Lead Review

• Book: Two Dark Tales: Jack Squat and The Niche
• Location: England, Lazio
• Author: Charles Lambert

Review Author: tripfiction

A small book that brings together two different stories in one volume. Read your first choice, turn the book over and start afresh with the second novella, two-in-one, a very novel approach to publishing. And both from Charles Lambert, the master of the “literary uncanny”…

Jack Squat is set in the Lazio area of Italy. Gordon is unemployed, living with his partner Omar and needs to find a financial solution to their woes. They alight on a plan to sell houses to the unsuspecting. Their first buyer is Cees, a Dutchman, who buys a house that has four entrances but no connecting doors inside, owned by four family members. Omar and Gordon are the facilitators for the purchase. But there is a very dark history associated with the house and soon the two men hear mournful and alarming tales of Cees in his new home.

Ignoring any salutary lessons from the first sale, they devise a second to dupe an eager purchaser and then hightail it off to foreign lands. But the dark consequences of their actions come back to haunt them, devastating their carefully crafted new existence.

Beautifully written, there is a dark and ominous thread that pervades the story. Snakes, faeces and holes in the ground, a cistern maybe or a well, that draw the characters to gaze into the black abyss and what it means to behave responsibly.

Turning the book over and you come to The Niche. Billy Lender is nearly eleven years old and mercilessly bullied at school. He steals copies of the magazine “Rugged Men” from his local newsagent and pores over the images of men tied and flagellated, in all kinds of sado masochistic settings. These embolden him and tap into his budding sexual awakening….

Billy finds his niche, his hiding place and bolt hole when he has too much attention foisted upon him by the Lees Twins and arch bully Horton. Injuries and abuse, both physical and verbal, rain down upon him, but gradually a hissing in his ears indicates that the tide is turning and empowerment is possible.

Two very different stories each with an eerie malevolence threading its way through the narratives.

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