Customer Reviews

A Walk on the Nightside

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Welcome to the world of John Taylor, a London based private eye that can find ANYTHING. Yet despite this talent John hasn't exactly prospered, mainly because he's not from round here. John was born in the Nightside, a hidden part of London where the misfits and deadbeats end up after falling through the cracks. A place where Gods and Demons hang out when people stop believing in them. A place that despite being home got just a bit too dangerous, so John ran for it.
But circumstances conspire to force him back, in order to find the missing daughter of his client, John has to go home where he hooks up with some old and extremely nasty friends, the love of his life, the homicidal Shotgun Suzie, who did shoot him once, but he didn't take it personally and Razor Eddie the punk god of the straight razor a malodorous being who does good by hacking the bad into a piles of bloody pieces, who currently owes John a favour and REALLY doesn't like it.
With friends like these who needs enemies but John has plenty of these too, some of whom he knows, others who remain hidden and mostly want him dead. To confuse matters John's not too sure why, but it may have something to do with his mother, whoever or whatever she may be. All he knows is that the few people who do know are so scared of her they won't talk, even to him.
Welcome to the Nightside, the illegitimate offspring of Dashiell Hammett and H P Lovecraft. Welcome to an original world of neatly crafted characters in well focused stories. Simon Green does not write the bloated doorstops beloved of some of his contemporaries, but this is no bad thing. Welcome to the dark zone, you'll like it so much you may not want to leave.

Simon Green is a wonderful British writer who creates a unique and fascinating world with his novels of the Nightside. This particular volume has the first three books in that series, and it is considerably cheaper than buying each of those books separately. An awesome read and an excellent deal!

I love the nightside! It is a great series of books. Sarcastic, stuff born of nightmares.. John Taylor is a great charactor.
LOVE these books. My fave charater is Dead Boy!

Read each book's Amazon description to get an idea of its plot, but I can tell you the entire series is wonderful. I've read the entire series, and I am looking forward to the next one.

Imagine Harry Dresden loose in a Neil Gaiman-style world, and you'll have some idea of what's going on in the world of the Nightside.

And "A Walk on the Nightside" introduces us to the first three fantasy-noir adventures of Simon R. Green's strange, creepy other-London. The first book in here starts a little shakily, but once Green finds his footing the story rolls along with a few slow spots, theological fast-and-looses, and the occasional moment that is just too weird for words.

John Taylor fled the Nightside years ago, and set up shop as a PI in London, using his special talent (finding things) to eke out a living. But when wealthy Joanna Barrett hires him to find her teenage daughter, Taylor finds himself leading her into the Nightside, and acquainting her with the terrifying, often gruesome chaos that dwells inside it.

Then they accidentally step into a timeslip, and John finds himself facing a ruined, dead world. Worse, it turns out HE was the one who did it, many years in the past. Tormented by this possible future, John must find the girl who was lured into the Nightside -- and hope that the area doesn't get blown up first.

Amidst strange angel rumors, John Taylor is hired by the Pope's undercover representative, Father Jude. The Vatican wants to hire Taylor to find the Unholy Grail -- the cup that Judas drank from at the Last Supper. Think the One Ring in cup form. So John and Shotgun Suzie prowl through the Nightside, into devil S&M clubs and neo-Nazi halls -- but the angels and demons have landed in the nightside, and will rip it to shreds to find the Grail.

And then a Nightside banker hires Taylor to help his daughter, the popular nightclub singer Rossignol -- and now her songs have gone from happy fluff to the stuff of suicide. The most likely suspects are her creepy agents, the Cavendishes. But only after a trip to their ex-client -- now a monstrous prostitute -- does Taylor begin to realize just how dangerous the Cavendishes are to Rossignol... but the truth of this doomed nightingale's song is far more terrible than he suspects.

The first half of the first book is basically an introduction to the horrors and wonders of the Nightside. And it has plenty of them Merlin's ghost, carnivore houses, UFO paranoiacs in an armed citadel, faceless assassins, fleshy guns, the pantomime of the dead, goblin drag queens, the unliving Dead Boy, Hell's neanderthals, and -- most scary of all -- teenybopper goths.

