Bingo 15: Violence
The Watchers, had it been better known, would likely have faced bans for the violence, the sex, and the use of religion. I was also a little surprised there was no CW; it kind of needs one given how graphic certain parts of the story get in terms of the sexual and standard violence, some suggested but an awful lot directly shown, especially the last 100 pages or so.
Basically, The Watchers is what I image you’d get if Dan Brown had written The Hunchback of Notre Dame while channeling Toni Morrison (an no, the style does not really deserve this comparison; it’s content-related only). The Victor Hugo references are obvious from the setting and part of the plot; Marc Rochat is the watchman at Lausanne Cathedral in Switzerland, and he has both physical and other disabilities due to trauma at birth; the Quasimodo references are literally made by other characters. When he meets Katherine Taylor, a very exclusive high end call girl in a lot of trouble, he mistakes her for the angel his late mother always told him would come to the cathedral after getting lost. The level of violence in the final third of the novel, and at one least character’s fate is actually kind of reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s version of the story too.
Both Marc and Katherine have briefly crossed paths with Jay Harper, a private detective who can’t quite seem to remember what’s important; turns out there will be major reasons for this, one of which have a connection to the History Channel (one of the more brilliant little touches). Jay is investigating a disappearance and some nasty murders; the bodies pile up, and it turns out, in the manner of Dan Brown now, that there is something epic, sinister, and quasi-extra-Biblical going on and has been going on for centuries if not millennia.
The first third of the novel is kind of slow, establishing each of the three main characters’ general situations, the second third is all the confusion of knowing something is going on but not quite what, and then finally everyone gathers around the cathedral for a battle for the world kind of time. Not everyone walks away, and no one really gets a happy ending, and this is only part 1 or a trilogy. Honestly, I’m glad this was a give-away, and I don’t really care enough to seek out the rest.
