Customer Reviews

Wicked Things

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Like the Publisher's Weekly review above, this book is a stinker. It starts out promising, with Jack Carlson headed to an idyllic little town to investigate some fishy insurance claims.

As most readers know, Stephen King is the master of creating idyllic little towns with dark, horrid secrets just below the surface. Unfortunately, Thomas Tessier isn't Stephen King. Along with King, Tessier attempts to cross-weave some of Dan Brown's famous secret-society intrigue. He's not Dan Brown either. The town, intended to be creepy and mysterious, comes off as vague and undefined.

The vaguely-intriguing premise quickly dissolves into a mess of red herrings, loose ends, and clunky, awkward dialog. We meet some cardboard-cutout characters who deliver plot-advancing statements. We even get a few puerile, clumsy, sex scenes involving women who say improbably-graphic things lifted from the "Letters" sections of men's magazines.

The plot is equally pathetic. There's something vaguely weird in the town, people die off, maybe it's a conspiracy, maybe it's a cult, it's all hazy and unclear. I'll save you the six hours it takes to read this book and tell you that the ending provides no answers. A vain attempt to pull off a sinister and dramatic ending falls laughably short of the mark.

In addition, there are few a bizarre moments that reference the story being set in the late 1970s. Tessier does nothing with this setting, except maybe provide a convenient excuse not to give his characters cell phones or other technology. It's just another half-baked concept thrown into an already-messy concoction.

The paperback edition includes another short novella. Sadly, "Wicked Things" was so bad, I saw no reason to continue reading.

I don't know how the publishers obtained the favorable review quotations on the cover, but those methods were far and away more creative than the book itself. Skip this one in favor of almost anything else.

I was very disappointed in Tessier's FINISHING TOUCHES but this one looked much better. Jack Carlson is an insurance investigator. He has just been handed a case of seventeen accidental deaths insured by seventeen different firms but all sold by the same agent. The case takes him to a small upstate town. At first the town seems like a typical small town but then he notices small inconsistencies. Then the insurance salesman getts jittery. Then people begin to die. Jack begins to get very lucky with the ladies.

This is a strange town where strange things happen. The sky glows. Sometimes the ground glows. The ground sometimes shakes. People disappear. An old arganization seems to own a lot of the town. But how does it all tie together? How will Jack figure it out? How many more will die befoe Jack exposes what is going on? I don't know. I read it but the ending was cheap and offered no explanations. All in all a big disappointment.

Like with FINISHING TOUCHES the book is filled out with a long short story that takes place near the town in the novel. This is a tale of small town justice and what it might bring. Unfortunately it, too, ends rather suddenly without true explanation.

If a storyline about an insurance investigator being sent to investigate a small "upstate" town that has some link to an old cult and chanting in the streets and strange sights going on sounds sort of familiar, well...let's just say another good name for this novel could have been The Wicker Shadow over Hobbs End. But horror is full of cliches and rehashed stories, it is all in the telling. Too bad Tessier never quite gets the spark of life going in this one.

The main character is a slice of old noir detectives: masculine, a little undisciplined, a hit with the ladies, and generally an agent of good. His investigation pivots upon the suspicious behavior of one man acting as agent through several companies. This seems proof enough that something dark and sinister is going on.

The problem is, you have a man that is so paranoid that a free agent whose claims come through over a a couple of years sets off his hackles, but a small town that has an unprecedented view of an aurora far brighter and more active than any real world equivalent merely annoys him a little. He is convinced murder is going on, but continues to "stir the pot" long after he could have called in some contacts and stopped himself into increasing danger.

By time the weird factor starts to truly amp up, and some honest mysteries are being laid out--the part of the novel that should be drawing the reader in until the end--you realize that the pace of the story is not speeding up at all and you are past the half way mark. Red herrings have cropped up here or there (the best/worst one being an "adult strip" that seems largely to be an excuse to get the protagonist laid from time to time). Fifty pages from the end and the pace is still chugging along at the "build up speed" stage. 20 pages from the end, and what might be a climax starts to show up. It ends with a very flat note.

By the time you get to the end, you begin to wonder if Tessier originally envisioned a different novel and was not sure how to end it, or if some other constraint kept him back. No matter how excited you got through the first three-quarters (and I stayed pretty excited up to even past that point), you realize that there is no ending at all to the vast majority of things that the novel has been about. I can deal with the lack of real explanations (or at least I could deal with some things being unexplained). I can deal with a few red herrings in a horror novel. I can deal with a "twist". But when the twist is "the main character is in a horror novel...da da dumm!"; it just feels a little like a cheat.

