Scavengers by Robert Hood

‘Memory, but not a memory. There’d been a party, but it hadn’t happened like that. What was his mind trying to tell him?

Meet Mike Crowe, of Wollongong NSW. He is a sort of Private Investigator, with a sort of girlfriend named Gail who is haunted by a sort of ghost of a woman called Lucy, who has been dead for ten years. This is important background information, all relevant to the turmoil in which Crowe is about to find himself immersed.  There’s a bloke called Charlie Pukalski ‘pillar of the community as far as the community was concerned, dodgy bastard to those in the know, an old frenemy.’ Pukalski wants the very unwilling Crowe to do a job for him. And, when asking doesn’t work, blackmail does. Sort of. Pukalski is after something bizarre and almost priceless.

There’s a serial killer at work, nicknamed ‘The Scavenger’ because he cuts up his victims. The Scavenger gets involved when Crowe is trying to meet Pukalski’s request, and things rapidly go downhill. Crowe, plagued by nightmares and seeming visitations about the death of Lucy (a case he had been unable to solve). Why is Lucy haunting Crowe, and what is the meaning of the message she is trying to share?

‘Don’t let him have it!’

Crowe is working with the police as well as with Pukalski (sort of). He is also being assisted (sort of) by a scruffy ex-journalist called ‘Blowie’. Hmm. Meanwhile his visions of Lucy are increasing, and her messages are becoming more urgent.

While Crowe is the main character, his is not the only perspective we see. Occasionally we are in the murderer’s mind (not an entirely comfortable place in which to dwell) and references to Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ give us hints as to what he is about. But, be warned, there is also a touch of occult involving at least one demented character.

Horror often doesn’t work for me but the crime fiction element of this novel captured and held my attention while (gulp) the horror worked its way insidiously into my consciousness. Here I was, towards the end of the novel when the light flickered. Could it be a sign? I mean, the first copy of this book sent to me didn’t arrive, which just made me more determined to read it.

And now I have finished, I thank Mr Hood for the ending which may (just) prevent me from having nightmares about body parts and electricity. Possibly.

My thanks to Clan Destine Press for being kind(!) enough to send me a second copy when the first copy mysteriously disappeared between Victoria and Canberra.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith