Paul Finch - Stalkers

[dem bones]

Congratulations are in order to Black Book of Horror stalwart, Paul Finch, surely the first from Charlie's stable to trouble the Sunday Times UK best-sellers list. At time of writing, Avon have shifted close on 50, 000 copies of this, his debut crime novel, and you can even find it on sale in the larger branches of Grotesco's and S*insburys.

Paul Finch - Stalkers (Avon, 14 Feb 2013)

Blurb:
Time’s up. You’re Next.

`All he had to do was name the woman he wanted. It was that easy. They would do all the hard work.'

Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenberg is investigating the disappearance of over thirty women. Each one was happy and successful until they vanished without a trace.

Desperate to find her missing sister, Lauren Wraxford seeks out Heck's help.

Together they enter a seedy underworld of gangsters and organised crime and encounter the so-called 'Nice Guys Club', a gang who can arrange anything you want. Provided you pay the price...

A GRUESOME CRIME STORY THAT WILL CHILL FANS OF STUART MACBRIDE AND MARK GILLINGHAM.

Louise Jennings, thirty, senior secretary at Goldstein & Hoff, is snatched on the Friday commute home. All evening Louise has sensed she is being watched, first in the toilet's of Mad Jacks, then on the tube, finally in the car park at Gerrards's Cross. Driving through Burnham, only three miles from home, her tyres are taken out by a police stinger. As she investigates the damage, the man with no nose slips into the front seat to await her return. Horror-face and his black accomplice bundle Louise into the boot of a car and take her for a long, long drive.

Once arrived at their destination, the kidnappers give her tea, a ham roll and a choice of syringes. The first is loaded with the blood of a junkie prostitute, the second, a mystery sedative. Their behaviour to date has left Louise in no doubt that she's been nabbed by total bastards. She assures them that Alan, her husband, who manages his own accountancy firm, is a fabulously wealthy man. He'll pay anything they ask provided they don't hurt her. The masked men are unimpressed. Who said anything about a ransom? She opts for the mystery sedative.

Cut to Bermondsey where D.S. Mark Heckenberg, Deptford Green's one-man Serial Crimes Unit, has just come off second best in a Sunday morning rendezvous with old school villain Bobby Ballamara (we know he's a force to be reckoned with. Only a proper gangster would wear a poofy pink silk shirt on the meanest streets of South London, and only a proper mug would pass negative comment on his dress sense). Ballamara's daughter went missing two years ago and he wants to know why Heck is no nearer to finding her than he was at the outset of his investigation. The detective explains that girls leave home for any number of reasons. Ballamara doesn't want to hear that, and intimates Heck will be propping up a flyover if he doesn't get his arse in gear.

Heck's weekend gets even worse. On his return to the station, he's informed by his immediate superior and one-time lover, D. I. Gemma 'The Lioness' Piper, that the costly investigation into the disappearances of 38 young women is over as of now. It's been three years and he's not done enough to convince those upstairs that the cases are linked. 'Those upstairs' translates as his detested unfriend, Commissioner Laycock, a number-crunching 'yes' man, fast-tracked to the top on his ability to slash budgets and manipulate crime statistics. Gemma insists that Heck's been over-working, he looks like a tramp, and he's to take three months leave, catch some sun and recharge his batteries. Laycock advises him that, should he get his way, he won't have a job to return to.

Louise has been transferred to a box room now, sharing it with what appears to be a glamour models wardrobe. Orange-mask, the black guy, slaps her around, tells her to take a bath and tart herself up. She'll be receiving a visitor in two hours.

Which takes us to p. 58 of 417, and that page count doesn't seem the least imposing once you get stuck in and realise Stalkers belts along like a Laymon novel.

[dem bones]

The moment of truth is finally upon her. A bolt slides open. A voice beckons and Louise, dressed in high class hooker regalia, leaves her prison for the master bedroom opposite. What a relief! It's a director of the finance company who share office space with Goldstein & Hoff! Poor Mr. Blenkinsop! They must have abducted him, too! But ... why is he coming on like some sleazy lounge lizard. Doesn't he realise the danger they're in? And then the penny drops ....

Heckenberg is drowning his sorrows in his local, The Raven's Nest, Hammersmith, when he's approaches by a vision in a miniskirt. They get off on the wrong foot when the mystery girl asks him how the investigation is going (he's none too thrilled when she thrashes him at pool, either). A royally pissed Heck concludes that, as no leggy ringer for a young Halle Berry would spare him the time of day through choice, she can only be one of Ballamara's tarts . Unfortunately, the Lioness arrives too late to prevent him saying as much. Lauren Wraxford storms out uttering profanities. Unknown to Heck, she's a soldier, recently returned from the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, and most definitely not a woman to be put off. Not when her elder sister, Geneve, is still missing three years after she was snatched from Leeds Uni.

The Lioness drives her drunken ex back to his Fulham flat, which he's converted into a makeshift incident room, a transgression so beyond the pale he would be looking at a custodial sentence should she report him. As impressed as she is horrified at such misguided devotion to work, Gemma is torn between doing the right thing or turning a blind eye. Heck prevails on her that, finally, he has a promising lead, one Ron O'Hoorigan, a fresh-faced habitual housebreaker and former cellmate of multiple rapist Shane Klim at Rotherwood High Security Prison. Nothing's been seen or heard of Klim since his escape four years ago, during the course of which he lost most of his face to the prison guard dogs. This could account for eyewitness reports of "the man wearing a monster mask" cited in connection with several of the abductions. O'Hoorigan recently completed his sentence and returned to his old patch in Salford.

