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Pecking Order by Chris Simms
A gripping psychological crime novel that follows the success of his first, Outside the White Lines.Rubble lives in a caravan and works on a battery farm. Totally oblivious to the outside world, he spends his days disposing of the sick and injured chickens. One day a mysterious visitor arrives and sees Rubble’s childlike naivete combined with an ability to kill without compunction. Soon Rubble is employed on a sinister secret project.Rubble’s only chance of realizing how he’s being cruelly used lies with the one person he confides a phone-line fortune-teller. But just how disturbing must her caller’s revelations become before she is prepared to take action? In this chilling thriller, Chris Simms plunges once again into the darkest reaches of human what it is that drives one person to kill another.From the Hardcover edition.
- GenresCrime
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2004
9 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Chris Simms
65 books81 followersI was born and brought up in rural Sussex, three miles from the nearest shop. Childhood holidays – which lasted for weeks as my dad was a teacher – were spent in a secluded spot in the heart of Exmoor. Sitting round the campfire at night, the haunting cries of owls floating in from the blackness beyond the flames, he would read me the ghost stories of MR James. The short walk to the safety of my tent was always taken at a sprint.
Books that interested me growing up? Plenty of mysteries – especially the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series. I also loved Roahl Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and read plenty of Pan Horror Stories, too.
Later, it was novels that gave insights into unusual minds: the twisted desires of Frederick in John Fowles’, The Collector; the tormented thoughts of Scobie in Graham Greene’s, Heart of the Matter; the violent urges of Francie in Patrick McCabe’s, Butcher Boy all had a major influence.
After school and university came a series of abysmal jobs punctuated by travelling. Quite a lot of travelling, actually. Then, just after my 30th birthday, the idea for my first novel came to me. I was broken down on the hard shoulder of a motorway in the early hours of the morning, waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive. It’s about the driver of a van who roams the roads in the dead of night, looking for stranded motorists to murder…
Ideas for subsequent novels have occurred at all sorts of odd moments: glimpsing a derelict church from the window of a moving train; browsing a newspaper report about a walker who claimed he’d been attacked by a panther; half-reading a doctor’s surgery article on how some tinnitus sufferers don’t hear whistles or buzzes – they’re tormented by birdsong; listening to a radio program about a flotilla of yellow ducks that fell from a cargo ship and floated slowly across the Atlantic.
Books that interested me growing up? Plenty of mysteries – especially the Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series. I also loved Roahl Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and read plenty of Pan Horror Stories, too.
Later, it was novels that gave insights into unusual minds: the twisted desires of Frederick in John Fowles’, The Collector; the tormented thoughts of Scobie in Graham Greene’s, Heart of the Matter; the violent urges of Francie in Patrick McCabe’s, Butcher Boy all had a major influence.
After school and university came a series of abysmal jobs punctuated by travelling. Quite a lot of travelling, actually. Then, just after my 30th birthday, the idea for my first novel came to me. I was broken down on the hard shoulder of a motorway in the early hours of the morning, waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive. It’s about the driver of a van who roams the roads in the dead of night, looking for stranded motorists to murder…
Ideas for subsequent novels have occurred at all sorts of odd moments: glimpsing a derelict church from the window of a moving train; browsing a newspaper report about a walker who claimed he’d been attacked by a panther; half-reading a doctor’s surgery article on how some tinnitus sufferers don’t hear whistles or buzzes – they’re tormented by birdsong; listening to a radio program about a flotilla of yellow ducks that fell from a cargo ship and floated slowly across the Atlantic.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 29, 2010
RATING: 3.0
Have you ever read those articles listing out the top 10 worst jobs that anyone could have? Roy Bull, also known as "Rubble", certainly has one that should qualify for that list. He works at one of those places where chickens are stuffed into cages and live a miserable life producing eggs until they die. His job is to dispose of the sick and injured chickens. It's not one that he minds at all, actually. He's a bit intellectually challenged and doesn't see any horror in what he does. Mostly he does his job, returns at night to his caravan and reads his military comics.
