Sex and violence run like scarlet, subterranean rivers beneath the surface of many iconic fairy tales and Little Red Riding Hood is no exception. A young girl loses her way in a dark forest and meets a Woodsman and then a Wolf. They both ask her questions and give her advice, but who is friend and who is foe? She arrives at Grandma’s house, only to find her beloved Nan in the belly of the beast, literally. What happens after Red Riding Hood’s unfortunate discovery of a Wolf in Grandma’s clothing is not definitive: in various versions of the fairy tale she either escapes unscathed; or she’s eaten by the Wolf; or she’s cut out of the Wolf’s stomach by the helpful Woodsman. But whatever the final dénouement, it’s always bloody, it’s always violent, and someone always ends up dead. And this is what people read to their kids as a bedtime story! No wonder human beings are so fascinated by horror. We’ve all been indoctrinated from a very early age.
In RED, Paul Kane’s very modern take on a centuries’ old tale, Little Red Riding Hood is Rachel Daniels, a pretty young woman with a big heart and a terrible taste in men, who undertakes a mission of mercy to take some medicine to an old lady who lives on a council estate in a bad part of town. She meets a few disaffected youths on the way, which is threatening enough, but something else is stalking her – a creature that is snuffling out the familiar scent of an adversary from the distant past and who is eager to taste the blood that was denied to it all those years ago.
From RED’s shocking first chapter through wicked twists and turns to the end, the story surprises, intrigues and beguiles you. Paul Kane’s taut, muscular, yet descriptive prose conjures up disturbing images in your mind that you won’t be able to dislodge for months. Kane’s writing is frighteningly realistic. Not only are you are there with Rachel for every moment of her ordeal, but you also inhabit the shape-shifting monster’s mind -- privy to his motivations and his side of the story. RED is a beautifully visceral, dark tale and if any novella was ripe for a film adaptation, it’s this one.
Paul Kane is a multiple British Fantasy Award-nominee and co-editor, with Marie O'Regan, of HELLBOUND HEARTS.
