Book Review: 'Atrocity Week' by Andrew McCoy
2 / 5 Stars
'What is it ?' Cameron demanded. Pacoe's body was blocking his curious view.
'Holland and Holland 600 Nitro Express', Curtis Bill told him.
'Jesus !'
Decker spoke softly, persuasively. 'Look, you can't hunt niggers with that elephant gun. What I mean is.....Look, this fucking cannon would blow a nigger into fine bits and there would be nothing left.'
'You wouldn't be able to take photographs afterwards' Curtis Bill added softly behind Pasoce.
Pascoe turned on him. 'But it's all I have ! I got six of them.' He sounded as if he were about to burst into tears, his face crumbling massively, his eyes watery.
The above excerpt communicates the quintessence of 'Atrocity Week'..............
'Atrocity Week' first was published in 1978 in the UK by Sphere. Subsequently Warner Books released a U.S. version in 1979, and Grafton, another UK edition in 1984.
As a work of proto-splatterpunk, 'Atrocity Week' has gotten curiously little attention from the chroniclers of that genre of literature. The 'Splatterpunk Files' website doesn't mention it, and neither does Paul Sammon in his essay 'Outlaws', from his 1991 book Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror. So I nobly took it upon myself to acquire a copy and read and review it.
'Andrew McCoy' is the pen name used by the South African writer André Jute McCoy (b. 1945), who has published a number of novels, most of them set in Africa and dealing with wildlife, safaris, and big-game hunting. Other titles, such as 'Sinkhole' (1982) and 'Eight Days in Washington' (1986), as by Andre Jute, are thrillers. Jute's 1987 book 'Writing A Thriller' (1987) is an instructional text.
'Atrocity' is set in South Africa in the late 1970s. Chris Decker and Curtis Bill Bonham run a safari adventure firm called Ultimate Test, Inc., with a well-equipped base camp on the bank of the Limpopo River.
Decker and Bonham charge their clients a hefty fee for their safari services. But then, Decker and Bonham don't offer their clients the usual hunting experience. For Ultimate Test, Inc. gives its clients the thrill of hunting humans...........in particular, black African men who are unlucky enough to be discovered crossing the veldt with nothing more threatening than a shield and a spear.
[ Needless to say, a novel that takes as its centerpiece the hunting of 'niggers' by wealthy white and Asian men who crisscross the terrain in a helicopter, high-powered rifles in hand, is transgressive in every sense of the word. ]
Decker and Bonham have taken scrupulous care to conceal their activities from the South African authorities. But Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda and the leader of black Africa, has learned of the existence of Ultimate Test, and he has ordered a force of guerillas to descend on the camp and eliminate its inhabitants. Of course, Amin would prefer that none of the people at Ultimate Test die quickly........
McCoy clearly intended 'Atrocity Week' to be over the top in terms of its reliance on explicit descriptions of the torture, and violent deaths, of men and animals. These are salted with pornographic passages describing rough sex and rape. So there is no doubt that 'Atrocity Week' deserves enshrinement (if that's the right word) in the Splatterpunk Canon.
But as a novel, 'Atrocity' is something of a dud. The middle section of the book belabors one manhunt after another, while reminding the reader on a regular basis that the manhunters truly are reprehensible people.
The confrontation with the guerillas doesn't start until page 254 of the Grafton edition, and while the ensuing chapters deliver considerable action, and would seem sufficient to end the novel in an effective manner, author McCoy elects to prolong the narrative past a logical stopping point. He introduces additional chapters that feature plotting so contrived, and so dependent on comic book-style coincidence, that they undermine the narrative and induce eye-rolling on the part of the reader all the way to the final paragraph.
[ For another review of 'Atrocity Week', readers are directed to the Trash Menace blog (warning: that review has some spoilers). ]
Summing up, if you are among the cognoscenti of splatterpunk or 'shock' literature, then searching out 'Atrocity Week' may be worth your while. All others can pass on this novel.
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