Normal (2013)

Sex :   Violence : 

Author Graeme Cameron
Publisher Harlequin MIRA
Length 314 pages
Genre Psycho
Blurb The truth is I hurt people. It's what I do. It's all I do. It's all I've ever done.
Country

Review

Normal

"If all you did was have a good look when you put me in my nightie, those are some pretty poor serial-killing skills." - Annie

With nary a dark passenger in sight our central character, who from memory is never named, lives in a lovely secluded house in the sort of rural English location that just screams out for a Brit soap opera to be filmed there. Naturally his living the dream is shattered as he meets two females with decidedly different views on his extra curricula activities. One seems only too happy to embrace the life style, after some unwanted indoctrination, the other can accept what he is without being a hundred percent behind what he does. This naturally can't end well.

Our Pommie Everyman has a secret; a secret he hopes will remain hidden in the cage under his garage, a secret that is increasingly seeing the light of day as his position worsens with every visit by the local law. He enjoys kidnapping women, keeping them locked up, and then hunting them down in the local woods. His victims are random, but things aren't as obscured from the police as he might had hoped, especially since Rachel and Erica have him confused about what happens next. But hey he has a few days to kill, maybe he can find a way out of the tightening noose.

Getting straight to the point Normal is told in first person narrative from the viewpoint of a psychopath who isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is. Author Graeme Cameron is taking one hell of a risk with this approach as the only other author who, for mine, has succeeded in getting away with this trick is Jeff Lindsay with the Dexter novels. I discount Thomas Harris and his Hannibal series of novels here as the focal point isn't Hannibal. Whereas Lindsay has created a character with a survival code that involves satisfying his cravings by slaughtering the sort of person the rest of us are secretly glad he meets in a dark alley, Cameron's character has no such redeeming quality. In Cameron's killer we have someone who simply enjoys what he does and who picks out his victims on a purely random basis, assuming they meet his criteria. See what I mean by risk, Cameron's job is to get the reader to somehow find some sympathy for a thoroughly evil person. For mine the Author achieves this which should underline just how good a story teller he is. So while the first narrative form takes us right into the mind of a psychopath it's during a transformation period for that character, which raises a major issue with the novel.

The underlying premise Cameron asks us to believe is a psychopath is nurtured not inherently born deviant, with said psychopath able to develop human feelings and walk away from their psychological requirements. I'm not exactly in a position to be able to say if this has any basis in reality but it sure does add some spice to the narrative. Just when we think our focal character has no redeeming features he starts to display some emotion and empathy for other characters, naturally this means his guard comes down and the Police are picking up on the mistakes he makes. Can a psychopath change their spots, Cameron asks us to believe it and to be honest it doesn't take much to get the reader over the line with this exceptional writer adding the guiding hand. I should also note that Cameron creates the most believable on spectrum serial killer I've run across since Dexter started cleaning up Miami.

So you could say the Author has laid down a romantic novel, which has a sort of a triangle inserted into it that will have lovers of the strange and bizarre counting coup here. Initially I thought Cameron had the character of Erica all wrong, Stockholm syndrome? But as the novel draws its path toward the shattering conclusion you start to see an almost transference of motivations from the narrator to his former victim. In one of the more harrowing scenes Erica is able to take it one step beyond where our resident psycho is able to go. So yeah we have some well-drawn characters that have motivations that are actually believable, you won't find any of the characters, even the most minor, doing anything left field. Cameron is tending his garden well here and getting some blue ribbon results. Got to say it's a breath of fresh air in the often times enclosed and fetid horror genre for an Author to take care with his character portrayals.

So I guess everyone is wondering about the good parts, do victims get sliced and diced splattering the pages with blood. Cameron is no splatterpunk, so doesn't expect passages of the novel to go into detail on the gruesome side of the tarot pack, the Author has some sensibilities working and only exposes the reader to enough in the way of gore to get his narrative point across. So yeah the slight patter of dripping blood but nothing that will have even the most squeamish reader running for the bathroom. Cameron is slightly darker than say P.D. James and the English crime novelists but he is in no way entering into Clive Barker territory.

In terms of sexing it up Cameron isn't going there. We get the odd hint but nothing explicit, sorry ladies wrong novel if after something on the risqué end of the equation. The novel really doesn't need it, human intimacy after all is still slightly beyond the understanding of the narrator, so if after some dazzle with your fiction then check out some of the Paranormal Romance titles that apparently send teen chicks into raptures. Is that your fang or are you just pleased to meet me.

Cameron is a classic English writer, his prose presents as later day James Herbert which should have the literary amongst us happy with life. I found the pacing working for me, this is a slow boiler rather than a rampant greyhound, with the pages just flowing past as I fell into the novel. At no stage was I taken out of the narrative by any jarring paragraph or was left wondering what happened to such and such a character. The Author has a well-crafted novel here that will keep your dark genre reader glued to the page. Warning folks this one is pretty open ended, yes there could well be a sequel, but hey Cameron allows you to construct your own ending. I would like to think the narrator lived to fight another day, but the Police might have other ideas including a nice padded cell. Make your own mind up kids, what happens next is open to interpretation.

I'm nearly always up for a well written psycho novel that roves outside the dark malaise of the horror genre, and Cameron has given me a novel that will entertain horror, crime, and avid readers. Not entirely sure I had any sympathy for the narrator, he's a bit of a twat to be honest, but I surely did enjoy him proving himself to not be as smart as he thinks he is. End of day a well written book that strides into some taboo territory, this is one novel you are not going to want to miss. I'm now fanging to see what Cameron does next, make it a haunted house yarn - no one does that quite as well as the Brits, or to catch the inevitable movie based on Normal. End of day I guess Cameron is asking us what is normal and is there any chance of redemption for even the vilest character. Make your own mind up folks, the Author leaves that part of the storytelling to you. Recommended novel and it should be on the shelves of your local bookstore right here right now. Happy reading kids, this one will seep under your guard and into your nightmares.

Beyond Scary Rates this read as ...

  Mark down the name Cameron, the boy can right, the next James Herbert for mine.