In the sleepy English town of Medworth life drifts along, nothing of interest has happened in the last few centuries, and the locals are content. A couple of workmen head out to a local church to clear the weeds and bushes, while getting stuck in one of them discovers a hidden medallion which happens to have a bunch of black magic impressed into it. Going home that evening the worker begins to feel unwell and is suddenly averse to all light sources, during the ensuing hours he turns into something less than human, something barely alive with glowing red eyes. He goes ape shit crazy and attacks his wife and daughter, leaving their destroyed bodies as he disappears into the night. As the days go on more and more people are being murdered, and others are turning up missing. Can local police inspector Lambert get to the heart of what is happening before an ancient curse comes back to make matters even worse. And is anyone going to believe the dead are rising and murdering the living!

If you haven’t read Hutson previously then this novel might be a good kicking off spot as the book is steeped in the author’s style and narrative style. We are not talking serious written word in use, this is purely pulp fiction that doesn’t pretend to being anything else. So yes Death Day is an easy read, with no attempt at exploring the use of the English language, hey definition of an airport novel. We also get plenty of gore splattering the page, Hutson is never going to be accused of subtly. And finally yeap some sex scenes to titillate teenage readers, hey nothing wrong with that in my humble opinion. So yeap we are travelling the well-worn paths of Shaun Hutson fiction. 

The narrative at least follows a logical flow, there’s nothing coming at you from left field and scenes are built on rather than being inserted due to the pace dropping off, or the author seeing the need to add some additional horror content. Hold onto your linen here folks, we get standard horror tactics of raising the stakes as things get out of control. So here we get one person infected, then two, then a whole bunch more as things deteriorate. Yes, we are talking a zombie outbreak due to black magic, hey explanation there rather than some dubious reference to a returning satellite. Hutson does well with his zombie tactics as the undead threaten to completely engulf Medworth and maybe surrounding districts, with the feeling that there might just be a larger danger waiting in the wings.

Hutson further shines with his major focal character inspector Lambert seeking help from outside Medworth, but not being believed. Hutson, for mine, is winking at his readership, yeah this is zombies and black magic, no one in their right mind is going to believe in black magic zombies with glowing red eyes, but we’re in this together and suspension of belief is the name of the game.

Which is one of the strengths of this novel, the zombie outbreak might be happening in an English backwater, but no one is jumping on the bandwagon, even the central characters have to be convinced something supernatural is going down. So we get missing corpses, they just won’t stay in their graves, zombie attacks, and any number of gory attacks. And for sure Hutson does know how to write a blood drenched attack, which has the reader believing. Hutson also manages to have his zombies attack at night, which helps raise the tension as night descends each evening in Medworth and the situation worsens. 

While Death Day no doubt has the reader feverishly reading page after page there is still some major issues with the novel. Why is it that Hutson’s main character, always apparently male, has anger issues in novel after novel. The reader losses all sympathy with the lead character, who is the same character if we had to be honest in every single Hutson book. Equally problematic, but at least confined to this outing is the attempts at deciphering the Latin inscriptions on the amulet, sorry anyone with even a passing knowledge of the dead language is going to be able to decipher this one, we really don’t need an expert here. Mortis Diei, should be a dead – excuse the pun, giveaway here, hint it’s the title of the novel! And Rex Noctis is equally self-evident, King of the Night right. But we still have to investigate the Latin, Jesus wept, but at least we get the full back story of Mathias, a black magician causing all sorts of naughtiness back in 1596. At least the source material on the magician is written in Latin in a couple of honking big books, which does require translation.

Finishing off with the positive here, and while I may have found some issues with the novel I still had a good time with it. Shaun Hutson knows how to pace out a good read, how to create identifiable characters, and for sure how to write a horror scene. The narrative in Death Day romps along, only taking time out to describe the odd grisly scene, as all roads lead to an unholy resurrection. Special mention of the prologue, some unknown chick is getting tortured in particularly gruesome fashion, the Brits of the time could show modern day serial killers a thing or two, it sure does preference future scenes of mayhem that have the pages turning red as the reader is almost forced to read the next paragraph rather than putting the novel down.

Slight confession here, a site supporter sent in a bundle of books to review, and four of them were Shaun Hutson novels. I’m not averse to reading pulp fiction, and for sure was happy to get some Hutson, so this review isn’t anything from a self-funded excursion into these dark woods. I got exactly what I was expecting with Death Day, not a work of literature but a penny dreadful who’s only reason to exist is to entertain and titillate the reader. So recommendation to readers after a quick jam season with the darker end of town, at the very least you are going to be entertained, but don’t go into the novel expecting anything in the way of an exploration of the human condition or a discourse on the meaning of life. Sometimes a zombie novel aiming to scare is exactly what you need in your reading diet.