Review: Squelch

Squelch by John Halkin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

After all, it was only a moth: wasn’t it? 

This starts off with a twelve year old breaking into a research facility and stealing a box of caterpillars to later take back and impress his friends. But alas, crime doesn't pay and when a caterpillar breaks out of the box and starts biting him, he falls down screaming in pain. It's a free for all then as the other caterpillars attack and start burrowing into the little boy. Back at the facility they notice someone broke in but a cat gets blamed when it's dead body is found broken on the caterpillar cage. A kid and an animal dying in the prologue?? I thought I was in for a squelchy good time but the story then jumps a few months, have to give time for the caterpillars to become moth airborne killers, and then we meet, Ginny. She just quit her job as a director on a soap opera series, broken up with her boyfriend of three years, and going to try and find herself in the outskirts of London in a little cottage. 

Normally she didn’t like creepie-crawlies, yet here she was now – completely calm, for all the world as though she were receiving visitors. 

Ginny encounters a moth at the cottage right away but there's this almost bond between them as she doesn't kill it but gently brings it back outside to fly away. Readers see a different side of the moths as the ex-bf that helped her move in is attacked when he's driving as the moths seem to try to kill him. This starts the murderous little cut scenes as caterpillars and moths attack people who are alone or only in groups of two while we always come back to Ginny and her desire to bang her brother-in-law. 

Her body lay twisted unnaturally on the grass with fat green caterpillars – six at least – gorging themselves on her. 

Ginny's cottage is by her sister Lesley and her doctor husband Bernie. Lesley gets bitten by one of the caterpillars and ends up in the hospital. But don't worry, Ginny realizes that sleeping with her sister's husband while in she's in the hospital would not be the thing. They wait until the caterpillars and moths start attacking larger groups of people and people start running scared. Lesley takes her kids and goes a few towns over. Ginny and Bernie bang that night. In Lesley's home. In Lesley's bed. The story then takes a disaster movie turn and it's carnage, the caterpillars and moths are slaughtering a hundred people at fêtes and church get togethers. They're making their way to London! 

Calmly she went about the task of slaughtering those moths one by one, bringing the hoe blade sharply down on each to sever the wings and crush the body. 

The sister finds out about the affair, a slap to the face, and then a couple more months go by where the caterpillars are doing their thing until they turn into moths and Ginny has convinced herself still sleeping with her sister's husband will be ok (at one point she wonders if Lesley won't mind sharing???). A renegade pilot enters the picture, he has the hots for Ginny (I forgot to mention the seventy year old Reverend that also had the hots for Ginny) but when the caterpillars/moths make their murderous return he's fighting along side Ginny and others to save people. The government wants to try and keep things hush-hush (???) about the murderous rampage making it's way to London but ol' renegade pilot gets on to something and he renegades, by bringing in a plane full of monitor lizards from Africa. Just as the caterpillars/moths are doing their charge he comes back, crashes the plane and releases the monitor lizards! The lizards gorge and save the day. Bernie dies. England advises people to keep monitor lizards as pets from here on out. 

Or did they get them all? The ending has Ginny in her cottage communing with a moth. (there was also Ginny writing a movie script about the whole thing and the renegade pilot shipping it to friends in America and her possibly getting a movie deal for a true author wish fulfillment ending)

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