You ever wake up and you can’t feel your arm? Now machine if you could but it looked different, like it belonged to a stranger. That’s the basic premise from which this wild tale spins out.
Quantick writes for TV on top of books, so he knows a thing or two about quippy dialogue and brisk pacing. Also, he managed to gain oodles of praise from really respectable sources. But for this reader, he’s yet to deserve any of it.
Night Train was entertaining but nothing special. And this novel is more of the same, albeit less so.
It’s fast and flashy and snappy and glib, but all the appeal is surface level. The plot is preposterous and credulity-straining with not much to back it up. The characters are virtually interchangeable in their mannerisms and conversational skills. This is very much a book by the way of a TV script. One where the jokes look like they ought to be funny but fall flat as soggy pancakes.
Much the same as Quantick’s TV show Avenue 5. Fun cast, technically fun lines that are never really funny. Unlike Avenue 5, I did finish this book. I’m a completist, plus it reads very quickly owing to all the dialogue. But outside of being mildly forgettably entertaining, it didn’t have much to offer. Kind of a one note joke dragged out into a novel length plot. Punchline may vary. Thanks Netgalley.

Unfortunately, I have been locked out of my netgalley account for a few months and was not able to see which books I had on my list or even know to check if they downloaded properly, in order to properly read and review. I do apologize and am doing a 3 for neutral. Will update once I’m able to obtain a copy and read!

When a paparazzi photographer wakes up with a different hand on the end of his arm he knows it will be a difficult day. No scars or pain, but definitely not his arm. Little does he know he is not the only one struggling. Comic novel that moves speedily and proficiently.

Ricky Smart is a nobody, a Miami Beach paparazzo who lives in a cheap apartment and scrapes a living snapping celebs. One day Ricky wakes up, and realises there’s something wrong with his hand. It’s not his hand. In fact, it’s someone else’s hand. How does he know it’s not his? Because it looks different, it feels different and – perhaps the biggest clue– it has a four-letter word tattooed across the knuckles.

Then a week later, his other hand changes. A few days after that, Ricky gets a new arm…

Ricky is losing his mind as well as his body parts, but he has to eat and pay rent so he manages to get things together enough to pursue his seedy paparazzi career. He’s after candid shots of pop sensation and local girl Scala Jaq, who’s staying in town. He trails Scala, who has a secret of her own, and to his surprise and shock comes across her at a support group for people with an unusual condition, led by an overly enthusiastic guy called Don. Scala and Ricky team up when they begin to suspect Don, who tells them he’s a time-travelling policeman with an interest in Ricky’s problem.

This week’s review is Ricky’s Hand by David Quantick. Strap yourselves in folks. Things are going to get weird.

Ricky is a downbeat, mildly sleazy soul. I guess it comes with the territory when your job is essentially celebrity stalking. It’s tough to maintain the moral high ground. I’ll admit I felt a little sorry for Ricky. When we first meet him, he has hit rock bottom in life and is doing whatever it takes to get by. As soon as anyone discovers his profession, Ricky is viewed with barely veiled contempt and obvious distrust. Understandably, this has made Ricky quite self-motivated. He feels he can only rely on himself. If people won’t trust him then he won’t trust anyone else. Ricky has developed an acerbic, spiky persona. He continually pushes outwards, terrified of connecting with anyone. Of course, this means that Ricky can’t keep his mouth shut; he has a snarky attitude that all but ensures he is going to get a beating at some point or another. As his “condition” escalates, Ricky finds himself in the unusual position of needing help from others.

Scala Jaq exists at the opposite end of the societal scale. She has everything she could want – fame, wealth and a manager who will literally do anything to protect his investment. Like Ricky though, she lives a solitary existence. No-one can understand what it is like to live in the spotlight twenty-four-seven.

Circumstance drives these two disparate souls together. When various body parts start to change overnight both find themselves asking the same question “what can I do?” The answer is easy, do what every other red-blooded American would do, join a self-help group. That’s the point where things take an even weirder turn.

