Beth and Simon Parker have the middle class English life style happening. They both have decent jobs, Simon is a Psychiatrist at a local Asylum and Beth is a private secretary to an Executive. The only blight on their otherwise perfect world is that Beth is barren and ergo they can’t have children, still they own their own upwardly mobile house. A surprise visit by Beth’s younger sister Lucy brings some chaos into the otherwise orderly Parker lifestyle. Lucy is the complete opposite to Beth, a rebel without any apparent morals, even worse for Beth, Lucy is currently jobless and wants to crash. One thing leads to another and soon Lucy is on life support after getting into a relationship with a local lad. Silver lining here, Lucy is pregnant and Beth definitely wants the unborn child. But things aren’t going to be that simple, the Doctors want to pull the plug on the life support machinery, and there appears to be something supernaturally and deadly happening in the Parker’s former castle. And exactly what is the story with Simon’s new patient, how does she know things that only Simon and his nearest and dearest know. Can Beth and Simon survive an escalating descent into the darkness.

Shaun Hutson is possibly the most well-known English horror writer after the great James Herbert. While Herbert is writing traditional horror Hutson dives head first into splatter punk, not pulling away from the gore, explicit sex, or anything he can throw on the page to shock and stun. Hey who else could have made Slugs, yes the slimy critter, the main antagonist of a couple of novels. Shut up, we are not going to even mention Guy N. Smith and his crab stick diet. Hutson has a lot of books to his credit, some of which divert from the dark genre, but primary if you want your horror literature on the robust side of the tomb then this is the author you can rely on. So let’s start our exploration of the author’s work with a solid enough ghost story that comes at us with fangs extended.

Hutson does what Hutson does best in Lucy’s Child, get his main characters on the page, and have their motivations spelt out in quick order. The Author covers the groundwork he will need later in the novel through the first few chapters and has his antagonists happening so the reader isn’t going to be surprised when the conflict breaks out. Lucy is a force of chaos entering Beth’s life once again, and Simon works in an environment of natural chaos. While the main conflict is held for later in the novel there are other conflicts being explored where both Beth and Simon have issues with their immediate superiors. Beth is possibly overly concerned about her boss’s attention to her, including a business trip that pans out as not as sinister as Beth had supposed, while Simon has a boss that is behind the times in terms of modern psychiatry, and is at the very least highly antagonistic towards our dude.

So multi-dimensional conflict happening, check, time to get down and dirty with the haunting aspects of the novel. Here we have Hutson really hitting his marks as he slowly ramps up the chain rattling to keep the reader on his/her toes. I am going to admit that I was getting the chills through some of the descriptions of paranormal activity going down. Hutson knows what he is doing, and for sure knows that the simple is what works in ghostly outings, just hints and strange happenings are enough to raise pulse rates and tension. The Author introduces the supernatural slowly and builds on the quiet horror on the page at the start of the novel, really turning the screws as each chapter develops the central concept.

Naturally Hutson isn’t Shirley Jackson when it comes to the concept of “the bad place”, we are talking about a robust style of horror from this writer. So we move from your standard haunting to poltergeist shenanigans to something else. Along the way the stakes are getting higher as Beth’s almost fanatical demands are going against what amounts to a revenant. Cue a rising body count, did you really think you were going to get out of a Shaun Hutson novel without a few deaths? And just when you think we can’t get any more jammed into the novel we get possession going down, and that would be take no prisoners possessed.

The one area that Shaun Hutson doesn’t handle the narrative well, in my opinion, is with the paranormal investigators called in to check out Simon’s work place after a number of incidents that can’t be explained. The investigators are introduced, their defining trait is they are from a University – well hello trope be thy name, look like they are going to be a major factor in underlining narrative – a standard tactic by horror creators, and then disappear completely after one devastating night that happens pretty much off page. While it might be nasty to hint at the characters being filler to push out the length of the novel, I was more disappointed by the lack of character development, and pretty much there use as a plot device rather than having an impact on the direction the plot was going. For better use of these sorts of characters see the Poltergeist franchise, or the granddaddy of them all the Van Helsing character from Dracula.

As one would expect from Shaun Hutson the pacing of the novel is rocking the reader from page first to page last. Hutson barely takes a breath as his narrative rockets towards the conclusion, pulling the reader along on his shirt tails with nary a deviation into territory best left off the page. While the novel doesn’t address the human condition, seriously this isn’t something you read Hutson for, it does exactly what Hutson sets out to achieve, it provides a rollicking good read that will entertain you from the first paragraph to the final paragraph. While Hutson’s characterisation is on the thin side, there is no hero’s progress etc., at least Beth and Simon have their flaws and are not Mary Sue-ing their way to a conclusion that parachutes the reader directly onto planet cringe. This isn’t to say we are dealing with bad writing or the sort of literature that will be analysis in depth at your local University – now there’s an exercise in extended BS, Shaun Hutson is delivering exactly what he promises, a penny dreadful that will entertain the reader who isn’t counting the number of Angels on the head of a pin.

It has taken me a while to have a look at Lucy’s Child, the title and the blurb on the back of the novel didn’t really have me rushing to check out what was between the covers. That was a heck of a mistake, as I was pretty much engrossed in the novel as soon as I decided to see what it was about. As usual Hutson captures the reader, gives said reader exactly what they want, and delivers a rollicking good time. I pretty much devoured this one in a couple of sittings, didn’t mean to do that, but the Author had me glued to the page. If you like robust horror that has a decent pace then you are going to enjoy this book, Hutson as usual doesn’t shy away from the gore or getting down and dirty, so be warned this isn’t a novel the faint of heart is going to have a good time with. Full recommendation, I’m a meat and veg reader, I want to be entertained rather than preached at or even worse being forced to read fifty pages describing something that a single paragraph could have covered. Looking forward to the next Hutson novel on the review pile, the Author delivers once again, dive on in the water is fine.