If such a thing as a writing-gene runs in the family-line, Richard Christian Matheson lucked on an unfair advantage. Father Richard is an elder-statesman of the fantastique, both as screenwriter and author (the classic I Am Legend for one). For his part, Matheson junior has served his time in TV hell as a pensmith and story editor on the likes of The A-Team, The Incredible Hulk and Knight Rider, as well taking time out to draft some of the most distinctive, stylish and just plain short horror fiction of recent years. (Check the enormously valuable Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks collection.)

In Created By scripter/producer Alan White, weary of the sit-coms and one-hour adventure series of network TV, conceives of a new show to excite his jaded palate. Thus is birthed The Mercenary, with its pilot opening on a sunken airliner packed with the throat-slashed victims of evil terrorists. Lone operator A.E. Barek's discipline is simple revenge, the Vietnam Vet's methods every bit as bloody and ruthless as those of the opposition. To White the cobwebs of network convention will fall victim to this weekly blood feast of sex, expletives and gore. Naturally the public adore it.

But as White is destined to discover, within The Mercenary he has created another monster, feeding off those around its creator in an orgy of all too real violence and sadism.

Matheson's debut novel is an intriguing two-headed beast to be sure. For its first two-thirds Created By is more or less a notably sharp satire on the vagaries of the American TV system penned with an insider's eye. The result is frequently very clever and very funny, Matheson's prose style an extension of his short fiction, economic and peppery.

It's the remaining chapters where the book is more uneasy with itself. Created By is, after all, a horror novel, but one that leaves the reader wondering whether or not it quite needs the macabre welded to its superstructure as it is. Indeed, the author seems aware of the fact, inducing the dread with a very knowing hand, albeit more through duty than real enthusiasm. To his credit, although the incidents are repeatedly ugly, Matheson's descriptions are never overly specific, being more impressionistic than savage.

Interestingly, although Matheson evokes classical horrors in his climax (The Phantom of the Opera comes to mind), the very necessary epilogue is a curiously low-key, surreal affair that bequeaths enough of an idea for a bizarre semi-comic novel in its own right.

Created By offers perhaps more than it delivers, a horror novel where the imagined horrors are outstripped by the all too plausible excesses of The Mercenary itself. It does, however, confirm Matheson as a supreme stylist, and one more than capable of bringing his considerable talents bear on a longer form. His next should be fascinating.