‘Scuttle’ – Barnaby Walter (One More Chapter)

Page Count: 366 Pages

I managed to get through my half year review, yesterday, relatively unscathed so when I popped out for lunch, of course I popped into Waterstones to treat myself to a little reading material for the commute home. I mean, yes I did already have a spare book in my bag but hush you, don’t judge me ;o)

It’s not just zombie books that I will automatically pick up these days, I’m also partial to anything that features giant spiders (have a click Here and you’ll see what I mean). So when I saw ‘Scuttle’ lurking on the bottom shelf, I knew what I’d be reading on the way home. And…

Your worst nightmare is closer than you think…

For a group of teenagers, a night away from home in secluded woodland with no phone signal is the perfect way to spend Halloween. But when their camping trip comes to a grisly end, with one of the campers found dead, the whole neighbourhood is left in shock.

What killed her? And why?

The name of the publisher is pretty apt here as ‘Scuttle’ ended up being a book that I polished off over a journey home and then a couple of hours at home where I should have been doing any number of other things, but had to finish the book first.

But damn did ‘Scuttle’ make me work for it, at least in the early stages. Things did pick up eventually but ‘Scuttle’ made for some choppy reading to begin with. The opening chapters felt rushed and the characters subsequently suffered from having no room to be introduced properly. Hudson’s Dad, and his husband, fare slightly better than Hudson who left me wondering just how he was going to carry the plot. There was nothing to him other than a nasty case of ‘perma-sulk’.

Stick with it though. I wondered if the game had been given away a little too early but it worked perfectly in terms of setting things up for a series of grisly kills which I thoroughly enjoyed. ‘Scuttle’ is very much a book where as a rule (bar a couple of exceptions), people very much get what’s coming to them and I didn’t realize this but that was exactly what I needed from yesterday’s reading. Well played ‘Scuttle’, well played :o) Even though I did a little cheer when certain characters died, I was still on edge at all the right moments; ‘Scuttle’ took a while to find its groove but when it did, it purred along.

And the further you go, the more you realize that you only thought the game had been given away too early. There is much more to tell and while ‘Scuttle’ is very much a horror novel, it has one foot firmly in another genre as well. I won’t give the game away, all I’ll say is that I really appreciated the downbeat ending, both at the personal level and in terms of the bigger picture. It was also good to see Hudson’s character develop over the course of the book after that worrying beginning. You can’t help but feel a little sorry for him at the end, Walter definitely adds the right note of tragedy to the proceedings.

‘Scuttle’ is a tale of two halves then but it’s worth sticking with for the generous helpings of body horror/’Creature Feature’ along with a surprisingly touching tale of family coming together in the face of adversity. I don’t know if it’s one that I’ll revisit regularly but ‘Scuttle’ did a great job of getting me through my commute and for that I’m grateful ;o)