My copy was supplied for review. Warning: spoilers ahead
Life is good for Jimmy Cochran. He’s a freelance journalist, investigating supernatural stories for a local paper in New York, is a successful comic illustrator, lives in an apartment overlooking Central Park, and in Sophia, has a fuck-buddy who’s into a bit of BDSM. Yep, all is pretty rosy in Jimmy’s world.
Until word comes from his Mum back in England that Jimmy’s estranged half-brother Quentin and his friend Riley have gone missing while on a walking holiday in Germany. A chance meeting with a psychic medium, Walter, provides some clues as to Quentin’s whereabouts: ever since they make contact, Walter becomes plagued with terrifying visions which, infuriatingly for Jimmy, give little concrete evidence. It quickly becomes clear that Jimmy has to head back to England to see if Quentin left anything at home that might help find him.
Once there, he is approached by a mysterious stranger who tells Jimmy of his own involvement with a bloodthirsty brotherhood – an offshoot of the Black Hand, within whose ranks were Gavrilo Princip, assassin of Franz Ferdinand and his wife: the action that lit the fuse for the First World War. This faction of the Black Hand, however – the Nachzehrer – aren’t interested in politics. Instead, they worship the memory of Arnold Paole, the original Serbian vampire, and intend to hold a very specific blood ritual in his honour which will give them everlasting life. In the meantime, they live by feeding on flesh: animals will do, but human for preference. Jimmy’s initial scepticism is overcome when he realises that Quentin has unwittingly walked into their midst, and sets off for Germany to track them down.
After fruitlessly asking – across the language barrier – everyone he meets in town, an encounter with an autistic child, who has drawn an eerily-accurate portrait of a man he calls “evil”, leads him with the help of the local police to a man called Sinisa Bogdan, and it’s with the appearance of this itinerant wanderer that things crank up a gear. Bogdan is their man – one of the Nachzehrer – and a chase ensues, leading Jimmy to the scene of the ritual. Will he make it in time to stop their evil plan, and save Quentin?
The Last Breath Before Death is the fourth horror novel from Alan Golbourn, and the first of his I’ve read. It’s slow to build: maybe a prologue would have helped, with a snapshot of the (enjoyably grim and dark) ritual as a bit of foreshadowing, so that the reader has their appetite whetted, and knows there’s going to be a pay-off to the long build-up.
It could also benefit from some judicious editing: inside its 400 pages is a much better novel of maybe 250 pages: sometimes too much information is given that a reader simply doesn’t need: “I got a cheaper flight to Hamburg, which isn’t too far from Salzwedel. Well, it’s still a good 90 miles or so, give or take,” and every transaction – in shops, hotels, police stations – is detailed in full, when the reader only needs the salient information: the rest we just assume, and let our minds quietly fill in.
The novel is well-researched, particularly around the subject of Serbian vampirism, but sometimes the author is a little too enthusiastic to show what he’s discovered: I’m not sure the reader needs to know that motorcycles in New York need to be parked at least fifteen feet away from a fire hydrant.
I said at the start that all is well in Jimmy’s life, and sometimes things are a bit too neat and tidy (the deadline for his next piece of comic artwork is safely weeks away), when Jimmy could do with a bit more instability so that the reader feels the stakes are higher, and more emotional heft could be squeezed out of a situation. In the midst of all of this Jimmy sleeps well – no nightmares, for instance – and otherwise everything in his life is fine: but if it wasn’t, it would ramp up the tension.
The action builds to a superbly blood-filled climax. Fans of 80s horror from authors like Brian Lumley or James Herbert might want to check it out.
Into the Gyre 