Shaun Hutson, Nemesis

Shaun Hutson, Nemesis - Synopsis:

"AUGUST 1940: while Hitler's bombers are busy reducing London to rubble, biologist George Lawrenson is nearing the climax of Project Genesis - a daring experiment aimed at breeding a super-race to combat Hitler's armies. But the results of his work are so appalling in their implications that Churchill personally orders Lawrenson silenced and all traces of his experiments destroyed. Almost half a century later, Jon and Sue Hacket are contemplating the ruins of their marriage. A relationship already under strain now seems to have been destroyed by the savage murder of their baby daughter, Lisa, and the couple retreat to the small town of Hinkston to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. But Hinkston is a town with a secret. A series of horrific and unexplained murders has brought terror to the area, and when Sue approaches Dr Edward Curtis - a man famous in Hinkston for his treatment of infertile women - to help her conceive another child, past and present evils give birth to a new nightmare".

Released back in 1989, Nemesis was Hutson's twenty-fifth full-length novel to be published. It is a classic Hutson-style splatterpunk fest of a novel that starts out with a fast pace, and just seems to keep speeding up. The violence and use of gore is intense and powerful. The storyline is gripping and intriguing. Unfortunately the ending is rather obvious, but this doesn't subtract too much from the plot. Nemesis is one of Hutson's better offerings of a splatterpunk novel. The rape and murder of the young girl at the beginning is quite shocking, so be warned. The storyline seems to flow nicely throughout, building to the grande finale, where all the side-plots come together.

Running for 320 pages, I would recommended this novel to anyone interested in the splatterpunk genre.