BOOK REVIEW: LAKE LURKERS BY EMMA JOHNSON

BY KIT POWER 

 
Lake Lurkers is a super-fun creature feature nestled in the bizarro/splatterpunk genre. Starring Tess, a hard working business woman who has finally secured her dream lakefront property (her castle, as she thinks of it) only to have her paradise threatened when the lake itself turns out to contain a number of (really superbly realised) hungry creatures with an insatiable taste for flesh.
 
So sure, it’s pulp - glorious, unabashed pulp. There’s a series of chapters where the creatures claim victims just off camera, building the bodycount and stoking curiosity, and when they finally arrive in full view, they do not disappoint. This is is some ways a very cinematic novel, and this is one of the ways it achieves that - you can almost picture the camera angles the director would use to tease the creatures, and in the later bigger setpieces, the action is brilliantly and economically described.
 
So the titular Lurkers are a big part of what made this novel so fun to read, but the other part of it that really worked well for me were the characters. They are broad, but never characters - even the clueless, hyper-suspicious cops manage to fall on just the right side of believability, somehow - and they are funny - not in a ‘gags-per-second’ kind of way, but in their personalities, and the way they interact.
 
Chief of these is our lead character, Tess.
 
Tess is a wonderful creation - she’s unapologetically materialistic, and basically just plain doesn’t like other people that much - she doesn’t hate them, or anything, she’s not a mean person in that way - she just genuinely prefers her own company. Her relationship with randall, her sweet but vaguely clueless boyfriend is especially well drawn, painting a funny, but also oddly touching portrait of a vaguely dysfunctional but still oddly sweet couple.
 
Tess’s interactions with her neighbours are similarly gleefully funny, and her reactions once she realises what’s really going on are brilliantly layered, as she wrestles with both her emotions and the practicality of survival. Her closing line in the novel is kind of an exemplar of this, as it serves as both a sitcom punchline and also a genuine signifier of her journey.
 
One of the things I’m increasingly coming to realise is that the genre of pulp comes with a lot of negative baggage. I think a lot of people immediately associate it with cliched characters and situations, stock plots, and schlocky violence.
 
This isn’t that. The characters are funny, yes, but also functional, the pacing is sublime (I ripped though the book in 3 or 4 days), the action is well realised and vivid, and there’s a lot of very smart things going on under the hood.
 
At the same time, those smart things never get in the way of telling a fast paced horror story in the grand tradition of the creature feature. If that sounds like your kind of thing, I’d give Lake Lurkers a spin, because honestly, I feel like it’s kind of an exemplar of the form.
 
KP
2/5/18




 


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