The Folly – David Anne

I’ve read books about evil lizards, evil flies, evil dogs, evil jellyfish, evil mantises, evil butterflies, evil trout, evil cockroaches and several about evil worms. I’ve long been meaning to get around to the evil rats, cats and crabs, but when I heard about a book about evil bunny rabbits, I bumped it to the front of the queue.

When you’ve read a few of these “animal attacks” books, you start to see patterns emerging. This is set in England, and the set up was very similar to the slimey, squelchy, slithery books by John Halkin (which I assume are very similar to James Herbert’s Rats.) Peaceful rural scenes are interrupted by brutal maulings at the hands of hitherto mild-mannered wildlife. The attacks in The Folly were quite bloody, but there was nothing else to note until the end of the book.

Spoilers ahead:

So it turns out that the bunnies are a laboratory experiment gone wrong. A lad who wanted to control the rabbit population in his neighbourhood hired a scientist to genetically engineer a disease that would kill rabbits. Once accomplished, this pair continued their genetic experiments, resulting in a chamber of freaks. The book ends with the protagonist stumbling into a secret room in the scientist’s laboratory which houses his half-human, half-chimpanzee lover (Maybe it’s his love-child: I read this a few weeks ago, and I can’t honestly remember.) The inclusion of this freak is needless and out of place in the story, but I thought it was a stroke of genius. It was like giving somebody a sneaky finger up the bum at the end of a blowjob – the reader’s not expecting it and probably doesn’t really want it, but they shan’t deny it makes things more exciting!

In truth, this is a ridiculous book, but if you’re the kind of person who is willing to read a book about evil bunny rabbits, I don’t think you’ll be terribly disappointed.