Michael Slade - Cutthroat

[andydecker]

Michael Slade - Cutthroat (Signet, 1992, 397 pages; NEL, 1993)

A bizarre series of grisly murders has San Francisco in a death grip, the work of a twisted serial killer somewhere between man and monster. Behind his horrific rule lies a mystery as old as the American West itself ... a screct worth protetcting ... and worth killing for.
From the cutting edge of psychological terror comes this spellbinding novel that reaches from the darkest depths of the past to today´s highest tech ... from Custer´s last stand to horror ripping through the American heartland ... from a corporate octopus of unspeakable evil to the most monstrous serial killer ever to leave bloody footsteps through history ... brace yourself for the ultimate terror trip ...

What do you do when you have written two over the top horror novels, have plundered horror fiction tropes in the second and don´t want to repeat yourself? In the case of the guys behind Slade you look at history, again use the kitchen sink approach, rip off the headlines of your country and plot a tale which doesn´t make much sense but would do Sax Rhomer proud.

Read today this novel is like a view into the past. At the time asian immigration seems to have been a hot topic in Canada as the clock was ticking on Hongkong 1997. So what better topic to write about as insane chinese warlords eating brains?

But the novel´s complicated plot begins with a nice and bloody retelling of Custer´s last stand. Complete with a faksimile of an american 1876 newspaper. While the cavalaery gets slaughtered a hapless archaloegist gets killed too who was looking for dinosaur bones in the Black Hills. Instead he discovered the skull of the missing link - what the indians call the wendigo -which ends up as loot and later is found by Slade´s frightening Killer-Mountie Wilfred Blake in Canada.

(In an amusing and for the plot totally unneccessary aside his journal is found by an american officer who understands the implications of this find for Darwin´s thesis and destroys it, after visiting Darwin in England. As the Origin of the Species is a work of the devil ;D It is these little excursions I love about the early Slade´s, a walk in Darwin´s garden and long ramblings about evolution and creationism in a novel about serial killers )

Cutthroat now is the killer of the old and insane warlord of Hongkong based pharma giant Fankuang Tzu who wants to move the company to Canada before the chinese moves in. So Cutthroat murders some immigration attorneys who could prevent their moving - it is of course a lot more complicated than that - while simultaniously searching for for Bigfoot in the Rockies. The warlord believes that the brain of Bigfoot holds an immortality gene which can slow down the aging process. As he eats the brains of a race of hidden throwbacks in the chinese mountains which are somehow related to the Yeti.

Canadian cop Zinc Chandler, one of the heroes of Ghoul, is at the front again, this time together with the boys of Special X, and if you think he suffered enough in Ghoul, this was only the beginning.

This novel is a marvelous ride where people gets slaughtered and Slade does one of those idiotic Hollywood double punch endings with which you either want to throw the book out of the window or just snicker when you realize you have been had.

And the writers are not afraid to have fun with PC, stereotypes and true Pulp.

Lotus Kwan turned.
"Where is Evan?", Zinc asked.
"Behind you", Lotus said, East confronting West.
The look that passed between them spoke a thousand words.
To imperial China, the Middle Kingdom was the center of the world.
Everyone not Chinese was a barbarian.
The 'Red Beards' - Englishman - were hated most of all.
Lotus Kwan was heir to that reality.
To imperial Britain everyman´s land was theirs to seize.
Colonists had the right to go where they had no right to be.
God, Queen, Country and the White Man´s Burden sent armies and corporations forth to 'civilize' the world.
Chandler was heir to that reality.
"White monkey", Lotus said, pulling a gun.

Thematically Cutthroat is very different from the horror fiction stuff in Ghoul or the classic serial killer of Headhunter, but it retains the dense writing, the complicated plots, interwoven bits of history and lovingly described mayhem. Not to forget four pages of bibliography to document the research which was used. It may not be horror in the strictest sense, but it is pulpy fun. Even if the deranged Cutthroat is the least interesting thing in the novel, to be honest. There is too much going on, and sometimes Bigfoot and the evolution takes too much space.

These novels seem to have been largely forgotten today; but it is kind of ironic that single thematic parts have become a cottage industry: the serial killer, which still fills the bookshelves, and the mythic expedition with guns bit, which keeps writers like James Rollins and a lot of other in pocket money.

[dem bones]

Cover and blurb from the Nel 1993 edition

Chris Moore

Blurb

In 1876 naturalist Francis Parker makes an extraordinary discovery before losing his life – and the evidence – in the horrific carnage of the Little Big Horn.

In 1987 Judge Hutton Murdoch is addressing the American Bar Association when his brain is blown apart by a high-velocity bullet. Two days later a second judge is pondering a complex point of law when a masked intruder slits his throat from ear to ear.

The hunt for an ingenious and brutal killer soon becomes a desperate search for the missing link between these apparently unconnected events. A search that will lead to a company engaged in bizarre genetic experiments, a sinister Chinese family with a centuries-old obsession – and ultimately to the horrifying secrets of man’s earliest beginnings.

Mr. Decker, that truly is a marvellous review of what is, even by Slade's standards, a ludicrously over-complicated novel. It's the only one of the first four i didn't love, probably because after the epic opening - the massacre of Custer and the boys given that special Slade treatment - i felt it spent way too much time on the missing link and the Sasquatch (or was that entire episode a Zinc Chandler drug trip?) and i couldn't keep up with it. Next, as far as I remember, was Ripper, their ultra-gory take on Agatha Christie's novel of the unmentionable title, and that one had me gripped from start to finish.

[andydecker]

Thanks for the nice words, dem. I really concur, they fell a little bit too much in love with the evolution stuff. Still, the battle against the bigfoot with axes while the mountain came tumbling down - more plot than many hollywood summer blockbusters

[dem bones]

There really wasn't anything quite like the Slade novels at the time, or if there was i sure never found it. Up until then, the only horror novel i'd read which contained a bibliography was Jeff Rice's The Nightstalker - he researched four pages worth of 'Myths & Legends' and 'Sex Crimes' titles just to write the Kolchak pilot?

something else very different about Headhunter was the advertising campaign. There were posters for the Star edition with the, uh, 'memorable' cover artwork plastered all over the London Underground and yet it was about this time a particularly tame advertisement for The London Dungeon was banned on the grounds it was giving children nightmares.

[franklinmarsh]

Jings! Beginning to wonder if I have actually read this one now. Enjoying Zombie (also published as Evil Eye which is a relief as there's a character referred to as Evil Eye in it) although it's not exactly horror at present, more a nasty crime thriller.

[franklinmarsh]

Truly excellent review, Andy. I've just read this (I hadn't before) and have to say that overall I didn't really enjoy it - but your comments above put things into perspective. There are a lot of enjtertaining things on the way (the shootout at the zoo after a key witness has been fed to the bears) but it seems to want to pack in far too much, from the Zodiac killings to the Yellow Peril to the Origin Of The Species to Bigfoot and all things Canadian in between. The discovery of Wilfred Blake was a nice atmospheric Lord Of The Rings moment, but the punch up with the missing links veered way beyond veracity.

[andydecker]

Thanks, Franklin!

[franklinmarsh]

Have just read Hangman, which was good, but missed the OTTnes of the earlier work. There's an awful lot of info about...er....hanging, some suitably gruesome (and important to the plot) deaths, the twist ending was guessable (even by me) - enjoyable but not quite as breathtakingly enthralling.

In view of various comments elsewhere, I'm looking at a modern Hutson for comparison purposes.