Cursed Words is the latest novel from I.D Russell (Under Blood Lake, The Killing Death), and like those other novels, this takes place in the same world, featuring some welcome returning characters. I always forget how dark parts of these novels can get, while there are certainly purposeful comedic moments, sometimes this is pushed to the side for some more concentrated horror.
Sick of his author girlfriend telling him how hard it is to write a novel, Dexter decides that to prove a point he is going to write one in a single weekend. He decides to travel to the Van Lundgren estate, a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, somewhere outside of his home of River City. He hopes that the peace and solitude there will allow him to focus on his task. The night he arrives however, also sees the arrival of a whole bunch of different characters, all there for their own reasons. With the estate having a dark past, this gets reignited with the arrival of the strangers.
Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Sergeant Frank Malone and his rookie partner Jimmy Hooper are travelling out of River City with the aim of making it to a favourite roadside cafe of Malone. Their journey eventually leads them inadvertently to the cursed estate.
While they are very much side characters, it was comforting to see the return of Malone and Hooper. My first experience with this shared universe was watching the 2008 comedy thriller The Killing Joke and so the images of these two characters are cemented into my mind as Jeremy Dangerfield and Tyhr Trubiak, making them seem more real. Malone in particular was as expected the stand-out part of Cursed Words. While he might not feature too often, he as always brings to mind Frank Drebin from Police Squad, coming across as a bumbling idiot, yet having a bizarre method to his madness that always results in him coming out on top. Much of the comedy revolves around him, it was a real highlight every time he got a chapter to himself.
The focus however isn't on this brilliant character, but instead much of the novel follows wannabe writer Dexter. This is good up to a point, but with the heavy supernatural elements playing out, a lot of the story falls under an unreliable narrator, by this I mean events happen that seem real to Dexter, but might not actually be taking place. Up until around the halfway point the book was easy enough to follow. The various characters are introduced at the estate and it feels like this is going to play out as a somewhat traditional murder mystery. There is decent backstory drip fed throughout Cursed Words, with ten chapters evenly spread throughout that are set from the mid nineteen fifties up to the mid nineteen sixties, concerning a troubled child that had unfortunate 'accidents' that follow him wherever he went.
I was surprised then to see this murder mystery quickly morph into something that was far more supernatural. The second half of the novel is a whirlwind of strange events that keep you ever guessing as to what is going on. Characters die in one chapter, but then return in the next none the worse for wear, the antagonist included. There are false leads and red herrings that are so well mixed in that it can be hard to parse what is real and what is fabricated. It led to me reading at an ever increasing speed, hoping that all would be resolved and explained by the books end. For me that never happened, from the last final twist I was left pretty confused with what had been going on, unsure if the unreliable viewpoint pointed towards literal supernatural goings on. If Cursed Words was a film then the whole second half would have gone deep into arthouse territory, containing as it does dream sequences that may actually be real, hallucinations that again may actually be real, as well as a lot of full frontal male nudity, so all very arthouse.
This confusing perspective did make the subplots a nice change of pace. Getting Malone and Hooper's outsider perspective calmed things down, as well as being genuinely amusing, while the sections set in the past gave definite facts to what was occuring in the present. With Dexter, I wanted to like the character, but struggled due to never knowing exactly what was going on with him.
As is always the case with Russell's novels, Cursed Words is written very well. As confused as I was, this wasn't due to the style of writing, it was very easy to visualise in my mind's eye what was happening. Some of the characters were well realised, of course Frank Malone as always was a pure joy to read about. I fear a lot of my confusion over the plot was down to me, over the days that have passed since reading this I have sorted out a lot of the story in my head. Regardless, Cursed Words is well worth a read, a murder mystery with an arthouse difference, and a story that goes to some very unexpected places.
SCORE:
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