Kim Newman
The Quorum
Simon & Schuster hbk, 311 pgs
Review by Gerald Houghton (1994)
There's a school of thought that would have critic and novelist Kim Newman as perfect candidate for the horror writers' horror writer: a sleek, peppery prose-style; razor-sharp line in laconic wit; and virtually encyclopaedic knowledge of genre. Odd then that his books, speckled with ingenuity and humour, have singularly failed to set the literary world afire. Newman himself once confessed to one major failing - being just too damn clever.
The Quorum is a tale of Faustian contract; it says as much quoting from Marlowe on the opening page. Literally born of the Thames (Isle of Dogs, no less) in 1961, Derek Leech will journey into a post-Thatcherite 90s with an empire encompassing press, publishing, pop music, television, and Hollywood. But back in 1978, this watery Mephistopheles offered a bargain - a Deal - to ambitious trio Mark, Michael and Mickey: in exchange for the wealth, glamour and achievement they crave, the fourth of their number - Neil - must suffer. And not simply suffer, but lurch from disaster to catastrophe while his former comrades ascend the ladder of success.
The most intriguing aspects of the book are twofold. First, Newman jettisons any notion of linear projection, cutting back and forth across years with consummate ease, making for an involved but satisfying read. And second, he seems to have found at last the perfect home for his startlingly inventive, clever satire: Michael's 'dangerous' Jonathan Ross-like Dixon's On chat-show moves from Channel 4 to Leech's Cloud 9 satellite; Leech's company is picketed for producing the filmed memoirs of a gay SS man, Pink Swastika; there's a bunch of laughable Aryan saviours, the English Liberation Front (ELF, if you will); Mark founds style-bible The Shape - "The future, now!"; Mickey graduates to become one of the world's premier graphic novelists with the ground-breaking Choke Hold and The Nevergone Void.
Against this exceptionally good stuff, The Quorum survives intact much longer than previous books, even given the predictability of the climax: to each bargain, a terrible price. Through all this runs Sally, self-employed security specialist hired to watch Neil for the sinister triumvirate. And as with Newman's previous atypical, self-sufficient women, she's a very welcome addition to the genre, but curiously ill-conceived within the body of the beast. Too often she is irritatingly welded onto events, an interruption, being neither scream-queen nor protagonist. Likewise, Leech's colossal Device, striving for central imagery of the book, is prudently shadowy but, annoyingly, often just too damn shadowy to make its presence felt. It lurks more than it dominates.
All of which is unfortunate given the sheer creativity of the perfect sacrifice the author selects for each bad guy as the novel steams to a head. That final judgement is visited through the most spiteful and vacuous of celebrity TV is a delight. The Quorum is decidedly Newman's best book, and a fast, deft read, but one still aggravatingly misshapen; more cerebral than compelling.
Too clever, by half.