Just a touch of crass
Hesketh Lock works for Phipps and Wexman, a company that employs the best investigative brains in the world. By using Venn diagrams he specialises in identifying common threads in the unexplained; in this case a chain of shocking events from Harrogate to Taipei via Stockholm. He is called in to look into a string of random sabotage incidents often followed by the suicide of the perpetrators.
In one case this involves a spectacular leap from a Dubai skyscraper witnessed by Hesketh during his investigation, and prompted by a bizarre vision of a young child.
Elsewhere, another child fires a Black and Decker nail gun into her Grandmotherâs neck. This is followed by a sequence of other infants around the world who are hell bent on pushing their parents down stairs or using other weaponry.
What is it that brings all these events together in the Venn diagrams that Hesketh draws?
We have sabotage, suicide and child murderers; that is children that do the murdering, not the other way around. It has to be a phenomenon, but of what kind?
To help him concentrate he imagines making origami shapes such as animals and water bombs as this encourages relaxation and enhances the powers of logic needed to resolve this mostly ghostly mystery.
To break his concentration, Heskethâs wife Kaitlin converts to lesbianism with one of his own colleagues and cuts him off from any access to his much loved stepson, Freddy.
This should be a really creepy story and the author has to be taken seriously given her talent. But this is pure Dr Who, probably of the Tom Baker era. Expect the Brigadier to bluster in at any time with his corps beam under his arm, and cyber men in loosely fitting polystyrene pyjamas to run scared of the sonic screwdriver.
As soon as the possessed children are identified by committing parenticide en masse, and are rounded up and incarcerated â and then hoot AND exchange dib-dib type brownie hand gestures as they make themselves known to each other â the story moves from the creepy to the crass.
You could say that this was inventive but is not apocalyptic in the way that, say, that On the Beach described a society that knew it was doomed, but survived on hope and preserved its day to day dignity in the face of nuclear destruction.
The redeeming feature is the story of the love lost between a man and his stepson, but this would work anywhere, not necessarily in science fiction.
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