Review of Evil

[Brendan Donaghy]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Evil" by Joshua Berlin.]

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3 out of 5 stars

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Evil, by Joshua Berlin, is a thriller/slasher novel. Set in a small town in Australia in 2014, the story opens with Frank and Barbara Harrington heading for a night out at Frank’s workplace, leaving their eighteen-year-old daughter Amanda on her own. Amanda invites her friend Lauren over to share some food, but their plans for a pleasant evening are about to be derailed.

Lauren hasn’t even arrived when a neighbour’s eleven-year-old son turns up at Amanda’s front door in a terrorised state; someone has broken into his home and attacked his parents with a knife. Lauren arrives and proceeds to call her father, an Inspector in the local police, but this is not the end of the ordeal for these two young women or the small town in which they live. A sadistic intruder is on the loose, and he may not be acting on his own. The police are chasing shadows, and someone is tracking Amanda. Who will protect her? And who will be left alive when it’s all over?

Despite its many action scenes, this is a slow-paced thriller. The narrative never gets to flow, as it is interrupted too often with inconsequential and irrelevant details. This is evident right from the start. On page 4, for example, Amanda goes to take a bath. The author takes two or three hundred words to describe Amanda getting undressed, running the bath, testing the temperature of the water with her hand and lying in the tub. When she gets out, we get the same number of words to describe her drying herself, choosing clothes from a drawer, getting dressed and going downstairs. None of this tells us anything about Amanda, nor does it advance the story.

Additionally, there is too much repetition in the book. Characters recount details of an incident before describing the same event in much the same way to someone else a few pages later.

If the story is slow, it also lacks credibility. Some of that stems from the unrealistic dialogue. The characters don’t talk like real people. One example: two female characters are involved in a life-or-death struggle, one armed with a knife, one wielding a kettle. One sustains an injury to her face, explores the injury with her fingers and remarks: ‘I am going to scar up and lose my beauty!’ (p113) Is that really what someone says in such a situation?

The plot is equally incredible. Several new characters, with no connection to anyone or anything that has gone on so far, appear late in the story (chapter 10 of 12) and become involved in the action in a way that just doesn’t ring true. On a positive note, if you enjoy blood, gore and fight scenes, you’ll find plenty here to keep you entertained.

I’m awarding this book three out of five stars. It has been professionally edited, as this is mentioned on a preliminary page. Despite this, I’m deducting one star because of the many errors I found and one more for the book’s overall implausibility. Readers bothered by strong language and graphic violence should give this one a miss, as the book has an abundance of both.

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Evil
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[Laney K]

The plot sounded like it has a lot of potential, but I don't think I would be able to deal with the slow pacing and errors.

[Shedrack A]

I'm already excited with the storyline and cant wait to find out what happens subsequently in the book!