Rating: 2/5
Review:
Unengaging
I'm afraid I didn't get on at all well with this book. It's well written and has its atmospheric moments, but it failed to grip or chill me and I found it rather tedious.
The main problem is that I found it almost comically packed with clichés. It's a chiller set in 1955, and at the outset we have a slightly dodgy-seeming psychologist, a small, claustrophobic hospital in an isolated location surrounded by thick mist and desolate marshland, hostile locals, disturbed patients, a sinister experimental treatment, unexplained goings-on, and so on and so on. It all felt straight out of a Hammer Horror B-movie to me and even the climactic and "shocking" ending seemed a familiar device.
I'm sorry to be so grumpy about it, but it really didn't work for me at all. Frank Tallis can write decent prose, but I often found myself rolling my eyes at what he was writing about. Others have enjoyed this more than I did, but personally I can't recommend it.
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