The Lioness opts to upgrade Heck's enforced gardening leave to working-on-a-covert-investigation. He'd better come good on his hunch or Commissioner Laycock will have both their guts for garters ...

Heck drives North. A hooded figure in a clapped-out van makes a rubbish job of trailing him, and he suffers the pursuit until they near Salford, whereupon he lures the driver onto a patch of industrial wasteland, sets them up for a crash. The driver staggers from the wreckage, flick-knife brandished, the hood fallen away to reveal a familiar face ....

[dem bones]

It's been too long since we met a genuine Worst Pub Landlord contender, so chapter 15 comes as an unexpected bonus.

Ron O'Hoorigan isn't home and likely won't be returning in a hurry on account of his several ugly creditors. The amiable, candyfloss-haired junkie next door suggests Heck try his local, The Dog & Butcher, which, as the name implies, isn't the most salubrious of boozers and attracts a clientèle to match. Ogburn, the surly proprietor, is a glorious throwback to the days of Arthur "Bloody fancy town drinks" Meggitt of The Venomous Serpent infamy, and the last thing he's going to tolerate is some stranger and his black bit asking lary questions. O'Hoorigan emerges from the toilet, senses cop and bolts for the door. The entire bar pile in on Heck, who performs some serious violence with a bottle before he's overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Lauren slashes faces with her knife, but it's looking grim for the pair until a tall black guy, who has been sitting quietly minding his own business throughout, casually takes up a pool cue and wades into the fray. Even Lauren is astonished at the brutal beatings he gleefully inflicts on all-comers. Deke - that's his given name - makes short work of the Dog & Butcher mob, and, when the relieved couple thank him he shrugs it off, insisting he only stepped in as he has a natural aversion to shitheads. They know he's lying. Had O'Hoorigan's name not been mentioned, Deke would likely have sat doing his crossword until the fuss was over.

Anyway, the pair have taken a substantial kicking, so Heck throws himself and agro girl upon the hospitality of Dana, his estranged elder sister's. There's a coldness between Heck and Dana - at least, there is on his part - over some past business concerning their brother which clearly didn't end well. I'm sure we'll get to learn more about it in the fullness of time. Dana takes a shine to Lauren and puts her match-making skills into operation. Now she's getting to know Heck, Lauren has to admit that she's up for a relationship, but first they'd best check out Deke's tip off that O'Hoorigan has a squat on the abandoned housing estate at Gallows Hill ....

[dem bones]

The Gallows Hill estate lives up to gloomy expectation, and creeping its unlit corridors, fearful of being jumped at any moment, is the easy part. The stench hits even before they discover the horribly mutilated corpse hung upside down from the celing. Even as Heck and Lauren choke back their vomit, the police arrive downstairs. Deke set them up! The pair take a rickety fire escape to the ground and make a dash for it. Now the Manchester police have them down as murder suspects, Heck will have to work outside the law, as he knows Gemma will want him picked up before the Salford cops take him in for questioning. Back in London, they break into Deke's place and come away with a dossier from Deke's filing cabinet. Eric 'Deke' Ezekial, ex-Special forces, is a contract killer, and the the Nice Guys Club financed the hit on Ron O'Hoorigan. But who are they?

"It's a rape club. The Nice Guys are a criminal gang who organise rape for money." So admits one of their past clients before coming to grief in a scene which recalls a bloody episode in Peter Saxon's The Torturer. And, of course the NGC have a friend in high places, keeping them informed on the police operation ....

Meanwhile, a casualty of the mass brawl at the pub is snatched from his hospital bed, tortured and offed by the NGC in the most appalling manner ....

And that's where we leave the blow-by-blow account because by now I was too engrossed in the action to bother scribbling down notes. Mr. Finch keeps his chapters short, snappy and every-one-a-setpiece - there are 47 in all - ensuring the breakneck pace set from the begining rarely lets up.

Stalkers is a crime novel much as Headhunter, Ghoul, Ripper & Co are crime novels. Like 'Michael Slade', the author keeps it macabre. The creepy premise - if you've the cash, the Nice Guys will abduct your rape-victim of choice - should be horrible enough for most readers, and the multiple murders are as sadistic as they are frequently inventive. Amid all the flaying, live burial and impalement there are occasional moments of ghoulish humour - Nice Guys supremo 'Mad' Jack Silver is so revolted at the prospect of witnessing another Shane Klim torture-session that he does a 'Dr. Evil' and leaves the room, thereby enabling the victims to make an improbable escape - but for the most part, the going is as grim as the locations (As if the Gallows Hill estate weren't bad enough, a nightmarish rendezvous at Blacksands Tower, a long derelict sea fort off Canvey Island, is enough to make Heck pine for the cheerful camaraderie of Frank 'Toady' Ogburn and The Dog & Butcher beer monsters). The worst of it: Heck realises that even if he triumphs against all odds, somehow puts the Nice Guys out of action, similar Rape Clubs are mushrooming across the globe.

[paulfinch]

Glad you enjoyed, D.

Much more where that came from. In fact, trying to think up new 'macabre' cases - as you say - for Heck to investigate has been the order of play over these Easter holidays.

[paulfinch]

Might be of interest to you chaps that the sequel to STALKERS, called SACRIFICE, is officially published in the next 20 minutes.