Brian Hodge, Wild Horses (Morrow, 1999)
Brian Hodge spent the early half of the nineties being one of the most weirdly original writers of horror fiction of our time. (Impossible to travel through, say Nightlife without saying "where does he GET this stuff?" at least once. Trust me.) So when this-a mainstream (gasp) novel that, from the description, sounds equally reminiscent of John Ridley's Stray Dogs and Doug Winter's Run-hit the shelves, I was a bit leery of it. I have watched other horror authors attempt this transformation and fail miserably. (Exceptions are to be made for such authors as Kathe Koja and Lucius Shepard, who were writing literature to begin with.)
Hodge does the job, and he does it well. His main character is day-care worker Allison Willoughby, who finds out her boyfriend, Boyd, is cheating on her. After a confrontation with Boyd and the ex-showgirl lover, Allison gets ready to move out. Before she does, she cleans out Boyd's laptop. What Allison doesn't know is that one of the things she erased was a file with the information necessary to get seven hundred thousand dollars stored in an offshore account which Boyd and the lover have been skimming from the casino in which Boyd is a dealer. Allison's headed back to her childhood home to settle some old ghosts, blissfully unaware that both Boyd and his new girlfriend, and the lover and her sadistic husband, are after her.
As far as the wonderful world of the crime/suspense thriller goes, if you're looking for a quick way to turn your brain off, get a few good one-liners, and have yourself a merry old time, you need look no further than Wild Horses. Fast-paced, straightforward, sharp, and funny, there is a good deal here to be enjoyed. A few folks who are unfamiliar with Hodge's earlier work in the horror genre might find themselves wincing a time or two at some of his more loving descriptions of damage caused by various characters, but overall you shouldn't have a problem with it. (Just keep reading. He'll stop after a paragraph or so. Honest.)
My only real problem with the book is that every once in a while a two-dimensional character pops up whose sole purpose in the novel is to advance the plot. But they are few, and while they're not far between they disappear pretty quickly once you're into the second half. (Again, keep reading. He'll stop after a chapter or so.) It's certainly not enough to keep you from picking it up if you're looking for a good, action-packed thriller. Fans of Winter and Ridley will definitely want to give this one a look. ***
