Stalkers

Hugh Oliver is editor-in-chief at the OISE Press.

This is without doubt the most unpleasant novel I have ever read,
relying almost entirely for its impact on sadism and violence—in
particular, the making of snuff videos, which (for the unenlightened)
refers to videos of street kids who are first seduced, then sexually
assaulted, and finally hacked to death in front of a camera. Now I
understand that snuff videos represent a part (I trust a small part) of
the current sleaze scene and are therefore legitimate subject matter for
a novel. But I hope that I am not being prudish in thinking that such
subject matter should not be exploited but rather explored—as, for
example, it was in Nabokov’s Lolita or the Marquis de Sade’s
Justine, which brought to unsavory topics (at least for their time) some
artistry, some insight, even some wit. Stalkers has no such redeeming
justification.

The action in Stalkers rotates between Toronto, where the snuff video
business is the centre of interest and where a detective is tracking
down tycoons responsible for it, and New York, where an ex-member of the
business (on the run from his employers) is stalking (and ultimately
falling in love with) an attractive female business executive. The
characters are superficial and scarcely believable—and perhaps that is
all to the good. The best that can be said about this book is that the
writing is moderately articulate and the shifts between Toronto and New
York are cleverly structured.