Horror Review: Tit For Tat by Steven Crown (2012, Amazon Kindle)
Tit For Tat is a good premise in search of a better story-teller.
Not long ago, Chris was out drinking when a stranger offered him a lift to a new bar, a place with better booze and much better women. Tipsy enough to accept a lift from people he didn't know, Chris made the biggest mistake of his life. Kidnapped, taken to an unknown location, and restrained, he's subjected to extremes of agony no man should ever know or endure, then patched up again afterwards, all for the kicks and kinks of wealthy snuff connoisseurs who have each paid a princely sum to watch the action live-streamed over the internet for a period of thirty days.
Now, having suffered through the sanity-shattering cutting, nailing, slicing, chopping, scalping, smashing, stretching, chewing, burning, twisting, hammering, breaking, stapling, melting, whipping, and amputation for the past twenty-nine days, one of his captors makes a fatal mistake: he allows Chris room to escape.
Chris doesn't have much time left before he'll succumb to his injuries, but with the days remaining, he plans to follow the Golden Rule, doing unto his former captives as they did unto him. Tit for tat. If there's any time left over, he'll expand his net to snare the organizers and the viewers as well.
Tit For Tat is told in a rambling monologue based solely in the protagonist's head. I like the idea, but the execution left something to be desired.
My biggest problem is the narrator's ability to do things his injuries should absolutely disqualify him from accomplishing. What Chris pulls off would be difficult under normal circumstances--after weeks of disfiguring tortures, they would be impossible without months or even years of physical therapy, and that's being generous. The man has no thumbs, most of his fingers are gone, his hands are heavily-bandaged, his feet have been shattered, his arms and legs pounded with hammers, sections of flesh removed from every possible place on his body, and he's missing an eye, yet he manages to drive a car, disarm a single entry point in a home alarm system, stalk, ambush, incapacitate, and brutalize four healthy, paranoid victims seemingly without effort. The point where he hauls himself up sixteen stories' worth of apartment building is where I lost all respect for the author. Yes, I get it, there's such a thing as strength born of insanity, but that doesn't mean someone with injuries as awful as Chris's is able to perform the sort of stunts that Jackie Chan pulled off in his prime.
Prior to Chris's impromptu Spider-Man performance, this was a solid three-out-of-five: a decent stab at writing an I Spit On Your Grave, Darkman or Guinea Pig: The Devil's Experiment homage with an unreliable, certifiably insane narrator. After watching Chris fairly effortlessly accomplish things that would have strained Sylvester Stallone in the 1980's, however, I pretty much gave up. Hell, for all I know, the book's a performance art piece or Chris is narrating and making up the whole thing in his mind in the last few moments of consciousness before his life is ended out by the Pay-Per-View snuff producers. But there's nothing to make me believe this is the case, no last minute "Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge"-style wrap-up to indicate this was Crown's intention all along.
I can deal with books that end ambiguously, but the writer has to give me some indication that's where he's heading. Otherwise I'm left calling bullshit. I don't like calling bullshit, but if it's the last option left, what choice do I have? Two revenge penectimies out of five.
Most Disturbing Scene:
Despite coming nowhere close to living up to the advertised premise (the book's description begins, "Tit For Tat is arguably the most frightening horror story of all time," a sentence which only makes sense in a universe where there's no such thing as The Exorcist), plenty of awful fates befall Chris. Each of his four tormentors has their own work space, so to speak. Jeffrey's the torso man--anything on the main body, neck to waist and shoulders to fingertips, he handles. Andre is the face man--hair, eyes, nose, lips, teeth, ears, they're his territory. Peter's the leg man--thighs to ankles and everything in between are his focus. Then there's Henry.
Henry's the foot and penis man.
Unspeakably agonizing things happen when Henry's in the room. Need I say more?
Didn't think so.
nice post