by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Del Rey, out now

After she is forced to kill her partner, FBI agent Odessa Hardwicke encounters a world of which she knew nothing…

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s novels about The Strain gave a new twist to the vampire story, telling their tale on a vast worldwide canvas. Things are on a rather smaller scale in this first of an ongoing series – but the stakes are no less perilous. If you like the genre blending tales of John Connolly, Michael Marshall Smith or Sarah Pinborough, you’re very likely to enjoy this new novel, told in three very distinct locales – Elizabethan England, the Mississippi Delta of the early 1960s, and contemporary New York. It begins with a handy definition of the different sorts of multiple killer – serial killer, mass murderer and spree killer – and draws you straight into the action as two modern day FBI agents race to stop some murders. What happens next is apparently inexplicable – as is the lynching of a white man in 1962, or so it seems to the young agent sent down to investigate…

Del Toro and Hogan take their time introducing the other central character of the book, Hugo Blackwood, which is a sensible move, given his background, and his involvement with the situation. But once he is present, things take on further urgency as Odessa (and we as readers) begin to understand what’s at stake.

There are some truly horrifying moments scattered throughout the story, and the procedural elements of the plot are blended in with the more outré, so the latter become more credible. (There’s a description of one particular location that Odessa and Blackwood visit that may seem bizarrely exaggerated, but having been to similar places in New Orleans, it’s not!)

Verdict: An engrossing, very well told blend of horror, the supernatural and the procedural. Roll on the second book! 9/10

Paul Simpson

 

Click here to order The Hollow Ones from Amazon.co.uk

 

Watch for our interview with Chuck Hogan coming this week