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A review by paulcowdell
The Old Religion by Martyn Waites
1.0
Whatever promise this book may have had was lost in its determinedly competent, grimly mechanical assemblage of subplots. You could almost see the technical thought processes at work, because every backstory, every description, every incident and wrinkle, even most of the dialogue, read not as narrative but like pages from the author's character development notebooks. After 250 pages we find out a small trait of the lead character that turns out never to surface again, nor to have any impact on him as a character.
It's just bad writing.
Given his 'by numbers' technical approach, it's all the less forgivable that the author is utterly unable to build tension in the narrative or manage a reveal.
It was a text entirely without life.
I came here because of the author's claimed interest in Folk Horror. Unfortunately this just turned out to be the most perfunctory and pointless of his subplots. He was trying to dress it up as The Real Point, but couldn't because he's only interested in it as affect, just a peg to hang his dull and formulaic would-be thriller on: he can't even unfold the occult underbelly story well, which means it can't ever work.
On the back jacket Mark Billingham proclaims Waites 'one of the very best crime writers we have'. If that's the case get the humane killers, because crime writing's clearly beyond any hope.
It's just bad writing.
Given his 'by numbers' technical approach, it's all the less forgivable that the author is utterly unable to build tension in the narrative or manage a reveal.
It was a text entirely without life.
I came here because of the author's claimed interest in Folk Horror. Unfortunately this just turned out to be the most perfunctory and pointless of his subplots. He was trying to dress it up as The Real Point, but couldn't because he's only interested in it as affect, just a peg to hang his dull and formulaic would-be thriller on: he can't even unfold the occult underbelly story well, which means it can't ever work.
On the back jacket Mark Billingham proclaims Waites 'one of the very best crime writers we have'. If that's the case get the humane killers, because crime writing's clearly beyond any hope.