'The Roo' – Alan Baxter

I'm not on Twitter nearly as much as I'd like to be; work absolutely saw me coming and not only gave me loads to do but also made my laptop refuse to let me anywhere near Twitter. That's not a bad thing to be fair; after my last round of long term unemployment, I have a new found appreciation for the benefits of staying in work ;o) I do make it onto Twitter though, normally at the tail end of all the cool stuff (I'm constantly playing 'catch up') and I was around just long enough, a while ago now, to catch a bunch of horror folk laughing at some cover art (the cover art in the post) for a made-up book called 'The Roo'. I hung around long enough to hear talk of how a book should be written to go with the cover and my reaction was along the lines of 'Would that even work? A demonic kangaroo? Fuck it, I'd still read it though.' And then I promptly forgot about it until the other day when Amazon kindly suggested that I buy it. Of course I bought it :o) There's a kangaroo with glowing eyes on the cover, I had to see if the story lived up to it. And it does, it really does. Welcome to the brave new world of 'Kanga-Horror'...

Something is wrong in the small outback town of Morgan Creek.

A farmer goes missing after a blue in the pub. A teenage couple fail to show up for work. When Patrick and Sheila McDonough investigate, they discover the missing persons list is growing. Before they realise what’s happening, the residents of the remote town find themselves in a fight for their lives against a foe they would never have suspected.

And the dry red earth will run with blood.

'The Roo' is basically what 'Evil Dead' would be like if you took out all the Deadites but kept all the gore and added a giant kangaroo that's really partial to fucking up your day. I get it, it sounds like it shouldn't work but it does. Alan Baxter gives his creation enough menace to catch your eye and then really lets it go to town on, well... anyone who gets in it's way really. Whether you're a good bloke or a flaming galah, we're all the same on the inside and you get to see those insides splattered all over the outback. It's great fun to read and at only a hundred and twenty two pages long 'The Roo' is timed just perfectly, avoiding the potential pitfall of being too repetitive ('Roo Kill', cut to the pub and repeat, the approach works here as it drives a short, sharp burst of horror). And if you're thinking that some of the characters sound a little familiar... Well, the horror community provided the encouragement behind the creation of 'The Roo' so of course some familiar names would be killed off, or not (read the book and find out who made it).

'The Roo' isn't just about a demonic 'Roo smacking townsfolk around with the corpse of a good friend or family member though (although that was cool). Baxter also finds time to shine a little light on the real life horrors of domestic violence and male suicide that is particularly prevalent in rural areas of Australia. It provides a real sobering undertone to 'The Roo' that kept me reading and stuck with me after I'd finished. There's a little message there, about looking out for people and doing the right thing, that I hope people will get.

The bottom line is that 'The Roo' is an awesome read that deserves to be read, made into a movie and for the Roo itself to end up as a MacFarlane figurine. I loved it and if you like your horror served with several buckets of innards, I think you'll love it as well.

(If there's a sequel, please let it be called 'Roo too'...)