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The Rainbow Maker
by Mark Turley
(UKA Press, £9.99, 272 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-904781-17-9.)
Review by Stuart Carter
 A
self-righteous 'entrepreneur', a Royal Marine turned labourer and the
head of a top-secret government research facility -- what, you may ask,
do they have in common? Well, in truth nothing at all, apart from their
DNA and the fact they're all lead characters in Mark Turley's The
Rainbow Maker, an intelligent technothriller whose genesis lies,
I suspect, in one too many encounters with the worst of London's intolerant
masses. God knows, we've all been there: the woman who refuses to move
down the bus and swears at anyone who asks her to, the man in the car
behind who beeps his horn if you don't move the moment the lights turn
amber, and the oblivious tourists walking three abreast along a narrow
pavement. Grr. They've all got it coming.
Well, the good news is that in The Rainbow Maker they all get
their just desserts. The bad news is that so does everyone one else
in London, due to an interestingly exaggerated flaw in our social make-up
that Turley christens the Black Cloud Effect; whereby the pressure of
living in very close proximity to such a bunch of inconsiderate, stupid,
rude ... er, ahem! Whereby the pressure of living in such close proximity
to so many other people leads inevitably to a catastrophic phase transition
where we all, shall we say, work off some of our frustrations in a more
direct manner than is customary.
Turley's three-pronged narrative follows Zac the builder, Richter
the scientist and Elliot the businessman in the lead-up to a Black Cloud
outbreak (or is it ... ?) in London. There are also two minor characters,
one a mysterious damaged recluse and the other a mysterious and secretive
gentleman visiting some unusual friends in the Middle East. All of these
characters go about their business, some of which is relevant to the
overall plot and some of which isn't. It's all well written, and generally
quite engaging, with a brisk feel that feels wholly appropriate as the
four horsemen are quite obviously gathering just over the page ...
Turley writes rather well, although with a tendency to give in to his
purple tendencies on occasion; which is not necessarily a bad thing
by any means, but it seems rather out of place in a fast moving and
rather less than beautiful story such as this. The story is interesting,
too -- well handled, if not completely original (I'm thinking specifically
of James Herbert's The Fog or even the Brit zombie movie 28
Days Later).
This next bit may be something of a spoiler, but the biggest
problem with The Rain Maker is simply that it's too short. When
the four horsemen (well, one or two of them, anyway) arrive they gallop
into town do their thing and gallop off again -- it's almost blink-and-you'll-miss-it
stuff. The book's climax is extremely unpleasant and grisly, but these
would have taken longer to watch in a film version of The Rainbow
Maker than they actually took me to read, so that where the book's
climax should have been a bloody beating it's more like a nasty poke
in the eye -- unpleasant, but over very quickly -- and the excellent
build-up and drama of the Black Cloud Effect Turley has given us before
is rather wasted.
One thing I would add is that as a Londoner I can honestly say that
things here generally aren't anywhere nearly as bad as Turley makes
out. I read The Rainbow Maker not long after the bomb attacks
of July 7th (the Russell Square bus bomb was just round the corner from
my work), and his descriptions of mean and surly Londoners rang particularly
hollow just then ... although a Saturday night on the Old Kent Road
could be a very different kettle of fish ...
So, an interesting and talented author, someone to watch out
for, I think, but this novel does, in the end, disappoint.
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