But after that, Green's mystery stories get solidly entrenched into a nice noir groove, although it usually takes him awhile to get the plots moving. His writing has a dark, wry snappiness, with plenty of solid dialogue ("Condiments. Never leave home without them") and tongue-in-cheek occurrences like the barhopping vampire. But he can imbue some more subtle horror into some scenes, like the ghastly encounter with the deadly Sylvia Sin, and the devastated world of the future.

The generically-named John Taylor is a good noir hero too -- he's got a very mysterious past and a lot of people out for his blood. The first book unfolds a devastating possible future, and the following stories give more hints about who his unknown mother is, and how he could be such a threat to the entire world and everyone in it.

Some of the other characters are not quite what they seem, but Taylor bumps into some endearingly bloodthirsty characters like Razor Eddie and Shotgun Suzie. Guess what they do for fun. And there are a number of others -- undead victims, the eerie Walker, the Collector, blind Pew, ghosts, and occasionally someone halfway normal like Taylor's teenage secretary.

"A Walk on the Nightside" brings together the first three Nightside books, and takes readers into a grotesquely fascinating world full of everything you don't want to dream about. Despite a few bumps in the road, it's a nice, dark read.

This series came highly recommended by several friends. But I have to say I was disappointed and couldn't get drawn into the story. The main charater's background is very relevant to the story, but we know nothing about him as the story opens and as the story moves on, we continue to learn very little about him ot the world known as The Nightside. And I found it very annoying that almost every other sentence ended with, "in the Nightside" as if the author expected the reader to forget where the story was taking place. I had very high hopes for this series, but was let down.

With all the rave reviews on Amazon for The Nightside books, I confess to a bit of curiosity, but have resisted the lure. Since A Walk on the Nightside was three novels for the price of one, I finally decided to give in just to see what all the hoopla was about. If you are of the same crippling curious (and cheap) nature, I suggest you buy this book - you will either be cured or brought into the fold. Personally, I was cured, and those people who are brought into the fold scare me a bit. The popularity of these books tells me there are a whole lot of infected consumers out there.

The Nightside is an ugly place, not particularly well described, but perceived through the movements of the characters. The best I could conjure up with my imagination was a filthy sewer, lined with businesses and flop houses stained with urine and blood soaked carpets. Within a very short period of time, blood and gore became so much wasted ink, and was hurled around like the residents were throwing animal feces at each other. Everywhere you walk, it squishes with some kind of offal.

The "hard boiled detective", the emotionally crippled 30 something hero of this series, whines about being abandoned by his Mommy at birth and his Daddy dying from an alcoholic binge when he was ten. (I can't imagine any man who would want to be like him, or any healthy woman who would find him attractive). His female sidekick, Suzie Shooter, is turned on by shooting things and farts for social commentary (charming). His secretary is a fourteen year old runaway from the real world who enjoys booze, masochism and dancing on tables (probably to avoid the dung on the floor). There are no sympathetic characters; "good" guys, bad guys, vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, angels from above and below, bums, businessmen, they all blend into one another, and telling them apart is unnecessary and impossible. Everyone is a loser and wallows in self-pity and degradation. Empty hearts, empty souls, empty lives. I couldn't find it in myself to care who lived or who died.

For those who suggest that The Nightside novels remind them of Chandler, Creasy, Butcher or Ellery Queen, I suggest that they have never read any of the above authors. Mysteries deserve a well-crafted plot, fantasy deserves a touch of reality and a few rules to make it seem magically possible. You won't find any of that here.

Basically, "A Walk on the Nightside" contained plots that didn't hold my interest, shallow characters I couldn't like and don't particularly want to hang around with (ever), a roach infested location I have no desire to visit (ever) and an apparent saga of further books containing more of the same. If all that floats your boat and gives you entertainment - go in peace (use my ticket to The Nightside, I won't be needing it again).

This glittering mixture of suspense and fantasy will grab you and not let go