Somewhere Between What Brought You Here and How You Are Going to Be Mutilated

Somewhere Between What Brought You Here and How You’re Going to Be Mutilated: A Review of The Last Motel

05/14/2005

McBean, Brett. The Last Motel. Duluth, GA: Biting Dog, 2004. 258 p.

While Brett McBean's The Last Motel might be a wonderfully creepy and highly suspenseful novel, I unfortunately had the same feeling while reading it that I had while watching Identity. For all practical purposes, both works are studies in isolation and terror. In other words, both ask the question: what would happen if a group of diverse individuals, one of them a maniacal serial killer, were placed into a situation where none could easily escape? And both leave much to be desired in the end.

Of course, creating an isolated environment does have it perks for a slasher writer. For starters, doing so allows for the equivalent of slow motion torture. Those of us who enjoy torture scenes will therefore be treated to a cut-by-cut description of what these maniacs are doing. And believe me, the crazed killer in The Last Motel does anything and everything you can think of, and revels in it to boot. In fact, one of the appeals of this novel is the killer himself. He is perhaps the most purely evil serial torturer and killer I have run across in fiction. He is also unique in that his choice targets are not hapless women, but young, good looking boys and men, which gives a new twist to the slasher motif. Here, shrieking, scantily clad young girls are replaced by crying, powerless boys. Again, if graphic serial killer fiction appeals to you, you won't be disappointed. You may actually find McBean's choices to be refreshing.

The problem is, this kind of mindless slice 'em and dice 'em tale is not what I consider fodder for a good story. Granted, McBean does try to introduce some normalcy into the text. Characters like Madge, the cop's widow who runs the out-of-the-way motel, and Morrie, the middle-aged ill-fated homeowner who accidentally shoots a teenager on Halloween (this is based on a true story which happened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when a Japanese exchange student in costume went to the wrong house on Halloween and was shot by the owner, who thought he was a burglar) are the kinds of people we met every day. When these characters interract, McBean writes in a relaxed style, allowing dialogue and interplay to advance the story, rather than detailed description or philosophical musings. This even leads to some natural character development, as we learn about the two petty thieves Eddy and Al, for example, through their banter, much in the same way we learn about people in our daily lives. But the "normal" scenes here serve no other purpose than the "normal" scenes in porn. They seem more intended to give the reader a brief break from the killing than anything else, and of course, you don't have to fast-forward through too many pages to get to another torture scene.

Another problem with The Last Motel is that the story itself strains credibility. We are presented with a fictional motel in an unpopulated area of Victoria's Great Dividing Range. Madge, in her sixties, checks in various customers, and in flashbacks, we find out what series of events have brought each person to the motel on that particular Halloween night. The characters do not realize this, but (and this again strains believability) their stories are intertwined. In fact, in a large part, the actions that have led certain characters to this motel are the same that have fated others to end up there as well. So in a way, you could say that this is a novel about destiny, which is all well and good, except that once we get to the end of all the murder and mayhem, McBean pulls his punch and introduces a deus ex machina—a local cop who just happens to be the same cop that once had an affair with Madge—to solve the crime. It's as though he could not bring himself to allow his killing machine to get away, even though every scene in the novel indicates that by all rights he should have. Or at least if he had, we could say that The Last Motel makes a bold statement about fate and fairness, that all is not always right with the world and bad things happen to good people and most killers manage to get away. Instead, what do we have? Another crime doesn't pay message?

So is this a novel you should pass up when perusing the shelves of your local bookstore? Not necessarily. Those of you with strong stomachs and a taste for splatterpunk may actually find that it crosses enough taboo lines and gives you enough graphic gore to make it worth the read. Others who simply like suspense (and have strong stomachs) will find McBean's writing style interesting. In each chapter, he jumps to a different character, so there is a cliffhanger at every turn here, which means you do have to keep reading—for at least a few more chapters—to find out what happens to someone. I've always found this to be a good practice for horror writers. You may even find that at points you will be on the edge of your seat.

But when all the body parts are finally collected, you still won't be able to help but conclude that this is a fairly stock slasher / horror novel. If that (and the gore—which is not gratuitous but is nonetheless prevalent) does not bother you, then I cannot see any reason why you would not find this a good book to pick up in the morning, so that you could finish it before bed that same night. Just keep in mind that The Last Motel is a debut novel, and it suffers from some of the problems rookie writers introduce into a text. Nonetheless, I will say one thing in McBean's defense: his "cliffhanger" style reminds me a bit of that of Dan Simmons. If his muse begins to bless him with the kind of original ideas that Simmons is known for, rather than with derivative and often repeated plot lines and characters, and if he can develop those into a fleshed-out narrative, he will make a name for himself in horror.