing complexity. To be honest there is a tad too many elements percolating in the novel to really deliver a totally satisfying read. Surprisingly the book isn't overly complex but it does ram in enough ideas to have generated four separate books, all in different genres. About the only thing missing was a fantasy element, if we for the moment don't ascribe the Koori dreamtime to that genre.

I'm not about to argue that The Site isn't one of those Airport novels you pick up for a long flight, or maybe decide to give a go over the summer, yes it's a pulp paperback that doesn't seek to be anything but a good read. A sort of literal equivalent to the standard fare Hollywood bombards our cinema screens with each year while claiming to anyone that still believes them that they are still in the business of making art. The Site is a mass market book aimed at the great unwashed, those that still have the attention span to tackle a full length novel that is, and it doesn't try to be anything else. Don't go in expecting great writing and you won't be disappointed. Keir has written a modern penny dreadful and it will engross. I'm always slightly amused by those who look down their noses at the mass market while extolling the virtues of some introspective read that at the most is likely to sell a handful of copies. Keir might be writing for a mass market, but so were Dickens, Austen, and most of the other so called masters of the English novel. The difference here of course is that Keir doesn't trouble himself with writing in deep meaningful messages about the human condition that have all the resonance of a fart in a bathtub.

It's an honest read that dosen't seek to do anything more than entertain, there's a certain honesty in that approach.

The Site does have its strengths, not the least of which is the yarn the novel is telling us. As Stephen King has noted story is everything in horror and if you get that wrong then you are on a hiding to nothing in the dark genre. Keir is for the most part single minded in his mixing of horror elements with the crime thriller while telling us about the events going down in Mallen. For sure there are some detours from the straight and narrow of the plot, and admittedly some of the subplots could have been ejected without impacting on performance, but Keir is successful in telling us a story. Whether or not that story works for you is of course up to the individual reader. I would have preferred if the novel had of stuck to the normal ghost story construct, but then again I'm not a Writer with a dozen or so published books to my credit. Whoever J. Radford Keir is, and current rumour is that we're talking a pen name here, he/she has clearly been published before. The Site doesn't read like a first novel, Keir has a grasp on the requirements of the horror novel and pulls a pretty good camp fire story on us.

About the only problem I had with the actual story being told was with the mixing in of Koori mythology, it isn't working to be honest and seems like padding. During the course of the novel we have a couple of hints going down, and in the context they happen they simple don't ring true, so guess we can't claim we hadn't been warned when the "bang your head on your desk" resolution to native affairs goes down. It has zero to do with the murder mystery, or indeed the poltergeist activity going down, and sort of sits there like that remaining strawberry cream chocolate no one wants to eat in the otherwise empty Cadbury's choc box. Hey life's like a box of chocolates. Why on earth Keir decided to add this facet to the novel remains anyone's guess, I was left shaking my head in general disbelief.

As one would expect with a pulp paperback, and remembering I don't have an issue with pulp, the writing style is simple and easy to read. There's no glacial descriptive passages coming at you and pages are not devoted to the contemplation of life in Mallen. Keir keeps the action coming at you, springs the odd surprise, and generally makes it a no brainer to read the novel over a number of days or in fact weeks depending on your reading speed. At no stage did I have to stop in order to go back and read a passage earlier in the novel in case I had missing that vital clue or paragraph. It's all pretty straight forward and plain sailing from first page to last page.

Surprisingly, and you can't say this about even mainstream literally works, all the characters in The Site are believable. And here I'm including human, revenant, animal, or otherwise. At no stage of the novel did I throw my hands up the in the air with anyone doing anything out of character or with Keir introducing a character simply to act as some outlandish plot device to move the book forward. This isn't to say there aren't any characters filling in as plot devices, all novels have them, The Site is no different. I was particularly impressed with the foul mouth, should that be beak? - of the cockatoo, and the old dog who proves her bite can be worse than her bark.

Overall I had an enjoyable enough time in country with The Site and am pleased I took the tome to locate and read the book. Sure it's not likely to win any awards but it's not taking itself seriously either. A welcome diversion on some late night trains that managed to keep my interest.

You may find it a tad hard to locate a copy of The Site. I wasn't even aware of the book till <<..>> on the southern horror writers list gave me a heads up. I was able to track down a copy on eBay so would imagine that's your best chance outside prowling the second hand bookstores.

ScaryMinds Rates this read as ...

A good enough read to fill in a boring Sunday afternoon.