book review: The Wicked by Cosmic Jones

The Wicked follows a well-trodden path in terms of storyline. It’s not original, and arguably uses one of the most common plots in the whole pantheon of horror/slasher stories. It starts with a deranged serial killer who murders a few people for no discernible reason, then drops the ball with one victim who manages to get away. Instead of moving on to the next slaughter, like any respectable mass murderer, he becomes obsessed with hunting down the survivor to put her through hell for having the audacity to escape.

This trope lies at the very core of slasher books and films. Despite the fact the plot is over-used, it can work ... with the right treatment. In today’s expansive slasher fiction market, the stories which really stand out are those which tackle the standard storyline with a point of difference.

The Wicked, sadly, doesn’t take the opportunity to mix things up. The serial killer is male, a physical giant of a man with bedraggled hair and an unkempt beard, and he doesn’t speak. He goes about his killings adorned with a selection of full-face masks, likes to tap on windows or stare through them (in a peek-a-boo fashion) to unsettle his prey, and drives a grubby panel van.

The survivor who becomes his obsession is also stereotypical. She’s female, artsy (in this case, she’s a violinist), unlikely to have the guts to fight back, and living alone. To concrete the cliché, she’s done the thing many single, fragile, artsy women do when they live alone, and taken up residence in a remote house that backs onto woodland.

It must be said that despite the overused plot and the typical characterisations, books of this type still can, and often do, work. Sadly, for The Wicked, there are a few hurdles it needs to clear.

The first challenge is the excruciating level of detail, or to be more exact, unnecessary detail. The novel weighs in at over 400 pages, which is fine if it was 400 pages of tense, driven narrative that hooks the reader. Detail is to be applauded, especially when it drives the story and delivers relevant and necessary information. However, much of the detail in The Wicked is superfluous.

There’s rarely a scene involving a window when the dimensions of the aperture aren’t given, along with an explanation of its location, defined using measurements and construction details. The first time it happened, I thought it had to be a clue, a vital piece of information that might serve to unravel the mystery, but it wasn’t. As a reader, I can and will accept that people can climb through windows, so using excessive detail to persuade me of the possibility wasn’t necessary. It restricted the flow of the narrative, broke tension, and bogged down the story.

One thing I found irritating was the way periods of time were explained. People pause for ‘about 10 seconds’, listen for ‘about 45 seconds’, hold their breath for ‘about 15 seconds’. It grated on me quite quickly.

Some of the detail is frustrating as it’s unnecessary, such as the explanation that Roxbury Community College is a community college in Roxbury. I’m guessing that most readers, if not all, will deduce as much. Exact details of routes driven also become tiresome, as do explanations of why certain characters can do specific things. There’s a significant chunk of text explain how one character knows how to secure his back door. Many of the things which are explained in detail will be accepted by readers without question, and the in-depth justifications merely disrupt the story.

I believe people can climb through windows, I don’t doubt a character can make themselves lunch or a sandwich, and I understand how some can drive from A to B using a selection of roads. I don’t need these things explained in intricate detail, and I certainly don’t need them explained multiple times.

Which brings me on to the second hurdle The Wicked has to clear: repetition. The novel is littered with repeated elements, ranging from simple thoughts and interactions to significant events. I was left with the feeling some of this was an attempt to build tension, but it had the opposite effect, dragging my attention away from the story. At times, when a fast pace was needed to match the narrative, the repetition made it feel like wading through porridge.

One of the more irritating examples came when the victim/survivor managed to escape from the killer. In a long and drawn-out chapter, the detailed episode is written from the point of view of the victim. After she escapes, the entire episode is retold by the survivor to her friend with the same point of view. Nothing is added, nothing new revealed, and as such it depleted my interest.

Another issue I had was with the killer’s backstory. He had none throughout the first half of the book, which was fine. I can accept a serial killer without a backstory. He’s mad, he’s silent, he’s a loner; I don’t need his journey. I just need him to do monstrous things to people. If he’s random, I can swallow that. However, halfway through the novel we get a drawn-out chapter where the FBI trace his sister. In a very strange monologue (during which her character never remains the same), she gives a protracted info-dump about his life. In the long run, it has no bearing on the storyline at all.

The final hurdle is the finished quality of The Wicked: it’s poor. The book reads like a first draft, and I mean a first draft where a writer smashes through the story without checking anything. I did suspect I’d been given the wrong file and checked the version on Amazon, but it was the actual final draft. There are some very clumsy sentence constructions, content errors such as incorrect names, and more mistakes and typos than can be considered acceptable. It’s hard to believe the writer even gave the novel a read-through, let alone an edit, because many of problems are simply too obvious to be missed.

It might seem as if I have nothing good to say about this book, but I’ll explain why it made me angry. The e-book is priced at a high level, higher than some established books from mainstream publishing houses, and I don’t think it’s fair to the reader, given the scrappy delivery. If the author – or any author for that matter – takes money from a reader, I believe they should at the very least deliver the best product they can. Even a basic edit would clear out many of the mistakes, and a tidy up of the construction would enhance readability considerably. Eliminating much of the repetition would probably half the length and make the book more appealing to the typical horror/slasher audience.
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There is the promise of a much better book hiding under the surface, and that Cosmic Jones chose not to put in the effort to bring it out means I can’t recommend this book as it stands, not when there are so many better options out there.

All over the northeastern United States, there is a brutal killer cloaked in various masks and disguises, terrorizing whoever or whatever gets in the way of its macabre and deadly path.
With this mysterious, demonic force still on the loose, law enforcement has been baffled to find the identity of the ever-changing killer, knowing the villain and its shocking crimes only as “The Wicked”.
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And now the monster has turned its dreadful attention to a fragile and lonely violinist, a woman seemingly helpless against the frightening mountain of horror.
Can anybody save her, and countless others, before it’s too late?  Before they all have to face the insidious wrath of “The Wicked”.

“The Wicked” is a terrifying and suspenseful novel of courage, desperate survival, the confrontation of fear, and the empowerment of hope in the face of life and death.

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​Peter Caffrey is a writer of tales with an absurdist bent. A born and bred Londoner, he currently lives in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the North Sea and fog for company. Introduced to horror as a small child by a Mother who was too scared to watch films on her own, he has a fondness for demonic possession, crucifixion and impalements. His novels, The Devil’s Hairball and Whores Versus Sex Robots are available from Amazon. He drinks too much, exercise too little and is unlikely to change.
 
http://petercaffrey.com

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