I can read "small towns gone awry" novels all day long. I especially love creepy little kids and strange old churches. But these are woefully underused, background flavor that gets only about as much wordplay as the description of what sort of shirt a stripper is wearing right before sexually satisfying the main character. Possibly even a bigger shame is the fact that there are hints, here and there, that Tessier was going for something more ironic from time to time...a small town that is not awry but just seems that way and things are getting out of hand.

It has some good points, some of which are really good. Most of the rest is adequate enough to get the point across. But the lack of conclusions leads you to think either a sequel is coming along or there was no real explanation for any of this. Couple this with some notably cookie cutter characters, pacing that does not adapt to the flow of the situation all that well, a plot that asks questions too late in the game, and a storyline that feels a little too rehashed, and the book is one that can probably be avoided, unless you are huge fan of the writer, the genre, or are needing a "dark" beach read.

I found myself very drawn into the general premise of Tessier's book 'Wicked Things'. Insurance investigator Jack Carlson goes to a small seemingly idyllic town of Winship to look further into a series of suspicious claims. The plot moves along at a good pace with a good deal of suspense & unseen menace. It all builds very solidly and really had me involved with several creepy scenes that did the trick... Then with all this bubbling promise and grand posturing the book just sort of ended in a way that left me very unsatisfied as well as several very big unanswered questions. 'Wicked Things' is not a bad book, but it is a book could have been much better had the hurried and hasty conclusion been drawn out a bit more...as it stands the ending was the least suspenseful part of the novel.

Wicked things had every thing I like in a modern horror novel. It was fast paced and interesting without every being boring. There was constant fear and tension through out the book. The characters were believable and the way they interacted with the narrator, and what became of them was just plain good horror fiction. What more can you want in a book. maybe this book is better read next to a camp fire or on a ranch than in a stuffy library or a stuffy church.

I loved Thomas Tessier's Finishing Touches, but his new book, Wicked Things was definitely a step down for me. Although it contains the addictive quality that most Tessier novels have, the story leaves too many unanswered questions. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with leaving a few loose ends untied, but when the majority of them remain a mystery at the conclusion of the book, it's more than a little frustrating. I also felt the protagonist acted out of character towards the end of the story, and as much as I wanted not to see the ending coming, Tessier fell right in line with my predictions.

I've been noticing a pattern with his writing in that his endings all seem a bit rushed. Even the novella, Scramburg U.S.A., that was included as a bonus with this book had a bit of fast wrap-up for my taste. Which is a shame, because Tessier's writing is pretty amazing -- the pace, the characters, the situations -- are all highly entertaining. I'm sure one of these days he'll nail it on the head and make the masterpiece I know he's capable of. I still recommend the book because for 75% of it, I was enthralled.

There are lots of questions and no answer to what happened, why it happened. First person narrator, went to small country village from big town- with this plot you either write masterpiece called 'the harvest home' or this. dont waste your time with this.

The earth is "alive" and women vanish (Picnic at Hanging Rock) and this odd, out-of-the-way little town has a secret society (Harvest Home) and a dark underbelly (Twin Peaks).

I've read all of Tessier's books and he is great at creating a mood. WICKED THINGS has several problems, the first being the title (never his strength), the awful paperback cover (looks like Basic Instinct 3), and the story itself, which suddenly. Just. Ends.

Trust me, you'll turn the page expecting more and bump into the novella tacked on to the end. (I haven't read it.)

So how DOES it end?

(SPOILER)

"Paranoids are the only people who really get it." Simply put, I think our hero's fainting and spells, etc are simply ALL in his head, the entire book is simply his ravings which is why the ending is so off-the-map and so sudden.

You WILL plow through the pages, but when it's over, you won't be at all certain what you read.

I wasn't happy with the ending of this book. It could have had so many preferred endings than this one. I was disappointed to say the least. Should I read any of Tessiers other books?

Wicked Things has a surge to it. A get in fast and hold 'em down pace.

Tessier has proven time and time again why he is a fantastic award-winning writer, and why he has the ability to scare the hell out of his readers.

Tessier is simply one of the best in the business. Read his work. It's proof!

--Joseph McGee, author of In the Wake of the Night, Phil's Place, Darkness Won't Rest: Phils Place II and Snow Hill (forthcoming)