Slightly Concerned About This Book (My Review of Black Snow by Malcolm Stacey) #TuesdayBookBlog

I gave Black Snow 3* out of 5*

Book Description:

When Richard Black and his two children move to Wales. a storm of concentrated evil is unleashed on the seaside town of Tenby. Brutal killings lead to even worse outrages. Soon a macabre torrent of violence threatens to destroy hundreds of innocent lives. As the snow falls, a mild-mannered vicar, a retired journalist and a tour guide must save the town. While an impossibly difficult woman with a mysterious past is also working on it.
But Richard Black is no ordinary villain while his unearthly followers are even stranger. Now it will take a miracle to save Tenby from Britain's worst peacetime tragedy. Set against the eerie background of the secret in a Victorian poem, a forbidding mansion, a dark museum, a forgotten crypt, secret passes, hidden treasure, a sinister graveyard, wild woods an uncanny mist and violent death, Black Snow is a towering tale of relentless suspense you will never forget.

My Review:

I have hesitated about posting this review (for reasons you will read below)and have thought long and hard about it. But I also belong to a review team whose remit is to post all reviews of 3* and over - and I've tried, in the past, to set the same bar for books I read by choice, or books I have read on request from authors. So, with that in mind here is my review of Black Snow by Malcolm Stacey.

I was interested to read this book as I had seen articles by the author promoting it in the hope that it would be picked up and made into a TV drama.

I'd class Black Snow as a cross genre between horror, fantasy and comic 'tongue in cheek' dramatic writing. I found it quite difficult to place Black Snow in any one genre, which is why I say it’s a cross genre (as are many books these days and, in my view, that's fine and makes many novels enjoyable and fascinating for more readers.).

 I enjoy reading different genres, and review quite a lot but I try not to give any spoilers of the story, so review on merit of plot, writing style, characterisation, sense of place etc. 

There were some of the characters in Black Snow that were quite well rounded and I would have liked to have followed their stories for longer ( it would have been good also to have had a little more detail to their backstories) Mostly I wanted to know more about the antagonist, Richard Black, and his two children who actually turned out not be children as we would know.  (perhaps these details were given in an earlier book? I must admit to not checking this as Black Snow was the book I was reading and reviewing). I didn’t really feel the evilness of them, either through the observation of the other characters, or through Black's dialogue (the words were said but I felt something was missing that should have been threaded throughout the words.

The story is told from the various points of view from the different characters through a third person narrator; so we read both the spoken dialogue and the internal voice of these people. Most of this is quite good but sometimes, without the dialogue tags, it was difficult to work out who was speaking. There is also a lot of what I call ‘head-hopping’, jumping from one character’s point of of view to another within a couple of sentences and without any foreshadowing.

On the whole, I liked the sense of place but, perhaps, only because the setting is one I know well and could picture the characters moving around in that world. There some good descriptions of the interiors of the buildings, especially of the church and one of a cellar under one of the houses.

The next section of my review is why I hesitated to write this post. 

As a resident of the area, I admit to being slightly bothered by some aspects of the book,

There are mentions of Tenby being infested with rats in a couple of places, which I feel might be a problem for local businesses, particularly those that rely on tourism. (But, maybe, these is one of the areas of 'tongue in cheek' humour?)

Also, one of the remits/enticements of the book is aimed at Pembrokeshire people ( in the hope that they would write to BBC Wales for it would be picked up and made into a TV drama). So the real names of local people are used sometimes.

 But what I do find particularly worrying is in the case of one character named The Gazer, who is portrayed as menacing (although as an alter ego). To anyone who knows the area, as I do, this character is easily identifiable as a homeless man who lives locally. Not only that, his usual place where he can be found is revealed. This man keeps to himself and, as is usual with the homeless, doesn't have a voice in society - so I doubt he has given permission for his living area or his lifestyle to be revealed.

As to the legal aspect I can't comment, but I cannot help but feel that it is morally wrong to have written about a real person, clearly identifiable, and to portray him in a negative way. 

Obviously if other people have been consulted about being included in the book and given permission to be named, that's fine.

So, to sum up, Black Snow is quite an interesting story that has its merits but I feel it does need another edit just to show the work at its best.

Links:
Amazon.co.uk:
https://amzn.to/2sEkVxh

Amazon.co,:
https://amzn.to/2Dob4ll