Despite a killer premise, Jeff Povey’s THE SERIAL KILLERS CLUB far from slayed me.
Forgive the puns, but at least they’re in step with the loose, severed-tongue-in-cheek tone of this oddball debut novel. Not quite a thriller nor a mystery – and not quite funny – this thinly written story concerns a would-be victim of a serial killer murdering the killer instead and then assuming his identity, and then answering a series of personal ads that lead him to join a full-fledged group of homicidal maniacs who regularly meet and talk shop at a local restaurant, partly so they don’t go after each other’s victims.
The members operate anonymously, assuming names of movie stars like Burt Lancaster, Chuck Norris and Betty Grable. Our narrator dubs himself Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and quickly grows the enjoy his time spent in their company, so long as he can fake his way through gory stories of his success. Then an FBI agent named Wade corners him – assuming “Dougie” to be the real “Grandson of Barney” killer – and tells him they know what he’s been doing, and would he be willing to avoid punishment by killing off his fellow club members within the next two months?
Because there would be no book otherwise, our narrator answers in the affirmative, and the games begin. Too bad they’re not all that fun. I really wanted to warm to this one, but the attempt at dark humor fell flat. Previously, Povey wrote for BBC’s EASTENDERS, and that may signal the problem: British humor – already a bit difficult when translated over the tube – is even more problematic in print. For instance, a character is named Turner Turner III just for the sake of an easy laugh – one that may be garnered in front of a live audience, but proves leaden on the page.
Another is that it begins too late, with the Grandson of Barney already dead. Then after the club is introduced, Povey jumps ahead again and skips our narrator’s first murder. I kept thinking I missed something, but it’s just that the flow of the story is arbitrary and meandering. In a way, it’s kind of like AND THEN THERE WERE NONE in reverse, not to mention perverse. But where it leads is anticlimactic and not half as clever as it thinks it is (nor as its cover). –Rod Lott
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