Bats
By William W. Johnstone
1993 Zebra Books
Paperback, 348 pages
Seemingly out of the blue,
massive hordes of flesh-eating bats descend upon a normally quiet parish in
the-middle-of-nowhere Louisiana. Luckily for all involved, macho he-man Johnny
MacBride, rough and ready military intelligence bigwig, made an early
retirement to settle there. With Johnny on humanity’s side, there is a chance,
however slim.
OK, yeah… right off I had a hard
time with this because the main character is an adult named Johnny, and he was
supposed to be badass. Whatever. At least the book starts off right away with
the gory bat-attacks and never really lets up. Johnny is pretty much a cartoon,
with everyone in law enforcement kowtowing to him and being in awe of his
manliness, but there’s enough bat action throughout to keep you going. In
addition to the bats themselves, victims of bat bites who do not die quickly
become rabid spreaders of the deteriorating disease and lots of smooshy fun is
to be had there. If the bats don’t get ya, the rabies-folk will!
I liked the book, but a lot of
it bothered me. Firstly, if Johnstone could have kept his politics and classism
out of it, it would have been a smoother read. I have no problem with
characters having a political preference but too much of it reads like Johnstone’s
angry personal agenda. He does it in most of his books, though, so I should be
used to it. There is a prevalent sense of humor throughout, which I like,
though sometimes it was a bit too “nudge-nudge-wink-wink, aren’t I being funny”
... (a redneck character is named Billy Joe Harry Bob).
Overall, the gore is good, the
bats are formidable and despite Johnstone’s eccentricities, the writing is
decent. In my opinion, about 100 pages could have been culled and it would be a
much more satisfying read. And Johnny? Come on… you might as well have named
him The Fonz. Couldn’t he have been called Walter or something?
As always, a nice cover by Richard Newton.
