‘Ghost Monster’ – Simon Clark

A quick ‘reminder’ glance at Amazon told me that the last book I read, by Simon Clark, was the apocalyptic ‘King Blood’ (just over ten years ago now). Amazon also tells me that this book has a reading level for between ages four to eight years old. If you have a child between four and eight, don’t give them ‘King Blood’ to read. Trust me on this...
Anyway... Not only was ‘King Blood’ the last book of Clark’s that I read it’s also the only one of his books that I’ve read. I don’t know what happened there as there was a time when I planned to read a lot more of his stuff. ‘Ghost Monster’ seemed like as good a place as any to jump back on board and see what Simon Clark is all about so I figured I’d give it a go. Having finished the book however, I’m not so sure...

All the children in Crowdale know about the ‘Ghost Monster’; a disturbing mosaic on the mausoleum wall that has been the object of childhood dares going back years. The story behind the mosaic has almost been forgotten though and it’s one that the people of Crowdale should pay heed to... The ‘Ghost Monster’ mosaic keeps the ghosts of the notorious Justice Murrain and his henchmen imprisoned; if the mosaic was to be damaged or lost then they would escape and run riot once more.
The mosaic has been stolen and Crowdale is about to drown in an orgy of blood. How can anyone be safe when their friends and neighbours can be possessed without warning? Will anyone make it through the days and nights to come?

Something I really hate are books that aren’t consistent. I don’t care if a book is consistently bad as that lets me know that it’s time to move on. Books that are consistently good speak for themselves! Even ‘consistently average’ works on that score. If a book is neither one nor the other though... I’m left with a tale that promises goodness only to drag me back into a morass that is anything but. This is what happened to me with ‘Ghost Monster’.

It was all looking good to start off with. I’m a big fan of the whole concept of possession; there’s so much scope for things that a possessed person can do and, to be fair, Clark explores all these options with gusto. It’s moments like this where the horror leaps off the page, grabbing you by the eyeballs and dragging you along for a rather nasty ride. When someone is possessed by the spirit of a former asylum inmate anything can happen and it generally does! Clark isn’t afraid to let his readers know exactly what is going on and spares no details in the process. It’s not just the possessed causing havoc either; Clark shows us that the normal residents of Crowdale can be just as vicious...

Clark also comes up trumps with the setting, a brooding coastal village where the cliff tops are slowly being reclaimed by the sea. Crowdale’s history looms large over the village and sets the rest of the villagers against the Murrain family; things are about to explode and no-one knows where the explosion will happen. Clark certainly does well to keep the tension on a knife edge for as long as he does. When things do kick off it’s worth the wait.

If only the wait hadn’t been so... awkward.

I found that I couldn’t really get interested in any of the characters, it felt like they were there to do a job (get killed, kill others etc) but actually develop as individuals. It was very much a case of ‘go to Point A, get in a situation, get out of situation and then move to Point B etc’. If there had been a little more to the characters then the moments of horror would have had a little more intensity, more reason for me to get involved in it. As it was, while the horror did scare me I wasn’t too bothered about who it was happening to... Clark's characters are also prone to lots of introspective moments (I found), something which had a habit of slowing things down when they really needed to be speeding up.

I also wasn’t too keen on the way that Clark has Jacob Murrain go on about how he’s not too worried about Justice Murrain because he thinks that things will go a certain way with him (and then they do). The sheer vitality of Justice’s evil is diminished by an ending that’s made all to clear and the tension was stifled by my waiting for the inevitable ending to take place...

While I would probably give Simon Clark’s work at least one more go (can anyone recommend a good book of his?) ‘Ghost Monster’ hasn’t filled with me with confidence for the future. I liked the concept, it’s just a shame about the execution.

Six and Three Quarters out of Ten