I feel like Adam Millard is an author I really should have read more of by now. Back when the UK Festival of Zombie Culture was a thing he was a regular guest and always seemed liked a nice guy. One time I ended up picking up a copy of his comedy horror book, Larry and judging from my review I really enjoyed it. I say going from my review as my memory of the book is shockingly bad, but even despite that, getting into the sequel, Larry II: The Squeeequel was an easy feat. Spoilers for the first book inevitably to follow.
After getting chopped up, decapitated and burnt alive at the end of Larry it seems the geriatric slasher's path of bloodshed and murder was at an end. Life has returned to normal for 'final girl' Amanda Bateman and her friends. However, a year later, Larry's mother (with the aid of the carpet fitting brother of a witch doctor) manage to resurrect the pig mask wearing, axe wielding maniac, who discovers he now has a psychic link with Amanda and is able to pinpoint her location to the nearby city of Haddonfield. Amanda also is able to discover her old foe is back from the dead, and so teams up with her best friend Freddy, as well as enlists the help of a very butch Nun called Sister Geoff in order to stop the killer for good.
As I mentioned in the prologue to this review, my memory of the first book is very patchy. Larry II was a book in similar style to the more recent Don't Smell The Flowers! They Want To Steal Your Bones! by Duncan P. Bradshaw. That book was so jammed of nonsense and fourth wall breaking that it threatened at times to derail the story going on. Here, fourth wall breaking is very much in effect, there is a constant back and forth with characters seeming to be aware they are in a book, and often commenting on the descriptions and language Millard is writing with. There were also a heck of a lot of recurring gags throughout the two hundred and sixty six pages, something that I am a huge fan of thanks to the books of Robert Rankin.
Larry was very much a spoof of the Friday the 13th series, and for the sequel (sorry, squeequel) the onus is on this being a sequel and so following the traditions of a follow up. Mainly in this case that there needs to be a higher body count, an excuse that Larry constantly uses, and something that becomes a plot point (Amanda figures the place with the most people will be where the killer is as she knows he needs to have a higher body count this time around). There is a lot of brutal killing here with people suffering all ends of trauma, all the time this is played for laughs, often with the victims reactions to what is going on being the funny parts. I liked how the side characters would realise they were side characters, bringing them to the conclusion that perhaps they wouldn't survive the book. The plot is quite basic but that works for this, the incidental dialogue was often amusing, and the writing style led to a book I breezed through.
Not all the humour worked for me, a few jokes were a tad dark, such as one about an Anders Breivik arcade machine, but overall the silly nature of the story and the writing here both delighted me.
Reading Larry II: The Squeeequel I was reminded by how much I enjoyed the style of Millard's writing. With many characters talking about the possibility of a third Larry book I was happy to see this now exists, even if it does seem like it might be a bit difficult to find. I will try and track down a copy as I enjoyed my time with this one.
SCORE:
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