The Asylum By John Edward Ames

The Asylum
By John Edward Ames
1994 Zebra
Paperback, 303 pages

 

                This one was pretty tough for me to make it through, but I did.

 

                Stereotype detective Reno Sloan (streeee-rike one!) finds himself and his endless annoying quipping embroiled in bizarre plot where teenagers in New Orleans are suddenly losing their minds and winding up in the Cypress Island Clinic, where they receive treatment and a cure. One patient, with psychic abilities, commits a gruesome suicide and her sister (with whom she can communicate, even post-death) hires the detective to get some answers.

 

                It seems the CIC has more to it than meets the eye. The top dog, Dr. Malachi Feldman (I’m not making that up) has created a new drug that will make the user hallucinate and go nutzoid. What better way to fill the clinic than to get the topical drug on to rich families’ teenagers and “cure” them by just keeping them there. His two cartoon-character henchmen infect the kids, and they sit back and wait. Just got to watch out for those pesky psychic kids. There may be more than one.

 

                OK, the premise here is all right and the improbable ending had some excitement to it but overall, if you don’t like Reno (and really, how could you?), you won’t enjoy the book. He is such a caricature, straight out of a 40s dime detective novel. He gets all the women, even though he disrespects them left and right, and every other character in the book is a paper-thin, cookie-cutter person, merely there for Sloan to play off. Some plot twists fail because it gets hard to remember who is who among the lesser players.

 

                Ames obviously sat at his typewriter with a street map of New Orleans (his home at the time) and traced a line around the city and then just gave directions as our hero Reno stalked the city in his dilapidated car. He mentions most of the obvious spots. (I was waiting for Reno to grab a beignet at Café du Monde, but Ames skipped that landmark.) Ames has a few other horror novels to his credit, but he is mostly known for Western Fiction. I do have one of his other horrors in my huge TBR pile, but I’m not hurrying to read it. And I’m not keeping The Asylum.

The Master By Guy N. Smith

The Master
By Guy N. Smith
1993 Sheridan (1988 Arrow)
Paperback, 208 pages

 

                The real master serves up another dandy one with this book. Set in the Scottish Highlands, this entry is filled with cruelty, obsession and good old evil entities. And a very fast-moving story it is.

 

                Hurst College is a private school for the very rich, for underachieving kids who are dragging their parents down. Drop ‘em off with Headmaster Lazenby and hope for the best. The Master is rough on the teens, both boys and girls, to achieve perfection, both in body and mind. I mean like Nazi-tough. He wants to turn his charges into supermen. And he rides them rough to get them there.

 

                New art teacher Ann, who thought she’d have no chance of getting the job at such an exclusive school, is taken aback when she sees the discipline that is dished out. Punishing exercise schedules, blood sports (I winced at a foxhunt… Smith pulled no punches) and strict diets. It’s a place that would have killed me, personally. And it can do just that if you’re a fairly weak newbie. You see, Lazenby isn’t the only Master. There is also his Master and Lazenby has plans on bringing his crusty old evil ass back to life.

 

                So, there you go. A little Satanic ritual, some sacrifices, a couple of dead kids, doomed virgins, and the inevitable cover-up. Lazenby is a right bastard and as a character, he is so easy to hate. His comparison to Hitler is just and his brain-washed kids blindly follow along. Most of them, anyway. GNS, as usual, makes the setting an integral part of the story, making the cadets’ struggle to please their Master (and his) more difficult because of their isolation. The dank crypt where their ceremonies are held is a great, atmospheric dungeon; Smith lays it on thick and dark.

 

                A highly recommended work from the master himself, Guy N. Smith. The Arrow and Sheridan editions are adorned with a wonderful Terry Oakes cover painting, making this one a must for your shelf.

 

Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

Floater By Gary Brandner

Floater
By Gary Brandner
1988 Fawcett
Paperback, 295 pages

                The entire story is told on the back cover; straightforward and simple. But in Gary The Howling Brandner’s hands, it is a compelling and intricate narrative that satisfies right up until its somewhat abrupt but still rousing ending. No, it’s not about an unflushable turd. Grow up.

 

                Lindy is the prettiest girl in school, Roman is her jock-star boyfriend and Alec is their hanger-on friend. They are in the upper tier of popularity in high school. At the polar opposite end of the spectrum is Frazier. Smart as hell, but nerdy, pimply and chubby. He has a crush on Lindy (but who doesn’t?) but he knows he’ll never have a chance. But he does have one thing: the hard-earned ability to astrally project.

 

                One night while floating around outside Lindy’s window, he accidentally catches her in a moment of self-intimacy. She breaks a family heirloom in her excitement, and Frazier decides to replace it to get on her good side. Hey- how did he know about that? Peeper much? Lindy, Roman, and Alec plan a way to get even, but their practical joke goes too far, and Frazier dies. His body does anyway. His spirit lingers on and 20 years later, he forcibly invites the three back to Wolf River, Wisconsin to the scene of the crime to get even. It’s payback time.

