Fiona Cummins’ debut thriller, Rattle, is a mess.
A real world thriller with a supernatural horror genre identity crisis, Rattle – or, to give it its full title, according to Amazon, Rattle: a serial killer thriller that will hook you from the start (see: a mess) – is confused and confusing.
It works analogies to the point of abuse, it’s weirdly misogynistic (especially given it was written by a woman), and the muddled story it’s trying to tell falls down somewhere after its first ten descriptions of obscure medical conditions and never manages to scramble back to the same heights – rendering it a less fun read than 101 Bone Diseases That Could Kill You Tomorrow.
I’m not promising this review will be any better, of course. But I’m pretty confident it couldn’t be worse.