I don’t want to give too much of the plot away. Half the fun of this novel is trying to guess where things are going to go next. That’s where Ricky’s Hand excels, it demands your attention. The narrative mashes together the best of science fiction and crime to create a deliciously unique novel. The premise says it all really. You have to admit that random people having random body parts replaced for no apparent reason is pretty weird. Fortunately, David Quantick is on hand* to guide us. I was a big fan of his last novel, Night Train. The bastard son of Snowpiercer and Cube was a great deal of fun. Even now I am still reeling from the scene with the soup. There is little doubt that with Quantick we are in a safe pair of hands**. When it comes to all things odd he has got us covered.

There is some darker than dark comedy infused throughout this story. Ricky tries to compensate for his many failings by portraying himself as a cocky son of a bitch. Unsurprisingly, it almost never works but for an outsider looking in, it is funny.

If you are in the market for a cheeky little science fiction novel that is going to throw you a curveball or two, then you need look no further.

Ricky’s Hand is published by Titan Books and is available now.

My musical recommendation to accompany this novel is the soundtrack to Nightcrawler by James Newton Howard. Ricky Smart has an eerie twilight existence on the fringes of society so it seemed like a good fit.

*excuse the pun

**honestly this isn’t deliberate, I promise.

I wanted a new read that would take me away from my usual crime ration and chose Ricky's Hand pretty much at random (other than recognising Quantick's name from his sharp Twitter account) - and it didn't disappoint.

Smart, funny and original, Ricky's Hand is a fresh take on time-travel. An engrossing "where the hell will it go now" story larded with wisecracks and great one-liners. I don't want to let out any spoilers here, but basically it's one guy's quest to find out why his hand doesn't look or feel like his own any more. He ends up meeting some seriously heavy blokes and gets in a few sticky situations before he and his female sidekicks begin to unravel the mystery.

Great fun, loved it. This trio need to come back for another episode!

I love science fiction, but it can sometimes be hard to relate to the characters if they are flying spaceships in far off galaxies. Sometimes it is nice to read something a little closer to home, bizarre things happening to normal people. David Quantick’s Ricky’s Hand is a twisted Twilight Zone episode of a novel about a series of people who wake up one morning with a different body part. The problem is that no one believes them.

Ricky is an aging Paparazzi who spends too much time drinking and stalking celebrities. He would be the first to admit that he is not a nice person, but even he should be believed if he says that his hand is not his own. This new hand is too hairy and big, and the rude tattoo was not something Ricky got. A select few people are suffering the same condition and they meet up in a support group, but the leader of the group may not be telling the truth.

Quantick specialises in an uneasy style of speculative fiction that feels like a sci fi Chuck Palaniuk. You never know what is going to happen, but you know it will be an odd ride. Ricky is more in the vein of the excellent All My Colors, but a nice Easter Egg suggests that it is in the same universe as the forward-thinking Night Train. What you have here is a thought exercise played out logically by an intelligent writer who likes to push things to the edge. What would you do if you woke up with someone else’s hand?

At first Quantick follows what we would all do; freak out and see a doctor. After this, things begin to become a little stranger and eventually full-on crazy. I loved the way that the book developed from a slight twist of fate to full blown science fiction concepts. The various escalations in the book come as a surprise as Quantick never forgets to write a coherent story.

It is the characters who keep proceedings grounded. Ricky himself is unfit and grubby, the other members of the support group take an instant dislike to him, but they must become uneasy allies. One fellow victim is Scala, a former child actor turned pop princess. She decides to trust Ricky and together they use his network of seedy contacts to try and unearth what is happening. The book becomes a comedic crime caper, but there is also plenty of science fiction as well.

Ricky is a hard book to pigeonhole as it hides its supernatural elements under the comedy and character development. When you do start to learn more about what is happening it feels even more fantastical because the rest of the book is so grounded in the dull life of Ricky. This is what makes the beats so much fun. You never know what is going to happen. Having someone like Quantick writing genre fiction is a joy as there are few voices deranged and as sly as this.

Violent and sleazy at times, hilarious at others, and pure bonkers all the way through. I liked the mix matched characters and the body-horror-ish concept a lot more than I was expecting to, Super fun.

A brilliant, weird, and darkly humorous story. Even if it's not amongst my top books of the year I must say that It's surely one of the most original and entertaining.
I liked the style of writing and it kept me reading.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A weird and strangely readable book about Ricky who wakes up one morning with someone else's hand and his quest, with a similarly affected superstar, to find out why. Full of sly dark humour, lots of bizarre and violent deaths and an unbelievable plot line it managed to keep this reader hooked until the end!
Thank you to netgalley and Titan for an advance copy of this book

“Ricky’s Hand” was interesting. A story about a paparazzo who’s stalks celebrities to capture pictures of them at their worst for the biggest possible payout. One morning, Ricky, the MC, wakes up to discover that his hand isn’t his hand and there’s a random tattoo spelling out “F*CK* across his knuckles. It doesn’t hurt, he moves okay, but it’s definitely not his hand.

While trying to figure out the origin of his new appendage, Scala Jaq, a well-known pop star comes to Miami. Thinking he hit pay dirt, Ricky heads to her hotel to try and get some pictures, only to be confronted by the angry singer who then destroys his camera by throwing it into a pool.

Fast forward: Ricky finds a support group for others that have woken up with strange body parts that are not their own. But guess who else is there? Scala Jaq. From there, the story turns into a sci-fi mystery that involves time travel, murder, and a slew of other unsavory characters that bring the whole ordeal to wacky new heights.

I enjoyed it, but towards the end, things were happening so fast that I had to stop and reread some of the details to make sure I fully understood what was going on. Just a heads up: though it’s marked horror, I’d say it’s more sci-fi/mystery than anything else. Nothing scary about this one, but it's still a fun and unique read.

I am not sure if the title is a nod to the song by Fad Gadget,a song about the perils of dissociating body parts from mind control, extrapolated as a warning not to drink and drive.

However, much like its predecessor,'Night Train' , 'Ricky's Hand' plunges you straight into the action whereupon we,and Ricky,start with the notion that the hand on the end of his arm is not his.

As unreliable narrators go,Ricky's job as a paparazzi sets him up as just higher up the food chain than a rat.

So when he wakes in a hungover state, are we to really believe that this is actually happening?

All we have to go on is Ricky's assertion that he did not have the word 'fuck' tattooed on the knuckles when he went to sleep.

So,ostensibly, we have a tale about a hand which belongs to Ricky as it exists at the end of his arm. And yet, further probing reveals not only is this absolutely not his hand, he has little redress to this situation.

A quick trip to hospital has the Dr's thinking it is a case of possible Body integrity Identity Disorder.

But as Ricky tries to distract himself doing his day job,his path crosses with that of singer Scala Jaq who has a secret of her own...

If you imagine Invasion Of The Body Snatchers crossed with Doctor Who and a soupçon of a future crime novel, this is alternatively hilarious and terrifying.

Bodily integrity and autonomy is very difficult when your parts are being taken over by some mysterious force from the future wanting restorative justice for a crime yet to be committed.

But how can you stop future you from doing something without altering that future?

Mindbending and peppered with fabulous characters like Scala's manager, Jonty, support group organiser, Don and my personal favourite, Ricky's contact , Isinglass, I would urge any reader of speculative, and often gory fiction,to take a punt on this novel!

My thanks to Netgalley for introducing me to this writer.
Ricky's hand is a fun read, despite the publisher blurb purporting it to be a horror. Quantick is not rewriting a genre or reinventing the wheel, but Ricky's misadventures from the morning he wakes up (hungover) to find another hand in the place of his own are comedy gold. While he IS a sleazebag, his minor transgressions pale in comparison to that of the real bad guys in the story, and despite the possibly tenuous use of time travel (explanations for which always either melt my brain or are too tenuous), the plot tears along at an engrossing pace. The characters are reasonably well-drawn and credible, and the humour rarely lets up, even when things look grimmest for our heroes. Far more of a comedy thriller than a horror, and Quantick is going on my list of cheer-ups for those bad days that need a little lift.

Ricky wakes up with a hand that is not his- its tattoo'd and much too large in comparison to his other hand. Then he continues on his day stalking celebrities and snapping photos of them. Strangely enough, later on in the day he goes to a special meeting- kinda like a support group for people who've woken up with the wrong body parts. Only, the celebrity he was stalking, is there too.

Ricky's Hand is a novel about a man whose hand suddenly changes to someone else's, and in the process he finds himself entangled in a weird web of secrets that go places he'd never expect. Ricky is a paparazzo in Miami Beach, just about making a living, when he wakes up one morning to find that his hand is no longer his hand, and instead is shaped different and has a tattoo. When he tries to ignore it to get shots of pop star Scala Jaq, Ricky finds himself with an unlikely ally in the attempt to work out what is happening to his hand.

As the premise suggests, this is a suitably ridiculous book, about body parts changing and, eventually, a weird explanation for it. The book mostly follows Ricky and Scala as they go from natural enemies to teaming up, and the plot follows various twists and turns as they attempt to get the leader of a local support group to give them more information. The narrative isn't the most gripping, but there's enough going on to keep you reading. It's a fairly fun, comic book (though it might be marketed as horror, it's not really horror though does have a vague element of body horror) that makes a good light read, with unlikeable characters that suit the style.

I didn't really know what I was getting myself into when I picked up David Quantick's Ricky's Hand, but I had a feeling it would be an amusing ride- and I was not wrong.

Ricky is a paparazzo who is down on his luck, and not very popular by the citizens of Miami Beach. He has a bad relationship with his sister, and is really only scraping by by taking snapshots of celebrities. But his fate all changes when he wakes up one morning with a different hand- yes, someone else's hand. Soon, he forces a love-hate alliance with a local celeb by the name of Scala Jaq and together they meet Don who runs a support group for people who also woke up with different body parts. Weird stuff, right? Well, just wait until you find out that Don calls himself a time traveling police man. Now, THAT is weird.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel with it's crude humor and quirkiness. It reminded me a bit of novels such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and John Dies at the End. While the characters might have been all a bit unlikable, they did further the story and served their part. I did feel that the end was all a bit rushed, but it didn't ruin the book for me.

I enjoyed Ricky’s Hand. It’s a pretty mad plot, but it’s very well done and I found it an amusing and a gripping read.

Ricky is a sleazy paparazzo in Florida, tracking Scala Jaq, a pop star. He wakes up one morning to find that he now has someone else’s hand...and it eventually transpires that others also have new, different body parts, including Scala. A support group is convened by the mysterious Don...and a weird, rather complex but entertaining story ensues involving time-travel, body appropriation and some major skulduggery.

In the wrong hands this could be terrible, but David Quantick makes it immense fun. His characters are believable and very well drawn, the tension really does build and the dialogue is excellent – as you’d expect from such an experienced screen writer. There’s an excellent balance of humour, sharp observation and exciting plot and although this sort of sci-fi stuff isn’t usually for me, I enjoyed the book very much and I can recommend Ricky’s Hand.

Originally,it was the premise of this book that got my attention. It sounded like something fresh and I dove right in. It didn't disappoint. Although I'd be hard pressed to classify this book as horror, it is, in fact, a horrific setup and I would certainly be scared out of my mind under these circumstances!

The darkly humourous overtones kept the obviously tongue in cheek vibe of the narrative and I found myself laughing out loud at some of the dialogue between characters. But the story also grabbed my attention and kept it firmly as I read. I can say I was never bored at any time.

The pacing was spot on and there wasn't any excessive descriptions to interrupt the flow. I grew to like the titular character, Ricky, even after finding him off putting at the start. However, he stays true to his character (even his flaws) and I appreciated that as I did the other characters we meet throughout the pages.

I enjoyed this book a great deal and would definitely recommend it to people who like satire and humour mixed with their thrillers.

I will post my video review of this book on my Horror Reads YouTube channel as the release date comes closer.

Thank you, Titan Books, for allowing me to read Ricky's Hand early!

Promising premise which I felt didn't deliver.

Ricky's Hand by David Quantick.
Ricky Smart is a nobody, a Miami Beach paparazzo who scrapes a living snapping celebs. One day Ricky wakes up and realises there’s something wrong with his hand. It’s not his hand. In fact, it’s someone else’s hand. How does he know it’s not his? Because it looks different, feels different and – perhaps the biggest clue – has a four-letter word tattooed across the knuckles.
An OK read. Wasn't for me. I did like the cover though. 3*.