REVIEW: Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up by David Niall Wilson
Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up is a crime thriller/sci-fi black comedy by David Niall Wilson in the style of Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch (Lost Highway more than Twin Peaks). David Niall Wilson is a two-time Stoker award winning author, and I’ve enjoyed his horror novels before this slightly more grounded but nevertheless deranged story of murder, cops, and mad science. If you want an enjoyable romp with a copious body count, then this is the book for you.
The premise of Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up is that a man, Sam, walks into a diner after having committed murder and in his stunned state, gives his gun to the waitress, Delilah. Delilah promptly eliminates her perverted boss and becomes his best customer/partner in crime. From there, the pair end up on the run with their bodies being cleaned up by a deranged professor experimenting with his new corpse-based biofuel. The surreal cast of characters just keeps growing as they head down toward a natural disaster in Mexico in hopes of finding more bodies for their experiment.
From the beginning to end, Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up is a great story of oddball characters in a heightened reality. The stakes begin with a pair who decide murder is the best way out of their shared humdrum lives and then just keeps growing alongside the body count. The science element of the biofuel has the potential to change the world but it’s also something that has the practical benefit of getting rid of corpses very quickly.
Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up is a world where there doesn’t appear to be much morality, but it’s played for laughs rather than horror. Each character is more concerned with how the bodies impacts their immediate plans rather than any actual worry regarding the loss of human life. Their ability to escape any consequences for their action also encourages more gleeful mayhem. The comparison with Tarantino is deliberate and you can’t help but wonder if they’ll end up at a bar full of vampires (they don’t but instead the scientists get mistaken for a UFO at one point).
While the sci-fi elements of Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up are light, they are still very relevant with the looming crisis of global warming and the lack of renewable resources being a subtle but consistent theme. The biofuel is something that has the potential to be a game changer to the planet, but everyone is too busy figuring out how to get rid of the people they don’t like to worry about its greater potential.
Sam and Delilah are fantastic characters, and their story is both comedic as well as dramatic in a way that mixes well with the larger issues. However, just about everyone leaps across the page. The sheriff and police officers are as bamboozled by the weird events and strange cast as anyone else.
In conclusion, Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up a solid and entertaining novel that is enjoyable from beginning to end. If you want a crime drama with just the barest hints of how futurism will only make humanity’s worst impulses easier then this is the book for you.
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