We Will See You Bleed by Ron Currie Review

It’s the summer of 1984 and the workers for the local paper mill in Waterville, Maine, have been on strike for over a year - without progress. As the money of local families dries up, Babs Dionne, the head of the union, begins to contemplate desperate measures to end the deadlock and get her town back to work.

Here’s a tip you can take to the bank: NEVER read a book that Stephen King endorses. Uncle Stevie has the most atrocious taste in literature and a pull quote from him is at the top of the cover of this book.

However - Ron Currie’s previous novel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, the first book in this series (We Will See You Bleed is the second, despite it being set decades before the first), was so utterly brilliant, I was willing to see past the equivalent of a poison symbol on the cover and still pick it up.

Well. The king of bad taste strikes again because We Will See You Bleed is a terrible novel and a hugely disappointing follow-up.

Its trashness is not immediately apparent though. Savage takes place in 2016, at the end of Bab’s life, and we only hear in passing about her husband Rheal because he died before the events of that book. Bleed takes place 32 years before and Rheal is alive and kicking - he is in fact the best character in this book, and his introduction is very promising: he’s in a bar when a would-be assassin wielding a chainsaw tries to murderise him.

This is the second scene in the novel and the last time it will be interesting for well over 200 pages.

In the meantime, we hear about how the strike is affecting the various people of Little Canada and the poverty of the area. We meet Claude, Rheal’s best friend, and his wife Sophie, who has bad kidneys and is fed up with dialysis and wants to die - the only solution? A transplant. But Claude doesn’t have nearly enough cash - or a donor - to make this happen. And Father Clement supports the strike, going against the Church’s orders to remain neutral, and is removed from his parish. From his new home in a remote recordskeeping office, he will play a role in the Spotlight articles on what the Catholic priests have been doing to kids for years.

Let’s take these one by one. The strike’s effects: I get it, we need to understand the stakes, and humanising the characters is always a good idea. It doesn’t need to be this drawn-out though. Especially when nothing happens and the same message is repeated over and over: how capitalist greed ruins ordinary people’s lives. It’s too static for too long.

Claude and Sophie: the first of the two boring sub-plots. They complain, reiterate the misery, and, eventually, without any real drama, let alone excitement, it’s resolved. Again, I get why Claude gets built-up given the novel’s conclusion - but there’s too much on this kidney stuff, and it keeps the pacing of the narrative frozen in place for way too long.

Father Clement and the priest diddlers: why did we need to hear about the filthy Catholic Church - has everyone forgotten how gross that outdated institution is? Of course not, but it wasn’t as publicised back in 1984. Ok, but it’s not that publicised then either - so why did we need to know that Clement supposedly played a part in the Spotlight articles that appeared years later? What does this add to the book? It’s absolutely pointless and tedious.

This being a prequel, there is some needless table-setting for the first book. We see how Bates becomes police chief, how Babs establishes the Little Canada crime syndicate, and, knowing that she becomes a mother of three, gosh I wonder what the nausea then-childless Babs feels could be?

The novel finally comes alive in fits and starts in the final third when Babs and Rheal decide to take the fight to the mill and its owner Sutton. It still feels too little too late, though there are some great scenes that I won’t spoil.

What’s really frustrating is that Ron Currie has created some fantastic characters here. Babs remains wonderfully brutal, as is her husband Rheal, who brings real terror when he unleashes his anger towards the end. Sutton is a cool villain, as is Aucoin, a rival mob boss - Currie writes the bad guys so well in both books (never over the top - the evil is always simmering tangibly just beneath the surface). The Saucier brothers, Ray and Normand, steal every scene they’re in - oddly comedic but also crazy (think Frenchie from The Boys but two of him). I loved these two madmen, especially when they begin their invasion of the mill.

It’s just that he doesn’t let these great characters do anything until the very end. Savage is different because it’s nothing but bonzer characters doing interesting things from start to finish. Bleed introduces a brilliant cast and has them sit around twiddling their thumbs until finally giving them something to do at the end.

So far, this is the biggest let-down of my reading year because I loved Savage so much and was hoping the follow-up would be as good - and it wasn’t even half as good. What it turned out to be was a dreary trudge through 250+ pages of changeless, predictable rubbish that didn’t need to be told to get to a sporadically exciting payoff.

Whereas The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne made me hungry for more, We Will See You Bleed has turned me off of reading any more in the series (though I expect I will eventually return, albeit more cautiously, whenever the next book is out). Did Currie put all of his best ideas in his first book and has already run out? That’s what it feels like.

I’m not opposed to prequels in general - so long as the story is entertaining, it doesn’t matter if they’re broadly unnecessary in setting up the story they’re preceding - but this definitely felt like one of those prequels that you’re better off skipping because it’s that dull and pointless.