Some spoilsies ahead!
When life gives you lemons, god opens a window - or however that thing goes. Because, while my beloved Giant Days ended, John Allison and Max Sarin started a new series set in the same world: Wicked Things. Hurrah! … right? Disappointingly, no - Wicked Things turned out to be a boring mess.
People are calling this a Giant Days spinoff but it’s not really - the main character of Wicked Things, Charlotte Grote, featured mostly as part of the cast of Allison’s other series, Bad Machinery (though she did cameo in Giant Days as Esther’s babysittee). Here she’s been aged-up a bit so she’s now 18 and headed to uni - but not before she attends a detective award show she’s been nominated for!At the ceremony, Lottie is framed for murder and, after some shaky plottering, ends up working for the London Metropolitan Police - because they apparently need the expertise of a teenage civilian to solve their cases! Such cases include twins scamming smartphones and a gang ripping off secret London casinos.
The framing story (a double entendre!) was a confusing load of cobblers. Lottie is arrested on circumstantial evidence which doesn’t make sense. She’s alleged to have attempted to murderise a famous Japanese detective who doesn’t speak English and whose interpreter is wilfully misinterpreting what Lottie says and is more than a bit suspect. Even the butler in the hotel seems suspicious. Neither character is developed and this entire plot is put to the side until the very last pages of the book, when it’s resolved in a rush:
Miyamoto wakes up from his coma and clears Lottie’s name, though he says this in Japanese and only in earshot of the interpreter, so only she knows the truth (as she’s always done). Does that mean that the interpreter chose to interpret his words correctly for the first time in the book, thus clearing Lottie’s name? If so, why - and then why implicate her in the first place? If not, how was Lottie set free? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.
The iPhone scammers story was pointless - unless the point was “crime does pay”? I feel like Allison should have cut this dull rubbish out and focused on developing the Miyamoto attempted-murder storyline instead. The casino gang heist thing was just as crap - I had no idea what was going on and I didn’t care. Apparently people in police safehouses can coordinate complex criminal plans without the cops noticing - Allison really seems to have the lowest opinion of the Met! First they actually need Lottie’s help to do their jobs, now their supposed-prisoners are running ops behind their backs - boy do they suck in this world!
The stories are badly-plotted and unengaging, the jokes are unfunny (Lottie’s a tea lady, let’s run that into the ground - har har…), none of the new characters were fun, and all of the police characters were simply annoying - this is Allison’s weakest writing since his last non-Giant Days book, Steeple. Max Sarin’s art is as beautiful as ever and Lottie’s likeable-enough but more as a side-character - she can’t carry her own series. Maybe the ending was rushed because Allison was expecting to explore that plotline further in later issues but, unfortunately, I can see why this series got canned after just six issues. I was done with the title even before the halfway point!
Wicked Things is a jumble of uninteresting and plain bad comedy detective stories that neither make you intrigued or laff - an underwhelming follow-up to the spectacular Giant Days.
I am starting to fear that Allison could become a "one hit wonder", an author with just one good title. All of his non-Giant Days works has been incredible lackluster, and this one was unbelievable boring and nonsensical. What was the point of the framing-for-murder plot? Why was the phone scam left basically unresolved? Why everything? Ugh, this was bad and disappointing but mostly bad. Come back Esther, Susan and Daisy!
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