A Trail Of Blood On The Snow by Sam Lee

I would like to thank Barbican Press for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Barbican Press

Published - 15/4

Price – £10.99 paperback

He remembers me. He remembers the screaming and the blood on the snow. He remembers everything, I can tell."

Rex is 41. Halfway to death and no happier for it. Any promise of a better life got stifled decades ago, when Rex was a limping school kid and Max was the school bully.

Then, a chance encounter. Max standing smug and handsome at a gas station with his oh-so-perfect family.

Rex secretly follows them home. Watches them. Thinks about his own miserable life. What Max did to him, and how a real man would claim revenge.

Rex acts.

Is this the making of a monster, or the breaking of a man?

Are we all responsible for our actions or do we accept our pasts shape them. This is a difficult age-old debate of is it our genetics or our upbringing that makes us who we are. Exploring the concept of toxic masculinity is an intriguing idea explored in Sam Lee’s dark novella A Trail of Blood On the Snow where actions shape future actions to some extent but I’m not totally sure it quite lands all its targets.

Rex Constanzo is 41, married and has a teenage daughter. He is slightly drifting as nothing has gone quite to plana and his family are all feeling increasingly distant from him. Then he meets unexpectedly Max Adams a schoolyard bully who appears now rich and in a happy family which makes Rex relive long buried memories of his childhood. Rex is furious to see Max has not been hurt by what he did to him many years ago. Revenge is the only solution but this could end even worse for Rex.

I have had a mixed reaction to this novel which is dealing with in credibly dark themes of sexual abuse and suicide. Rex who tells us his tale is not an immediately sympathetic character he blames his wife and daughter for their lack of fitness and takes no pride in his own. He tells us of his voyeur like spying on his sister’s many dates and overall is crude and bitter. Lee though does start to unpeel Rex’s past and we see a man who grew up in a time and place where boys were expected to be men in miniature, must hide their tears and emptions and that instead leaves them to lash out. When we do see what Max did to Rex it starts to explain his emotional distances, his not too hidden rage and sets him on a terribly destructive past. We cannot condone his actions but Lee achieves at this midway stage the key part of such characters we understand their actions.

It slightly though for me loses that focus in the second act after this turning point. In some ways Rex becomes much more sympathetic we see that a moment of revenge allows him to appear to unlock his emotional distance and try to re-connect with his own family. But for me the subsequent events do not quite flow as well as I was then hoping.  A subplot involving his daughter is allows to show that rex is not simply cured by one action. Indeed, this works to show that rex cannot be absolved for his current actions on his past and indeed we find he takes no real lessons from what he has done and lashes out if he cannot get his own way. That could have been an interesting placer to end the story but Lee slightly overcooks it with a big reveal that casts a different light on rex and for me really doesn’t work for the character or the wider story. Its one reveal too much and almost suggests a mental illness excuses the behaviour we see.

A trail of Blood On the Show is a very dark tale and goes into very murky territory with a deliberately horrible and unlikeable character to spend time with. While I applaud the character work to show what makes him tick the overall ending slightly for me loses focus on the key messages of responsibility. For fans of transgressive horror worth a look but caveated.