Talk us through it
Ben Fowler has been released from an Institution with the dubious security blanket of some behaviour modifying pills. Ben is a psychopath and is constantly losing himself to his own mental playground called the "Red Room". Our resident Dexter decides to rent an apartment in a complex, find a job, and generally start life afresh. If he can keep taking his medication maybe he can keep the red at bay and actually make a success of things. Unfortunately for Ben, Rachel lives across the way from him and she reminds Ben of "her", with the flaming red hair and such. Gradually Ben starts to forget to take his pills as he becomes obsessed with Rachel, and you have the feeling that love isn't going to be the air and things wont end up in the hills with Julie Andrews. Of course Ben might have harboured some second thoughts if he had of known that Rachel isn't exactly the full quid herself and just wants to be left alone. When world's collide, ready to get down to the grunge?
Review"And there in the Red Room he could play for as long as he wanted …" - Spare Key. For the second book review in a row I have to thank Chuck McKenzie, who sent a copy of Spare Key in my direction. Thanks Chuck this one is for you mate. Spare Key would I guess be termed a novella rather than a novel, word length definition kids. But just in case you think you are getting short change LegumeMan Books also include two short stories by new comer R. Frederick Hamilton to ensure you are going to get value for money. More on those in a moment. LegumeMan is a new publishing venture, I'm breaking my cherry here with Spare Key, so I have zero idea of what we can expect from them. There's certainly a number of titles being published in the near future by LegumeMan so I'll keep you up to date with new releases as they come to hand. Based on the first book of theirs I've managed to get my sweat stained hands on it looks like the Publisher is going to ensure you get enough bangs for your buck to remain happy with life. Okay lets get the two short stories out of the way before tucking into the main course. R. Frederick Hamilton is definitely trying for the extreme school of horror with the first short story, The Filmmakers, think Clive Barker's early short fiction. Hamilton keeps the gore and grunge to the forefront as he weaves a tale about a group of rural lads bored with life and more than happy to find some excitement in the escalating torture and maiming, physically and mentally, of young girls who fall into their hands. While the story is certainly in your face, told from a couple of unexpected point of views I might add, I'm left with the feeling that for the themes and plot to be fully fleshed out (no pun intended) the piece needed to be a lot longer. Author Hamilton needed to go book length in my unsavoury opinion to cover his ground here. Still early days and the Writer is showing promise in a sort of Brett McBean, Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson, fashion. If you like your horror like slabs of freshly butchered meat then dive on in. R. Frederick Hamilton is a young writer going at it hard and heavy in a competitive market. There's a lot of promise in this, his first book. Mark the name down, Hamilton is going to be a voice to be reckoned with in the coming years. The second short story, Writer's Block, sees Hamilton returning Stephen King's Misery serve, with a story both surprisingly adept and dripping with style. It's one of those tales were you gradually learn about what went down prior to the events unfolding and are left with some gruesome thoughts about what is going to go down post final paragraph. I really can't talk about this one without giving away some plot points so I'll leave it to you to read. What I expected to happen, and I guess the punch line I could see coming, didn't go down, so expect the twist not to be what you might expect. Excellent short story, Hamilton needs to start submitting to the majors, as they are, in the Australian speculative market. Spare Key itself, and welcome to the main attraction, is a study in abnormal psychology that descends into the offal pit every so often to ensure the reader is well aware that the pen is going to remain bloody throughout the course of the novella. As a study of two people with the Roos bounding around the top paddock, it's an ambition piece of writing. Normally a writer will content him or herself with a single psycho and either the ordeal they put their latest victim through or some Criminologist's work in capturing them. Here Hamilton portrays two psychos with completely different outlooks. Ben is clearly operating outside the bounds of normal society and no amount of chemical stimulus is going to be fully successful. His Doctor has seemingly failed to address Ben's underlying psychosis so the "Red Room" is always open to Ben. Notably Hamilton draws the origins of Ben's issues successfully as opposed to the lip service paid to Michael Meyers by Rob Zombie. Ben is a believable character Michael isn't in the hands of Zombie. Just how many clichés can a script writer conjure up for a character before the Audience starts to smell a dead rat in the wood pile? Hamilton nails his character's background; you can readily believe that Ben would seek to redress his early years of powerlessness, and you know he is dissociated enough to have lost his moral compass and any normal human compassion. Ben goes through the motions of being a normal human, Hamilton keeps hitting that point and is entirely effective in doing so. The Author is less successful with the character of Rachel, though the plotting of Spare Key might be the root cause there. We know Ben is a psycho from the word go, Hamilton doesn't beat around the bush there, but Rachel at first appears to be just a harassed waitress trying to put away enough money to buy her own place. Through the course of Spare Key it becomes apparent that first impressions can be deceiving and Rachel is hiding more under her bed than Walter. Unfortunately for Hamilton modern Audiences tend to be a tad more sophisticated than those of a few decades back and the general storyline of Spare Key becomes apparent way to early to have the sudden impact in the final chapters the Author may have hoped for. As stated previously it's an ambitious piece of writing, even more seasoned Writers may have found the literary device in use here hard to successfully pull off. Actually with the fixation on masturbation going down in Spare Key I should add, no pun intended. It's to Hamilton's credit that he doesn't drop the ball at any stage of the novella. There are some clever aspects to Spare Key that indicate Author Hamilton is going to get a lot better at his craft with more runs under his belt. The real estate agent has problems getting the key to work in the apartment lock, something Hamilton underlines later in the novella indicating a plot foreshadow. Both Ben and Rachel view themselves as superior to more normal folk, a touch of reality there that is not belaboured or even said out loud. And just what Ben and Rachel have been up to in their respective spare time is gradually unwrapped on the morgue table for Readers caught up in the storyline. Hamilton doesn't rush things but allows the novella to find it's own pace. For some readers there might be a slight touch of redundancy and repeated ideas, I didn't think so, we need to get into the heads of the major characters in order to fully appreciate what is going down. Structurally Spare Key treads the normal horror stalking grounds, though a couple of press releases at the start of the novella were refreshing, and kudos for the Writer in including them. There's a certain amount of irony involved there as Rachel didn't share the same views as the article writers. Other than that slight detour the story is told from either Ben's or Rachel's point of view in a sort of hybrid first person narrative style. As a Writer R. Frederick Hamilton is clearly at the starting line and is developing his own voice, no bad thing when you consider how many writers simply try to be Stephen King clones. There is only one King folks. Hamilton has a grasp of the language, knows how to construct a paragraph, and writes convincing Aussie dialogue without resorting to the ockerisms of someone like Robert G. Barrett. At this stage of his career Hamilton is tending towards the shock jock end of the street but might well developed into a dark genre writer to be reckoned with in coming years. Spare Key is available via the LegumeMan website, click through, and yes they do ship overseas. Look for the distinctive red cover, great artwork by M. Revert and J. Wilson by the way, and knock yourself out.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... Solid first up book by R. Frederick Hamilton, worth a purchase though be warned this one gets down and
dirty. Will be looking out for future Hamilton releases.
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