RATING: 3.0Have 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.
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.
