But yes, you should be somewhat familiar with the tradition of Lovecraftian horror and mythos to get the most out of it.
And speaking of visceral - yes, there will be a fair bit of actual viscera on page. She seamlessly achieves that cacophonically vivid viscerality of smells and colors, the disturbing imagery, the oppressively bleak of atmosphere. Khaw mostly pulls off the combination of hard-boiled noir and Lovecraftian horror. “The cold feels good, real good, a switchblade chill cutting deep into the cancer of a thousand years’ nap.” Yes, there’s cigarette smoke and moodiness and violence and quite a bit of body horror, some of it better avoided on a full stomach. I came into this book completely cold - Carol suggested reading it, and that was enough of a recommendation for me - and it took a couple of pages to figure out what’s and how’s of this short piece. In a few years, it’ll just be another haunt for the butter-and-egg men. Now Croydon’s split down the middle, middle-class living digging its tentacles into the veins of the borough, spawning suits and skyscrapers and fast food joints every which way. I remember when it was harder, when it was chiselers and punks, knife-toting teenagers and families too poor to make it anywhere else in grand old London, when this body was just acres of hurt and heroin, waiting to stop breathing. Just read the passage below and tell me you’re not hearing it in the macho raspy-voice gruff narration out of a cloud of cigar smoke:
But like it or not, this story is very much Lovecraftian in tone and feeling - combined with the tobacco smoke-filled atmosphere of Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled noir detective stories. “I’d gotten into the detective business to escape the deepwater blues, from the songs that squirm in your veins like worms.”I’m not a big fan of describing things as Lovecraftian - I don’t care for the guy himself, I prefer tentacles in the form of calamari, and I can live without the overwritten language just fine.
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