2020-11-07
An amnesiac henchman investigates the shadowy organization for which he works in Hewish’s debut horror novel.
Australian Mike Hadley is paid to follow orders, and asking questions about his criminal boss’s instructions is against the rules. Every night, he receives a phone call that wipes his mind of most memories of the day’s events. As a result, every morning he begins anew. Such is the life of an Executive—one who executes people—in the service of the Magician. Normally, Mike’s tasks aren’t too complex, but one night, he and his partner, Tommy, are sent to kidnap 5-year-old Lily Shepherd from her family’s murder scene. Motivated by a sudden shock of conscience, Mike disobeys orders; he can’t rescue the girl, though, and gets beaten into unconsciousness. He wakes up in his bed the next day with his memory of the night before intact; at least, he assumes it was the night before. He also has an armed visitor named Harper Ivey who tells him that they’ve already met. Harper’s been searching for his missing, mentally ill sister, Becky, and he thinks that the Magician is involved with her disappearance. With the help of psychiatric nurse Sophie Laine, the men investigate the Magician’s organization in order to discover the fates of Becky and Lily and the truth about Mike’s past. Hewish’s pugnacious prose style yanks the reader by the hair through a nightmarish Australian setting: “The night was coming down like Armageddon, bringing bruise-purple storm clouds that don’t bother raining—they simply hung overhead, like monsters blotting out the stars.” Readers should be aware that the book contains explicit depictions of child abuse, about which the author provides a warning in a foreword. Such abuse is the underlying trauma of the novel, and Hewish rather skillfully uses it to create an inventive and disturbing horror/mystery. Indeed, the book is filled with monsters—both human and otherwise—and it has a tricky structure that should please fans of Fight Club and The Matrix. Although its 500-page length is a tad excessive, especially give the promise of a sequel, Mike’s dark journey reads quickly and will hold readers’ interest.
An ambitious, well-executed horror story.
