Hyper-violence, misogyny and brand-names

The Observer's Rachel Aspden is 'less than impressed' with The Religion by Tim Willcocks, a new novel set in 16th century Malta. From Guardian Unlimited:

Heraldic kitsch and really big swords hold a fatal allure for the kind of men who also like Napalm Death, monster trucks and the gorier bits of Grand Theft Auto. Tim Willocks, a Hollywood screenwriter and author of the violent thrillers Green River Rising and Bad City Blues, clearly knows his market. Set in Malta in 1565, with the Ottoman army besieging the Knights of St John in their fortress of Sant'Angelo, The Religion is the tale of Mattias Tannhauser, an Aryan alpha male who can't get up from a chair without looking 'like a wolf roused from some primal dream'. After witnessing the rape and murder of his mother (lovingly described by Willocks in the 10-page gore-fest that opens the book), serving 15 years as a janissary and escaping to become an opium trader, he is lured into joining the defence of Malta by, what else, a beautiful woman searching for the long-lost son she bore to a dastardly Franciscan, now the Grand Inquisitor...

Willocks is no stranger to Dan Brown-style cliche: his 'tall and austere' warrior monks bear titles such as 'Lieutenant Turcopolier of the English Langue', while the evil Inquisitor is 'lean as a whip and dressed in a fine black doublet'. But The Religion is Tennent's Super to The Da Vinci Code's Bud Lite. Unlike Brown, Willocks's selfless pursuit of verite doesn't stop at a few baroque titles and hints of corruption in Mother Church (he asserts, weirdly, that Rome's 16th-century churches were 'theatres of bath-house art where the genitals and arses of leering pederasts were plastered over every wall'). His monks, soldiers and servants continually 'piss' and 'shit' themselves when threatened, gang-raped, hanged, tortured, disembowelled, blinded or simply preparing for battle. In Willocks's Malta, 'I've shat myself for less' is the standard, and wholly unmetaphorical, expression of friendly approval...