 

                The story is told in flashbacks and throughout, Lindy is the only person who is the least bit likeable. Frazier, as a floater, is an evil-tempered spirit thinking only of revenge. His post-mortem floater- possession training are some of my favorite parts, starting on a baby, elevating to preschoolers and finally an old man. Straightening out the man’s arthritic fingers is a wonderfully wince-worthy scene. Sure, you need to suspend disbelief quite a bit with this book, but Brander’s characters are fully explored and that helps keep the story from becoming too far-fetched.

 

                With a subtle but very effective cover by Stanislaw Fernandes, Fawcett’s Floater paperback is a good way to experience this excellent addition to the Gary Brandner section on your shelf. It’s still pretty easy to find on the cheap, too.

The Island By Guy N. Smith

The Island
By Guy N. Smith
1988 Arrow Books

Paperback, 191 pages

                I really liked this one. As good a GNS read as any of the classic nature-runs-amok masterpieces. Completely different in every way from every other book of his that I have read, but still pure Guy N. Smith.

 

                The Laird of Ulver is a dick. He repeatedly assaults his wife to keep her pregnant in hopes of a son to call his heir. When the fifth birth is yet another daughter, though stillborn, Marie, the wife, has had enough. Her four daughters and she try to escape but his lordship instead catches them and abandons them on Ulver Island, along with his deformed boatman, Zoke. Nobody on the mainland ever saw them again.

 

                In modern times, widower Frank Ingram, trying to get over his wife’s tragic death, decides to buy a small island “for a snip” to get away from it all and do some farming alone and uninterrupted. It’s a fine plan and it more or less works until one stormy night when five women show up on his doorstep. Their story isn’t very cohesive, and Frank finally learns that they are a mother, Samantha, and her four daughters. We, the readers, have a good idea who they really are.

 

                The story is played out with Marie and her clan alternating every other chapter with Samantha’s brood and we follow Frank’s plight as they take over his house, his land and his life. His frustration becomes our frustration, and Smith ratchets up the tenseness of the situation (in both eras) brilliantly until we just want it all to end! I don’t mean that in a bad way. I was just looking for relief for Frank.

 

                The only problem I had with the book was remembering all of the daughters and mothers’ names while reading. Somebody on less medication than me would likely have no problem with that but I got confused a few times about which daughter was acting out during some moments. But the book is very satisfying, and I plowed through the last 100 pages just hoping to speed things up for poor Frank!

 

                Top shelf GNS right here. And check out that Les Edwards cover!! Wow!

 

Originally published in GNS2: A Guy N. Smith Fanzine by Chris Elphick

Wolf Tracks By David Case

Wolf Tracks
By David Case
1980 Belmont Tower
Paperback, 240 pages

                That sounds like some kick-ass ice cream! But no, it’s David Case’s second horror novel, written ten years after his first, Fengriffin: A Chilling Tale. That book was made into a great Amicus film, And Now the Screaming Starts (Roy Ward Baker, 1973) starring Peter Cushing. I haven’t yet read that book, but it has plenty of positive online reviews. I wonder what happened during those ten years to make the quality of Case’s writing dip so deep.

 

                There is a string of murders in Toronto. The victims are bitten and ripped up but not eaten. Wolf and human saliva are found in the wounds. Eyewitness accounts are uneven. A huge man, not a man at all, a hulking hairy humanoid. It sure sounds like a werewolf to me. Detectives Greene and the laughably virile and stuck-up La Roche are on the case. Greene sees Cronski, an expert on wolves, who tells him it is not a werewolf, but it might be a wolfman.

 

                Meanwhile, American Harland James is in Toronto to visit his draft-dodging son Paul, hoping to rekindle their relationship. Paul was having girl trouble with his live-in girlfriend Sheila. She is a free-thinking hippy. In 1980. There are a number of hippies in this book. In 1980. OK. Anyway, the father and son hang out and things turn worse when Sheila becomes a victim of the killer.

 

                The book has a handful of side characters who are far more interesting than the leads. Barfly Wash, the ex-boxer, who is called the N-word later in the book for absolutely no story-telling reason, Ike, the legless eyewitness, Gus the bartender and Cronski, the only female with a brain in the book. In fact, it became quite obvious that Case is not a fan of women. La Roche’s wife is a childish idiot and the victims are all boneheaded tarts or prostitutes. Even a female cop on duty (undercover as a hippy…) thinks she might have rather been a whore or go-go girl. That shit makes me bristle. Like a wolfman.

 

                More because of the fact that this was a Belmont Tower release than any ineptitude on the author’s part, there are dozens of misspellings and wrong words throughout the text. Proof-read much? Evidently, in the recent Valencourt reprint, the errors are still present. I find when editing is this poor, it is part of the fun of old, shitty books. So, yes… I did read this quickly despite its flaws, and there are many. As a horror book it fails and as a detective novel, it’s pretty darn easy to know whodunnit early on. But the book has a lovely R.S. Brown cover painting of Lon Chaney Jr., and you do get this bit of dialog…

 

                “She was lying in a pile of cheese sandwiches, Steve. Goddamn cheese sandwiches.”

Dog Kill By Al Dempsey

Dog Kill
By Al Dempsey
1976 Tor Books
Paperback, 203 pages

 

                What a cover! Hats off to Jon Ellis, the artist! And to Tor for commissioning such a dynamic cover!  But fuck you, Tor, for the bait and switch. There are barely any killings in this book; the dogs seem to merely irritate the local farmers and law enforcement. But Dog Annoy wouldn’t have been as good a title as the one we got.

                A group of students release a bunch of test dogs from the University lab. OK… we’re going to have a roving pack of genetically altered mutts tearing up children! No, all but one of the dogs die in short order. The leftover one eventually forms his own pack with the help of Mitzie, an abandoned beagle in heat, whose scent brings all the boys to the yard. They move into a cave in a park and eventually get up to no good.

                OK, this book starts off with a note from the director of the American Humane Society. I was ready for some heavy stuff. As Blackie, the lab dog builds his tribe, each dog is introduced with a Humane Association “Animal Control Study” card. Then, we meet the dog’s owners and the dog. After 100 pages and far too many characters for me to remember who the ones at the beginning of the book were, the pack is complete. And the book is half over.

                The dogs kill some farm animals and some bunnies and, in an unnecessarily graphic scene, a fawn. But I was like “yeah… when they get to humans, it’s going to be amazing!” I was wrong. While there is an attack on a playground ballgame, the body count isn’t what I was hoping for, and the gory details are few. Too much time is spent on a blooming romance between park ranger Mel and Mary Ellen, a poor little rich girl that he has nothing in common with, but she has blonde hair and a good body. Deep. The other characters of note are pretty cut and paste… the yokel sheriff (nick-named Greasy!), the park director acting like the mayor in Jaws and local farmers puttin’ their gun hats on.

                Dempsey obviously knows a lot about dogs; all of the breeds get a lot of historical description. I guess this makes the actions ring truer. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of any kind of story, action or suspense. We already know that humans do not deserve dogs and every one of the dogs in one way or another are not responsible for their predicament. Humans, as always, suck.

                So, yeah… shitty book. Also, the print isn’t justified and that drove me apeshit. Great cover, though.

Gila! by Les Simons

Gila!
By Les Simons
1981 Signet
Paperback, 166 pages

    

    By now, everybody knows that Les Simons is actually Kathryn Ptacek, author of many horror and romance novels. Simons is one of her many pen-names and Gila! was her first published horror novel. Having grown up in the Southwest, Ptacek sets a believable tone for this tale of giant, people-eating, mutated Gila Monsters. In real life, despite being called "monsters", Gilas are slow moving animals and really not much of a threat to humans.

    These radiation-born ones mess up the homo sapiens in a big way. The body count is very high and to a killer-animal reader, that is of the utmost importance. It's not just gore and rampaging reptiles, however; Ptacek manages to squeeze out some pathos, none more than in the visceral fairground scene. (This chapter is so great that it inspired Tom Hallman's paperback cover.) Check it out..

    A mother is relaxing while her five children are enjoying a safe, family friendly County Fair on their own in different spot on the fairground. When the Gilas come, she faces the dilemma: which child to save? Heart wrenching! She makes her decision (a bit of Sophie's Choice there) and... 

        "Hypnotized, frozen, Julia could not take her eyes away. She saw the mangled body of her son fall         from the lizard's mouth, saw that only half of it was there and that the upper part of the torso, the            shoulders and the head, remained in the lizard's mouth." 

 Hot diggity, that's some excitin' writin'!

    Unlike many animal-gone-amok novels, Ptacek's science isn't completely absurd. I mean, we're dealing with giant Gila Monsters that crave human flesh, created by bombs in the desert. You can't get more 50s Sci-Fi than that, but she obviously knows a good deal about the real-life animal and thus makes a potentially silly idea work. For me, Gila! is one of the finest rampaging reptile reads around. Gore, humor, emotion and action; what more could you ask for? Evidently, Ptacek herself is fond of her first horror novel: for a time, she published a writer's market newsletter called Gila Queen's Guide to Markets, a publication with an eye on the horror and fantasy genres.

    Obviously, I'm not the only fan of this essential tome. Centipede Press released a deluxe, signed hardcover of Gila! and Macabre Ink have issued it as part of their Resurrected Horrors series, both released in 2025. And, of course, you need Grady Hendrix's indispensable Paperbacks from Hell (Quirk, 2017) for many reasons but especially to get a peek at Tom Hallman's rough cover sketch.

                                               
                                                         Centipede Press, 2025

This review first appeared in a slightly different form in Midnight Magazine #1 (MCE 2018)