Shaun Hutson - Hybrid

[andydecker]

Shaun Hutson - Hybrid (Time Warner, 2002, hc, 378 pages)

This is the 2002 novel Shaun Hutson delivered to his new publisher Time Warner, published like always in the summer. This is an odd one, and not only because it is one of - or - arguably the weakest novels Hutson did. This is basically two novels - or novelettes, I never counted the length - in one books, which don't have anything in common thematically. One part is a new Sean Doyle novel, who has become an anachronism at the time. Which is a bit reflected in the story. But this is only part which is a bit innovative. The rest is a dull, joyless, by the numbers shoot-em-up.

Doyle kills some IRA blokes in public, gets fired for being a dinosaur, works for some security outfit, gets his job back to kill the IRA guy on a rampage which escaped him at the beginning and kills him. End of story.

The wrap around is the story of bestselling horror writer Ward, whose books are suddenly out of fashion. A single with too much money, he can't adopt and drinks himself into a stupor at first. Then strange things happen, he has blackouts and someone – or he himself – writes large chunks of the Doyle story. Ward does things he can't remember later, he sees strange things. After the Doyle story is finished, he murders a call girl and begs his agent for help. The supernatural conclusion comes so far out of the left field that it is ridiculous.

As an attempt of metafiction, this falls mostly flat, because the two stories have nothing in common and lacking any finesse. Even if this isn't the first time Doyle's chronology has been seriously re-written by Hutson to make him a series character – all the supernatural stuff of Renegades is ignored -, this doesn't make much sense. Are his earlier adventures now supposed to be "imaginary"? And even if the Doyle stuff is basically always just a variation of a theme, this story could have been so much better.

Ward's part is mostly about venting about the sudden end of his career, because his work is out of fashion over night, publishing houses, his agent and life in general - which admittedly is sometimes amusing. Hutson is always good at portraying miserable sods. At the end it even gets a bit gory. Still. As the first novel for his then new publisher Time Warner one would have think that he put more effort into it conceptionally.

[ripper]

I agree that overall this is a weak book. I read it once about two decades ago and have not since felt the urge to read it again. It's a continuation of that period in Hutson's writing career when he was trying to mix horror with a thriller. Some of them work for me, such as Assassin, but Hybrid is one of those that doesn't, and I say that as a fan of Sean Doyle.

Yes, in Doyle's later adventures the supernatural elements of Renegades are not mentioned. However, there's a recent novel by Hutson featuring Sean Doyle that does sound like it may well have something to do with a character from Renegades, though as I have not read it I can't confirm.