A TIME BEFORE GENESIS

by Les Dawson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1986

Dawson's modest fame as a British comedian won't help with this wretched, half. baked piece of twaddle that contrives to tie together, among other things, UFOs, Nazis, the Second Coming, aliens, Moses, vampires, the Kennedy assassination, Tibetan monks, and devil-worship. It's 1995. Among the numerous first-person narrators here is journalist David Gates, who, in reinvestigating the Kennedy shooting, stirs up some mysterious bad guys who turn out to be immortal vampires (sort of), emissaries of cosmic evil. Then Gates' wife is taken over by the vampires; his daughter is horribly butchered (the mutilations have something to do with dispersing evil cosmic karma); so, on the lam, Gates contacts kindly editor John Mason, leader of the anti-vampire Crusaders. Various Crusaders die unpleasantly, including Mason and Gates, before we are led to the boy who is apparently Jesus returned; he will reinterpret the Ten Commandments and defeat the vampires, but the world is destroyed anyway (don't ask). These are the more coherent elements of the plot; the rest defies description. The prose consists of clichÉs strung together. The dialogue sounds like announcers reading weather reports. And all the while, Dawson is furiously venting spleen at just about everyone and everything, to no discernible purpose--unless it's all a comedian's revenge? Appalling. Avoid.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton--dist. by David & Charles

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION