Blood Crazy - Simon Clark

What do you look for in a horror book, or a horror movie even? Personally, scares don't count for much for me and I would prefer the situation to be at least half-way plausible and make a meaningful point about society and our attitude to death. So that kind of rules out zombies even if you want to hang a commentary on it about mindless consumerism. There are exceptions of course, and it's all the more impressive when you can be surprised by an unexpected new take on the genre. I got that with The Girl With All The Gifts and I've found that also with Simon Clark's Blood Crazy.

While not exactly a zombie horror - there are no living dead here - Blood Crazy has a similar sense of a feeding frenzy being unleashed on society, and indeed the sides are drawn across pretty distinct generational dividing lines that does suggest there is a deeper commentary to be found here. But first of all comes the shock, and it comes fairly quickly. Staying a night at friend's house, Nick Aten returns home the next day to find his brother dead and dismembered in the most bizarre and horrific of circumstances. It can't be real, he must have taken something hallucinatory, but even though it is extreme, he is sure that his mortal enemy and thug Tug Slatter is behind it. He quickly discovers that he's not, that there is something much more serious and sinister going on, not least the way that older people and parents are starting to look at and in some cases feed on their own children.

Well, one thing that is familiar with the zombie apocalypse format in Blood Crazy is how quickly society breaks down and little groups of survivors set up dysfunctional little communities. Nick likewise finds transport intending to get out of Doncaster as fast as he can, but picking up other survivors on the way - at each point risking being chomped down on by marauding groups of blood thirsty crazies acting with no control over their impulses - he soon discovers that the problem is wider than he thought. There's only one way of surviving in this current situation until they can figure out what has gone wrong, and that's band together and set up a protective community in an isolated area.

Figuring out what has happened is vital to the longer term solution. Has there been a poisonous gas leak? Why does it only seem to affect adults over the age of 20? And indeed what happens when Nick and others turn 20? Is there a satire in there somewhere, do we change as we get older, become separate and detached at this stage from the next generation? Are younger children 'victims" of a society that they don't feel they have any part in or relation to? The answers to what has caused this and what it means might not be obvious but there are other indicators in the behaviours of the 'Creosotes' that suggest that there is some kind of purpose behind their actions and activity. Well, an explanation is proposed that is at least half-way credible, but in the meantime you can be sure there won't be a moment's lack of tension and fear in Blood Crazy until we get to that point.

That seems to me to be a good balance on both sides of what you would ideally like from good horror fiction. On the one side there is the visceral horror of impending attack from the unknown - not to mention the horror from within 'safe communities' - as well as serious consideration to human behaviours. Not everyone will be convinced by the first-person narrative voice of a 17 year-old with anger issues and a strong disregard for rules and authority figures. Nick is the first to admit he's not the best equipped to explain what has happened, and indeed his first instinct on finding that his parents appear to have murdered his brother to go to McDonalds for a burger while society is in the process of melting down quite rapidly, which doesn't seem the wisest of instincts (you can read some social commentary into that if you like) but a clearer head is no guarantee of survival and other new skill sets have to be developed quickly, which is where Nick proves to have an important part to play.

Not all post-apocalyptic fiction is as good as this or as realistic in considering the implications. The first part of Blood Crazy depicts the horror, the second the isolated communities of survivors, the third part, revelation, explanation and resolution. The set-up has to be as extreme and as horrific as it is and the second part needs to explore the human reaction to extreme events. The key is to bring it all together credibly and author makes a compelling case that has the effect of a sudden revelation about the nature of life, humanity, history, religion and mythology. It's very persuasive and justifies the horror that comes before it. Not that it needs justified, but it's even more satisfying when the experience of horror is put to a purpose and not just used for sensationalism.

I say resolution, but it would also be far too neat to wrap up Blood Crazy with easy answers, so - giving away no spoilers - even though it ends in a more than satisfactory way as a standalone book, there is clearly a long way to go before an accommodation is reached and society gets back on its feet. And even if it does, everything is going to be drastically changed in this new world. Simon Clark has handled the immediate issues thrillingly and convincingly in Blood Crazy, so it's more than promising that he can find a way to take this much further and into new areas rarely explored in such horror fiction in a forthcoming sequel.

Reading notes: Blood Crazy by Simon Clark was originally published in 1995, has been out of print for many years and has now been republished in a 4th edition - with an undoubtedly long-awaited sequel or sequels forthcoming - by Darkness Visible Publishing. It's available in paperback and eBook editions. I read the Kindle edition.