Product Description

Christopher Ward signed up with a literary agency on 12th December 1984 wanting to be SO rich it would be obscene. And he IS a success - but there is a price to pay. Nothing lasts forever. As his writing ability begins to decline and publishers reject his books, he starts to drink. Sleeping badly, pacing around day and night, he gets a breakthrough. But is it? Pages of a novel pour out every night from the computer he's sure he's turned off and he doesn't remmber doing the writing. He sets up a video to see what is going on - and sees ape-like shapes shuffling around. And the video shows HIM murdering a prostitute. What IS going on? Then his literary agent comes round and shows that his life is the price he pays for previous success.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205965 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
'This offering from Hutson is a hybrid in both name and nature, and is well worth reading for the cleverness of the plotting and the sheer page-turning compulsion of the climactic section' - GOOD BOOK GUIDE ** 'Hutson cleverly intermingles Ward's unravelling life with the violent corpse-strewn life of the book within its pages. The ending should be predictable, yet somehow it isn't. Exciting stuff from the 'Godfather of Gore' - SFX Magazine

About the Author
Shaun Hutson is a bestselling author of horror fiction and has written novels under eight different pseudonyms. He has also contributed stories to 'Kerrang' and 'Raw' and used to host Sky TV's 'Monsters of Rock' programme.

Customer Reviews

Split personality.
Hutson's latest is a skilfull blending of both horror and thriller genres. Not only does the master give us, essentially, three books in one, but we're also treated to a glimpse of what he can do with a quiet room, a dark night and an unstable mind, somthing that many fans would agree has been long missed in Hutson's work.

Christopher Ward is a struggling novelist whose early success has slowly but surely run away from him. Now he spends his days working on a book that nobody wants to read, or publish, and his despondancy and general bitterness towards a literary world that doesn't seem to need him anymore sends him spiralling into madness.

Or so it seems.

Pages of his latest opus churn out from his printer, but he has no knowledge of how they came to be. Hutson's eponymous protagonist, Sean Doyle, is lent to Ward as a fiction within a fiction, and goes about his Anti Terrorist business with the now expected, nay, ubiquitous, fervour, blasting away IRA gunmen, drawing the wrath of his long suffering superiors, and even finding time to fight a few Islamic Fundamentalists along the way.

But as Doyle's imagined life spews forth from a machine that Ward is sure he turns off every night before he retires, Ward's real one is falling apart like a badly structured plot; not something that Hybrid could be accused of.

The "apparitions" come at night. The madness gestates by day. The clever locking together of each story, with Doyle hurtling along at 100 miles an hour, only to be interrupted by Ward's more sedate, but equally intriguing, plotline, means that any fan (or indeed those unlucky enough to have never read a Hutson tale) just has to read that little bit more before putting the book down.

Criticism has been levelled at Hutson in the past for his stripped down prose, but the flowery efforts of other writers in the genre just couldn't match pace with Hutson's relentless bombardment of the reader's imagination. A quick glimpse into the mind of one who has just finished one of his books would no doubt show a landscape drenched in blood, sweat and testosterone with every cell grinning like a buffoon between the still smoking bullet holes, each on the size of a man's fist, naturally.

Simply put: Simply brilliant.

Hybrid
Afte reading a number of Shaun Hutson books now, I was not surprised to find that Hybrid immediately captured me. This was instantly recognisable as a Hutson classic, due to its realism and engaging plot. Again, Hutson appears to put his heart and soul into this novel, which is full of exaggerated descriptive text, something I have come to expect from Hutson and become accustomed to. Hutson is truly a master in his genre.

2 For the price of 1!!!
Shaun Hutson is back with a bang and his latest offering is his best for a while. The book is about Christopher Ward,(based on Hutson himself at a guess) a washed up author whose publishers have abondoned him. Ward turns to drink, and all but gives up on his current novel. Mysteriously, Ward's book is still being written but by who?

This book is superb. U can actually read Ward's book which is Hutson's latest Sean Doyle offering. Another cut and thrust action novel where Doyle deals with the problems still facing Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement.

Hutson's novel with another novel works very well, and you'll want to know the end of both stories! All in all, an essential addition to your shopping basket!