‘Neuropath’ – Scott Bakker (Penguin)

Most days I’m one of those people who don’t hang around getting to work. After all, the earlier I get in then the earlier I can leave :o) Not today though… Today I will be staying on a little later because I just had to finish the last one hundred (and a bit) pages of Scott Bakker’s ‘Neuropath’ before I went into the office. It’s possibly the creepiest book I think I’ll read this year (maybe the creepiest book I will ever read)…

Thomas Bible’s life is on a downhill slope. His marriage is over and he hardly gets to see his children anymore, all he has left is a stalled writing career and job teaching bored grad students. Tom’s life is about to change though with the arrival of his old friend Neil Cassidy and his revelation that his university job was a cover for NSA work into cracking open the minds of suspected terrorists. Not only has Neil has gone AWOL from the agency but the FBI approach Tom with evidence that Neil has been using his skills on innocent civilians. Neil is obsessed with the fact that he can control the human brain and will strike at those closest to Tom in an attempt to prove a decades old argument…

This is probably the hardest review I’ve ever had to write, purely because ‘Neuropath’ operates at a number of levels and is one of those books that you could end up talking about far into the night.
At its most basic level ‘Neuropath’ is a storming thriller that rips along at a hell of a pace to an adrenaline fuelled conclusion (and some interesting speculations on the shape our world might take in the very near future). You have to hold on tight otherwise the twists in the plot will throw you right out of the book and leave you gasping for breath. Likewise with the frequent moments of creeping dread (especially the prologue). Everything happens for a reason, although you may not realise it at the time, and it all dovetails together to form a cohesive and action packed tale with an apocalyptic ending. Neil Cassidy is a truly monstrous character and some of what he does is shocking to say the least (you queasy folks had better watch out!).

Or is it?

The Argument, that Bakker hangs his plot over, is that everything humanity does is governed purely by stimulus and resulting neural impulses. We have no choice in our actions and this sheds a whole light on the events of ‘Neuropath’. If we have no free will then is there such a thing as crime? Is Neil a monster or is he the most honest character in the book (accepting himself for what he is without trying to disguise it)? Are his ‘messages’ the sign of a sociopath or merely the result of a course of action governed by a mechanical reaction to outside stimulus? Are all the characters just automatons and, once you ask that question, does that apply to us as well?
I don’t know, I don’t think so but that’s a whole different discussion that should take a place on a completely different blog! All I can say is that, as a reader, I was constantly putting the book down and looking at passers by in a whole new light. Did they actually choose to be doing what they were doing or, like Neil, were they just biological mechanisms governed by reaction? Was my continuing to read, instead of going to work, anything to do with freedom of choice? Any book that gets inside my head like that (and makes me view the world in a different light) is pretty damn special as far as I’m concerned!

That’s not to say it’s perfect though. Bakker makes the philosophical/neuro-scientific elements very accessible to a reader (like me!) who may have never dealt with these concepts before but, on occasion, things got a little heavy going for me. Two professors (Tom and Neil) on top of their game are not going to dumb down a conversation that they’re having but it might have helped me understand more if they had. To be fair though it has to be a fine line between getting your point across and doing it in a plausible manner, I’ll be re-reading this (sometime in the future) and I’m sure I’ll pick up more second time round, it feels like one of those books that will shed a few more secrets every time you back to it.

‘Neuropath’ isn’t an easy read but is rewarding whatever level you decide to read it on. If the Argument holds true then you’ll either read it or not, you won’t have any choice in the matter.

Nine and a Half out of Ten

‘The Shotgun Rule’ – Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books)

I love reading fantasy and (sometimes) sci-fi so that is what this blog is all about, every so often though I break out of the old routine and go for something completely different. Having got a lot out of Charlie Huston’s ‘Joe Pitt’ novels (some of my favourite reads from last year) I was eager to see what his ‘crime fiction’ was like. My wish came true when a copy of ‘The Shotgun Rule’ came through the door on Friday night and I settled down to have a read…
‘The Shotgun Rule’ weighs in at a mere two hundred and forty eight pages but it wasn’t for this reason that I finished it off so quickly. You see, Huston doesn’t just write punchy ‘vampire gangster noir’ that takes no prisoners he also does the same thing for this ‘small town rites of passage’ novel. Paul, George, Hector and Andy are four teenagers spending their summer getting high and getting into trouble. Things kick off in a spectacular way when, trying to get Andy’s bike back, they break into the local hood’s house and find a lab set up to produce crystal meth. It’s the easiest thing in the world to steal a bag of meth but not so easy to deal with the consequences. One impulsive moment is going to set the underworld on fire and draw attention to secrets much closer to home…
‘The Shotgun Rule’ blew me away (no pun intended) in both it’s execution and content. The flashback/flash forward scenes were a little confusing to start off with but it all makes sense halfway through when the two strands seamlessly fit together. Apparently this has been optioned for a film and the technical devices involved in the structure of the novel make me wonder if this was on Huston’s mind when he wrote the book. The prose is stripped down, and sparse in tone, but this just makes every single word more effective in its job. Nothing is wasted and everything is there for a reason. I rattled my way through this book not even noticing what page I was on, the story is fast paced and gripping and I was left eager to turn the next page and see what happened. The ending came right out of left field and really surprised me with its abrupt violence. Looking back things seem a little more obvious but I guarantee they won’t if you’re reading this for the first time. I wouldn’t speculate on Huston’s childhood but all I’ll say is that he gets the four main characters (teenage hoodlums) spot on with what they say and do. What’s also interesting is the study of the capacity for innate violence in different people and how they come across as a result. It is a cliché but in this case the quiet ones are always the worst… The only thing that I felt could have been done better was the portrayal of Paul’s father. Allegations are hinted at but never really confirmed (a couple of sentences right at the very end don’t really work for me, it felt more like gossip rather than anything else). The uncertainty is good but I felt that Huston needed to come off the fence and just say it one way or the other.
Apart from this small point, ‘The Shotgun Rule’ is a great read and one that I would certainly recommend to any fan of Huston’s who has only read the ‘Joe Pitt’ books. I’m looking forward to reading more by Charlie Huston, whatever genre it’s in.

Nine out of Ten