The job that Rubble REALLY wants is to be in the Army. So when he sees an ad to be a Special Agent, he applies instantly. What he doesn't know is that he's been targeted by a University professor who wants to use him to do his dirty work. Rubble certainly has no problem with killing, so why not use him to dispose of a few humans that are getting in Eric Maudsley's way, notably the department head who is about to squeeze him out of his job?
The only problem is that Rubble has been calling a horoscope hot line and confides in one of the girls there, Clare, who also happens to be a University student. She puts two and two together and soon becomes a target herself.
PECKING ORDER is certainly a unique, and at times disturbing, book. I can't think of too many readers who will be able to handle reading the segments having to do with the deplorable lives of the chickens. Fortunately, those sections are set off from the main narrative which makes them easily skippable, except for the first few chapters. Essentially, we learn that the chickens develop a "pecking order" which leads to the survival of the fittest. It's easy to look at the characters in the book in those terms as well.
The plot is fast-paced; some of the areas that are touched upon are euthanasia, care of the elderly, animal rights and academic politics. It's dark and it's creepy. There were parts of it that were too much for me, including the killing of a cat, sexual use of a dead chicken and the aforementioned sections on the effect of caging chickens in close quarters. That being said, I kind of liked the book which I find scary in its own way.
Have you ever read those articles listing out the top 10 worst jobs that anyone could have? Roy Bull, also known as "Rubble", certainly has one that should qualify for that list. He works at one of those places where chickens are stuffed into cages and live a miserable life producing eggs until they die. His job is to dispose of the sick and injured chickens. It's not one that he minds at all, actually. He's a bit intellectually challenged and doesn't see any horror in what he does. Mostly he does his job, returns at night to his caravan and reads his military comics.
The job that Rubble REALLY wants is to be in the Army. So when he sees an ad to be a Special Agent, he applies instantly. What he doesn't know is that he's been targeted by a University professor who wants to use him to do his dirty work. Rubble certainly has no problem with killing, so why not use him to dispose of a few humans that are getting in Eric Maudsley's way, notably the department head who is about to squeeze him out of his job?
The only problem is that Rubble has been calling a horoscope hot line and confides in one of the girls there, Clare, who also happens to be a University student. She puts two and two together and soon becomes a target herself.
PECKING ORDER is certainly a unique, and at times disturbing, book. I can't think of too many readers who will be able to handle reading the segments having to do with the deplorable lives of the chickens. Fortunately, those sections are set off from the main narrative which makes them easily skippable, except for the first few chapters. Essentially, we learn that the chickens develop a "pecking order" which leads to the survival of the fittest. It's easy to look at the characters in the book in those terms as well.
The plot is fast-paced; some of the areas that are touched upon are euthanasia, care of the elderly, animal rights and academic politics. It's dark and it's creepy. There were parts of it that were too much for me, including the killing of a cat, sexual use of a dead chicken and the aforementioned sections on the effect of caging chickens in close quarters. That being said, I kind of liked the book which I find scary in its own way.
January 23, 2013
After reading a glowing review of this author by a number of others I ordered this & Outside the White Lines. Pecking Order arrived first and it's an excellent read ... to me, a sign of a good book is one that has you still up after midnight and back at it at 6 am, desperate to devour more pages...this is most definately a page turner. Fast paced and unashamedly brutal, it whips along at break neck speed intertwining story lines all leading up to an explosive finale ... the detail in the text pull's no punches and your knee deep in the nitty gritty from page one. I couldn't put it down and i can only recommend & look forward to all the many quality reads that are sure to come in the future from this obviously talented guy .... you'll also never eat battery farmed eggs again ... ever.
February 18, 2013
Well, I'm done. It wasn't bad in the end, certainly keeps you racing through the pages, but is that really the function of a book? You just whizz through all the boring description-bits because you want to know what happens? And the incidental picture of Britain that it portrays is so unrelentingly grim. And why do thrillers always have to have some particularly revolting or gory or savage bit to turn your stomach?
I guess I come back to the same conclusion. I should simply stop reading thrillers. They're obviously just not my thing.
I guess I come back to the same conclusion. I should simply stop reading thrillers. They're obviously just not my thing.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews