Elizabeth By Jessica Hamilton

Elizabeth
By Jessica Hamilton
1978 Sphere
Paperback, 157 pages

                This is one of the most brilliantly written books that I have ever read. Every word is perfection, every paragraph a work of art. Yes, I also enjoy reading Grade-Z tripe but when I come across something like this, it is a truly magical experience. This book also goes a long way towards proving to me that I’ll always have a lot more in common with an evil 14-year-old girl than with men who are supposedly my peers.

 

                Elizabeth is fourteen and on vacation with her parents when she first sees Frances in a mirror. Frances is a long dead witch who wants Elizabeth to know of her bloodline… and her powers. After her parents die that same day (hmmm, how’d that happen), she is taken to live with her grandmother, her uncle James, his wife and child, and a tutor. Frances is there too, in the mirrors. Elizabeth’s powers grow and people who get in her way have a habit of disappearing.

 

                Jessica Hamilton is a pseudonym for Ken Greenhall, and this was his first novel. The short novel is filled with despicable characters and uncomfortable situations for the reader. As Elizabeth wields her powers, her sexuality being one of them, she puts her uncle under her spell and keeps him under her thumb with favors. None of the incestual pedophilia is spelled right out, nor is much of the violence or other sexual situations in the book, but you know it’s there. The story is told by Elizabeth in first person and her mind is complex, calm and indifferent to everyone except Frances. Her asides to the reader can be humorous or chilling, often at the same time. I guess it says something about my own disturbed mind that I felt a solid kinship with the cold and empathy-free Elizabeth throughout the narrative.

 

                An absolutely stunning piece of literature. I went back to admire some lines again and again. I wish I had the power to write something so powerful. Forget the online reviews by myopic cretins who didn’t understand it. They don’t deserve Elizabeth or Greenhall. This book is brilliant. Thanks to the good folks at Valencourt Books, it is back in print.

Crooked Tree By Robert C. Wilson

Crooked Tree
By Robert C. Wilson
1981 Berkely Books
Paperback, 324 pages

 

                Robert C. Wilson can write. Every sentence is well-planned, his word choice impeccable. His knowledge of his subject is second to none. Unfortunately, he rams every bit of research into this overlong, tiny print novel and it took me over two weeks to slog through it. Too bad, because it’s a really interesting premise.

 

                In Northern Michigan, there has been a rash of Black Bear attacks, certainly not a common occurrence as they are normally docile animals. Lawyer Axel Michelson and his wife Janis live on the edge of Crooked Tree State Forest where the attacks occur. She is of Ottawa Indian heritage, as are many of their friends. In fact, those friends grow to suspect that an old Ottawa legend, the bear-walk, is what is happening. An evil sorcerer’s spirit is said to inhabit the bears, also taking over a human to be his pawn. Funny… Janice has been acting very weird lately.

 

                Axel is a lawyer (as is the author) and I hate the name (I also hate Guns n’ Roses) and he isn’t the most likeable would-be-hero in the world. That aside, Janice is a great character and the changes she goes through tug at the reader’s heartstrings. The secondary characters are all well-defined and not too off putting. The bear attacks are gory and fun. It’s just that as a whole, the damn book is so over-written.

 

                I know Wilson wanted to paint the whole cultural picture for the reader, and that’s fine, but when he goes so far as to explain the geological movement of glaciers that formed Northern Michigan, I feel that’s more than I could possibly ever give a shit about. Each descendant from the Ottawa tribe speaks like they’re reading encyclopedia entries about their history and beliefs and that gets wearing quickly. Worst off, with about 100 pages to go, and I did have interest to see how things would turn out, ol’ Axel drives around the state searching for information from multiple libraries. A man of action. I realize that finding said info easily wouldn’t have been believable, but it also would have made me less twitchy. GET TO IT, ALREADY!!!

 

                Your mileage may vary but I found this book to be padded to the gills and tedious, despite a very good start and storyline. I will not be revisiting it.

The Elementals By Michael McDowell

The Elementals
By Michael McDowell
1981 Avon
Paperback, 292 pages

                McDowell strikes again with another fascinating, impeccably written gem of a horror book. While perhaps not on the level of the previous year’s Cold Moon Over Babylon (but then, what is?) this is a brilliant slice of Southern Gothic with quirky characters, unnerving tension and a sandy, haunted house.

 

                The Savages and the McCrays are two rich white families, joined by marriage, in southern Alabama who share a vacation property called Beldame out on a sandspit on the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, the Gulf of MEXICO. Each family has their own Victorian summer house there and a third house stands unoccupied, being consumed by a sand dune. After the Savage matriarch dies, the families take a June holiday to the property. Luker McCray and his daughter India come down from New York, joining his mother Big Barbara and his sister Leigh, who is married to Dauphin, the deceased woman’s son. Everyone has been to Beldame many times over the years except India; this is her first time. Also on hand is Odessa, the longtime housekeeper for the families.

 

                India gets very interested in the third house and finds that members of both families have a fear of it. This makes her even more obsessed and when she starts seeing things like doors closing and apparitions crawling through the sand, she is determined to learn more despite her own fear. Her photos show things that weren’t there when she took them. She finds out more from Odessa and between the two of them, they try to stop the Elementals, the force that is trying to take them over from the third house.

 

                McDowell’s characterization and dialogue is pure perfection, with a cast of mostly selfish, yet somehow likeable people. Everyone calls their parents by their first names, Luker and 13 year old India skinny-dip together, and Big Barbara finds everything easier to deal with being inebriated. Not your typical family gathering, but they are all fairly tight and when the supernatural starts acting up, their plight is all the more terrifying because of that. Odessa is easily the most grounded character. Sadly, McDowell points out countless times that she is “black”, like we wouldn’t remember that from the other dozens of times it was mentioned. That does fit the rich white folk narrative, however.

 

                The book is a slow burn, meeting and getting to know the families and their history along with the history of Beldame and that third house. When the horrors start taking over, it is pure McDowell mastery, with flowing sand and banging doors and many things going bump in the night. Despite a few things that might not have aged well, it’s impossible not to recommend this book. Nobody wrote horror better than McDowell.

Cat’s Eyes By Lee Jordan

Cat’s Eyes
By Lee Jordan
1983 Signet
Paperback, 216 pages

                Lee Jordan is mystery writer Alan Scholefield and his wife, author Anthea Goddard. Together they wrote a handful of books under the Jordan pseudonym and this one is a taut thriller that keeps up a quick pace for the entire running time. Even necessary flashbacks to fill in plot points do not slow down the narrative and I blew through this short book in just a few sittings. Don’t forget, I’m an extremely slow reader. Not really a horror book, more of a thriller/ mystery, but the authors manage to convey the characters’ fear and discomfort in a way that should please horror buffs.

 

                American Rachel Chater returns to her and her husband’s new home in Sussex Downs, England after a hospital stay, recovering (mostly) from a car accident. She is plagued by dreams featuring a large black cat peering through the window, the cat she swerved to avoid, causing her accident. Her husband has to go to the US for work, leaving Rachel alone with their infant and a part-time caregiver in the secluded house. Strange things happen, like scary phone calls, broken ornaments and the ever-present black cat that keep Rachel in constant anxiety. With a damaged, painful leg and very few friends to help her, every acquaintance becomes a possible threat and Rachel feels that her and her daughter’s lives are in danger. Especially after a suspect near fatal accident with the baby.

 

                Rachel is an extremely paranoid person. She thinks the impossible of the cat and she suspects all of the humans in her life, including her husband, of being out to get her. Of course, she has every right to feel some of that. She harbors guilt for the death of the town fix-it man who she was driving home the night of the accident. As well written as Rachel is, I still got mad at her for being such a cat-hater. The poor cat, also injured in the crash, is just trying to survive and I felt so bad for it. Of course, I had a large black cat resting on either side of me as I read this one. But the authors really did crank up the suspense and Rachels terror felt very real in certain spots.

 

                Despite a slight lapse in credibility at the ending (do villains really ever reveal the entire scheme with convenient exposition as they go in for the kill?), I have no problem recommending this book. It’s a page turner with plenty of suspenseful passages and an easy to absorb writing style. A nice cover (by Shaw? Looks like it) completes the package and this book can still be found fairly cheap. It’s a good way to spend a few hours.

The Manitou By Graham Masterton

The Manitou
By Graham Masterton
1976 Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 216 pages

 

                I really wish I’d read this back when it came out as it would have turned me on to Masterton’s craziness years before I actually dove in to his work. I’m eternally grateful that I still haven’t seen the film adaptation directed by William Girdler in 1978 because there’s no way I would want to picture our narrator and main character Harry Erskine as Tony Curtis. I promise to watch the film some day but Curtis is not Erskine! Not in my mind’s eye, anyway.

 

                So, Karen Tandy has a lump on her neck and doctors, including a tumor specialist, want to remove it. Nervous, she visits phony psychic Harry Erskine the day before the operation to see if he can figure out her recurring dream. Even though he’s a fake, Erskine sees something in her dream and makes some scary discoveries. Her lump surgery doesn’t happen as it’s revealed that something is growing in her “tumor” and it’s attached to her nervous system. After a séance, things become clearer; Karen has an ancient Native American medicine man named Misquamacus growing on her neck. But of course!

 

                Yeah, this gets bonkers quickly and the reader reaps the rewards. Though X-rays have deformed our medicine man, he still grows to full size (albeit with stunted legs), stretching Karen’s skin and effectively killing her, but she still has a chance. Once he bursts out, he starts to summon demons to fuck up the hospital. With the help of modern medicine man Singing Rock, Dr. Hughes and other medical folks who buy the preposterous story (because nothing else makes sense), can Harry defeat not only Misquamacus but The Old One, an invincible demon?

 

                The Manitou is a ton of fun but don’t expect a fifty year old book to not have plenty of things to make the modern reader squirm. Native Americans are referred to as red Indians, red man, redskins and even savages, all in front of and by Native American characters. Poor Karen, just about the only female in the book, is just there to host the manitou (an Indian Spirit, by the way). If that bothers you, just don’t read it. You’ll miss great gobs of gore (people being turned inside out), cool demons, a bad-ass main monster, and some crazy imagination on the part of Masterton. This book is non-stop from page one and it’s very well written so it’s not like a William W. Johnstone kind of lunacy, but it’s just as nuts. An excellent sense of humor runs throughout too, which helps to accept the interesting but ridiculous storyline.

 

                I normally do not like stories told in the first person but Harry is an affable enough chap where I got over it. Be sure to grab the original Pinnacle edition (which can still be found at a reasonable price) so you can enjoy Ed Soyka’s excellent step-back cover art.

The Amulet By Michael McDowell

The Amulet
By Michael McDowell
1979 Avon
Paperback, 340 pages

                It was high time that I delved into the work of Michael McDowell (1950-1999). Of course, I know Tim Burton’s film Beetlejuice (1988) for which McDowell wrote the story and screenplay, and Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas for which he adapted the screenplay, but I hadn’t read his books. I’m glad that I finally got around to it because this one, his debut novel, is great.

 

                Pine Cone, Alabama in the mid-Sixties is a slow moving, quiet town with a rigid class system and segregation. It’s only source of work is a munitions factory. Sarah Howell works there. Her husband Dean is drafted but is sent back home after a tragic accident with a gun made at that very factory. He is a bandage-wrapped vegetable who is kept company by his mother Jo, a loathsome bitch if there ever was one. This makes Sarah’s dull life even more miserable as she has to keep house for the three of them after a full day at the factory. Then, Jo gives an amulet to one of Dean’s visiting friends to give to his wife. Thus starts the horror.

 

                The amulet passes through a lot of hands in Pine Cone, from poor to rich, from white to black, from guilty to innocent. Everyone who has it in their possession dies in a violent and hideous manner. (My guess is that the Final Destination creators might have read this book.) You get houses burnings, ceiling fan decaps, a woman eaten by pigs, scalpings, suicides, babies in washing machines and all sundry of beautiful gore and grue. Sarah tries to figure out if the amulet is the cause and drags her friend Becca on her investigation, but nobody believes her preposterous story.

 

                Man, this book really made me turn the pages. Short chapters, thorough (but never boring) descriptions and authentic characters really put me into southern Alabama in the Sixties. Of course, still being segregated, the black population is “colored” but the characters are treated no different than the whites. There is some fat-shaming (Jo’s wickedness has a lot more with her nasty disposition than her weight) but overall, this is Sarah’s story and she is someone with whom I really felt in touch. Of course, most characters are there for the kill and you should know by now how much I love they get the old “set ‘em up, knock ‘em down” treatment. We get a huge body count in this one! And that cover by Don Ivan Punchatz is amazing!

 

                McDowell was a gifted writer and  this is the first time for me that a book has dialog with a Southern dialect that isn’t impossible to understand. No easy feat. Having just ended a job working for a jeweler for over 35 years, this might have been a “right place at the right time” read but I thought it was excellent and am already filling my TBR pile with more of McDowall’s books.

The Night Boat By Robert R. McCammon

The Night Boat
By Robert R. McCammon
1988 Pocket Books
Paperback, 346 pages

                Robert McCammon was one of the titans in the Golden Age of Paperback Horror. His books were everywhere and unanimously praised. I even bought Mystery Walk back in my youth but I never got around to reading it. His books are long, between 350 and 500 (or more) pages and that usually puts me off. I do have a bunch of his books in my “To Be Read” pile so I picked the slimmest one with which to break my cherry. First published in 1980, I had the 1988 Pocket Books first print paperback of The Night Boat sitting there and went for it. Pretty damn good book. I love when that happens.

 

                David Moore is diving in the water outside of Coquina, a Caribbean island that he’s adopted as home, exploring the deep, when he sets off an old depth charge. This uncovers and releases an old World War II Nazi U-Boat which rises to the surface and sticks on the rocks there. Coquina is a small island that was almost burned to the ground during the war and the villagers are not happy to see the boat. They know… it is evil.

 

                They’re right. Moore and the local constable Kip go into the boat and discover the mummified crew. Did they actually see one move? Damn skippy, they did. The skeletal crew go on nightly raids in Coquina, seeking human blood and flesh. This is where the book really worked for me. McCammon’s gory descriptions are fabulous and I was wiggling my feet as I read about the carnage. Drinking blood from bite wounds… “They broke open new rivulets of fluids, like dark wine from fleshy casks.” Oh yeah, that is my kind of poetry! The attacks are pretty chilling and a few times I wondered if skeletons with dried, brown flesh and tattered clothes were standing in the dark outside my bedroom door as I read.

 

                The book is not without its problems, though. Until the halfway mark, every woman is a prostitute, then we get a woman who researches wrecks and seems pretty courageous and capable but she never really gets to shine and she becomes little more than a love interest for Moore. Many of the islanders are referred to only as “the black” by the narrator which just feels wrong in today’s world. (I know, this was written 40+ years ago.) With 100 pages to go to an exciting and fiery climax, a new character is introduced for nothing more than exposition and a barely mentioned character becomes the top dog in the fight against the zombies. It seemed to me that the book could have used some editing or rearranging, but overall I enjoyed it a lot and I look forward to my next McCammon book. Luckily, all of the ones I have on deck have beautiful covers by Rowena Morill, like this one does.

The Curse of Loch Ness By Peter Tremayne

The Curse of Loch Ness
By Peter Tremayne
1979 Sphere
Paperback, 230 pages

                The horror novels of Peter Tremayne (nee Peter Berresford Ellis) are really hit or miss with me. Some have been a real chore to get through (Kiss of the Cobra, Zombie) while some have been excellent and fun reads (Swamp, Snowbeast). With The Curse of Loch Ness, I have finally found my (new) favorite, an exciting tale of family curses, back-stabbing locals and a big lake monster that is more than meets the eye.

 

                Being the last remaining member of her family, Jeannie Millbuie inherits the old family castle situated overlooking Loch Ness. It’s not an entirely welcoming old pile of stones; there are weird sounds, endless shadowy corridors and the weird caretaker Mrs. Murdo obviously hates her. Most of the old-timey locals seem to have ulterior motives when it comes to Jeannie’s presence, while others just tell her to leave. Just what is going on in Balmacaan Castle?

 

                The tale is told in two parts. The first is Jeannie’s arrival, her exploration of the castle and the area and then, her abduction. The second part involves her boyfriend Tim, who was summoned to meet her in Inverness but now she has disappeared. Granted, things slowed down a tad with the start of the second part. The first section has you guessing and wondering what the curse is, the secret is, then it backtracks while Tim catches up. But he does so quickly enough and the story charges forward.

 

                The monster? Yeah, he’s in there but he’s unlike any theory of the Loch Ness Monster that you’ve ever heard of. First off, in the chapters from the monster’s own point of view, he is referred to as the intelligence. No dumb dinosaur here, though he is a leftover from prehistoric bloodlines. He is the single most sympathetic character in the book, though Jeannie, Tim, and a handful of other interesting humans are also engaging.

 

                Tremayne’s usual flaw of over-explaining and too much exposition are kept in check this time by having the history of the area and the curse told by a few different people at different times. While one of the baddies is explaining it to Jeannie, the narrative is broken up with her being bored and disinterested in the history lesson. Kind of how I felt reading some of the above-mentioned novels. But this one moves quickly and for the most part kept my interest throughout, making for a very satisfying read. The cover art (some say by Terry Oakes, and I can’t see anything to make me disagree) alone is worth the price of admission.

The Tribe By Glenn Chandler

The Tribe
By Glenn Chandler
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 187 pages

                This is Chandler’s second and final novel in the horror genre and, hot on the heels of his book The Sanctuary, and the second one of his to earn Hamlyn’s “nasty” designation. I can’t tell you how much I love the fact that Hamlyn has “nasty” as a category! Does this one earn the right to be called a nasty? Yes. Yes it does. Much more so than his previous book.

 

                A bizarre string of cannibal murders have been popping up across England and Detective Chubby Holroyd is put in charge of the perplexing investigation. Trying to find a connection between these homicides is no easy task. A woman eats her fiancé, a man eats his brother, a man kills and cooks his daughter and force-feeds her to his wife… these are the cases that Chubby has to figure out. Looks like a good time to go on that diet; at least give up meat.

 

                Meanwhile, Herbert and Maggie Gunter are at the end of their vacation and back in England. They find themselves in a small village in Kent whose name is familiar to Maggie; a lovely man they had met while on expedition in New Guinea lives there. She calls their daughter and grandson to say they might drop in on him, but they’ll be back home in time for the grandson’s birthday. They don’t make it. Neither of them ever leave anthropologist Allen Briathwaite’s mansion ever again.

 

                With no main characters except for Chubby and his fellow investigators, the first half of the book tends to be a little confusing. You meet a number of characters, but they’re all just set-up for their descent into cannibalism. And what’s with the leering, seemingly alive shrunken heads? After the Gunters get involved, it starts tying together, for both the reader and dear Chubby. It’s a good thing Maggie called her daughter because when they start to investigate as well, you know you’re going to get an explosive ending. And you do.

 

                This is top-shelf gory pulp horror, and it is the very thing we all love about 80s gross-out books. This one is certainly next level (though I would say it is less vile that L.A. Morse’s The Flesh Eaters, 1979 Warner Books) and Chandler’s descriptions hold nothing back. The man roasting his brother’s head and peering “down at the golden brown face” is a scene that stays with you. Nasty for sure. This book gets quite expensive these days, but it is worth the extra dough. You just don’t get books that are this brutal very often.

Return of the Living Dead By John Russo

Return of the Living Dead
By John Russo
1979 Hamlyn
Paperback, 176 pages

                           

                This is the true sequel to George Romero’s classic film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Russo had written the novelization for that film in 1974 from his and Romero’s screenplay and this book is adapted from a proposed screenplay by Russo, Russell Streiner, and Rudi Ricci (credited as Ricci Valentine in the book) that never got made. This is not a novelization of Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 zombie comedy Return of the Living Dead, although Russo did eventually write that in 1985. Confused? Don’t be. The film was a comedy and this story is bleak and deadly serious. It carries Night’s grim tone throughout its pages.

 

                Ten years after the original zombie epidemic (which has ended), Bert Miller and his three daughters (one of whom, Karen, is expecting) are heading to a funeral. In this area, it is common to drive a spike into the skull of the deceased, because nobody wants a repeat of the previous decade’s trouble. While there, the mourners learn of a bus crash nearby and Bert takes his daughters with him to retrieve the bodies and spike them in the noggin. When the cops show up, the Millers screw out of there only half done. Guess what happens! Bert barricades the farmhouse but one daughter runs away, leaving the door unlocked and Bert becomes Zombie Chow.

 

                A group of looters (and rapists, we’re reminded of numerous times) show up at the farmhouse and settle in with two tied up prisoners. Dressed as cops, two of them give orders to the daughters but the two bound prisoners are the real cops. The daughters are taken with the gang (except Karen who is in labor) and the cops are left to feed or be fed upon. Who will survive this pickle? Will the kid be born healthy, or at all? Will the looters (and rapists) get their come-uppance? You will read this one with dizzying speed to find out. I am a slow reader and read it in two sittings.

 

                Don’t worry; in that short time, you’ll get everything you want. Flesh eating, corpse bonfires, good ol’ boys having too much fun, and bad guys using the outbreak to their advantage. “Warm human flesh was the only kind that could nourish the living dead.” The story stays in a rural farmland area and, even though it is more spread out than Night, Russo achieves the same claustrophobia. Of course the real danger here is humanity, or lack thereof. The looter (and rapist) gang are more bloodthirsty than the ghouls, proving again that man is the scariest monster.

 

                First released in the US by Dale Books in 1978, I, as always, prefer the first UK edition from Hamlyn because their covers always rule. Two different covers were available, one for Australia, and they’re both great. The green ghoul cover even has a rare photography credit for one Ken Adams, which makes me wonder if he was responsible for all of Hamlyn’s great photo covers. The book has also been reprinted many times, most recently by the reliable Fathom Press. If you’re a fan of Romero’s first foray into zombies, this book will check all of the right boxes for your zombie loving soul.

The Death of the Führer By Roland Puccetti

The Death of the Führer
By Roland Puccetti
1973 Arrow Books
Paperback, 224 pages

                First published in 1972 by St. Martin’s Press (in hardcover!), this book wasn’t on my radar until I saw the magnificent (and spoilery) Arrow paperback cover. Reading a few reviews forced me to find the book (the Arrow edition, of course) and it has changed my life for the better. Another death-bed-bookshelf tome. They saved Hitler’s brain, all right, and had a lot of fun with it!

 

                The story is told by an elderly Karl Gisevius, who had been given private information that Hitler did not commit suicide in his bunker, that the Russians had found his body, but without a brain. So, twenty years after the war ended, in the interest of a spectacular news story, Karl heads to Berlin to get into the bunker and have a look around. Seems reasonable. Miraculously, he does get in and gets a clue as to who might have taken the brain… his old pal/ rival Willi Tränger. Now, to find him.

 

                Cut to the chase. He did. To get into Tränger’s well-guarded castle, Karl has a motorcycle accident, and his old pal recognizes him (this would be many years since they’d last seen each other) and lets him convalesce in the castle. That’s certainly more good luck! There, he meets a crazy cast of characters who refuse to let the Third Reich die, including the hot Baroness. She is so attracted to Karl that they have a romantic rendezvous in her room. While screwing, at the point of their simultaneous orgasm, she screams “Ich ben der Führer!”. And then it starts to get really crazy.

 

                This sci-fi/ horror/ hysterical history novel just keeps chugging along, with Karl performing the most amazing stunts, including self-brain surgery, and he never gets flustered in the least. Puccetti actually made me squirm claustrophobically a few times, like going down the Bunker’s airshaft and climbing the castles’ chimney for espionage reasons but I knew Karl was going to survive. He was telling the story. And telling it in such a matter-of-fact way that it seemed that having his life in danger was a mere inconvenience.

 

                Stupid, hilarious, visionary and actually pretty well-written (except for confusing time-lines), this book is a gem of balls to the wall insanity. This is the kind of pulp novel that only comes along once in a blue moon and you have to grab it, read it and treasure it always. Now go listen to legendary Boston punk band Unnatural Act’s song “They Saved Hitler’s Brain” and thank me later.

    A much needed reprint is forthcoming from the great Fathom Press in 2026.

The Possession of Jessica Young By Russ Martin

The Possession of Jessica Young
By Russ Martin
1982 Tor Books
Paperback, 316 pages

                Russ Martin is back with another Satanic mind-control saga, the first one for Tor Books. Tor picked up the slack from Playboy Press who had just been sold. This one is another male wish-fulfillment fantasy if the male happens to be a total misogynistic asshole weakling.

 

                The book opens with Jessica Young, a whip-smart and beautiful woman, who has broken free from her captors. Among her credentials, she has psychic abilities. The story is told in chapters from “Then” and “Now”, unraveling a sordid tale of sexual abuse, degradation, betrayal, slavery and greed. Jessica’s captor is one Stephen Abbott, a rich, good-looking man who holds a prominent position in The Organization. His boss? It seems to be Old Scratch himself.

 

                Jessica’s escape from Abbott’s clutches are but a bump in the road for The Organization who are looking to steal her powers for the great good of mankind and Satan. Read that as MAN-kind. Abbott and his male cronies own their women. Maids, slaves and sex toys. In order to find the missing Jessica, Abbott seduces her 17-year-old sister Heather to help find her in Los Angeles. Jessica has a cop friend that she has been seeing so she seems safe. But is she?

 

                Jessica is a good character; a smart woman who can easily take care of herself. It is therefore very uncomfortable to watch her be reduced to a family-murdering trophy by Abbott in the “Then” chapters. Admittedly, I cringed quite a lot watching her, and later her sister with her teenage “boyfriend”, getting used and abused. I’m not comfortable with rapey scenes and this book has many.

 

                That said, Martin (whoever he really is) weaves a compelling story throughout, with the flashbacks and current scenes keeping the pages turning, hoping to see Jessica decimate her adversaries. This is a much more uncomfortable narrative than some of his other books with a similar subject matter. The cringe-factor is high, unless you really are a weakling man who needs to see women “put in their place”. It makes you wonder what kind of person Martin was (is?). This appears to be the first in a kind of trilogy that use some of these same characters. On deck is The Obsession of Sally Wing.

Mystery Walk By Robert McCammon

Mystery Walk
By Robert McCammon
1984 Ballantine
Paperback, 419 pages

                            
                                                                                                  Art by Jim Thiesen

                This is another one that I bought way back when it first came out and never got around to reading. That’s fine because if this had been my first McCammon, I might not have gone on and read any other books by him. Not that this one is bad, it’s just not very satisfying to me for a lot of reasons. One reason is not the writing. McCammon is an excellent writer, even when the story isn’t super engaging. That’s how I was able to finish this behemoth of a paperback.

 

                Hawthorn, Alabama is where John and Ramona Creekmore and their 10-year old son Billy live. Ramona is one quarter Choctaw and has the ability to not only sense someone’s impending death (a black aura surrounds them) but she can take on the pain of wandering spirits and put them to rest. Of course, in racist Alabama in 1962, this makes her the Hawthorn Witch and she is ostracized by the community. Now, Billy is showing signs of having similar extraordinary abilities and churchgoing John and the local shitheads are mad that there are two of them. At a tent revival in town, with charlatan J. J. Falconer and his son Wayne (who is a faith healer), the Mother and Son cause a real scene and are forced to leave.

 

                The story follows Billy as well as Wayne, two kids of the same age, both seeming to have special abilities. It follows them to their teens and high school, up through their late teens and into their early twenties. It is a good versus evil thing going on but Billy, despite being unchristian, is not the evil one. The Falconers have been all about the money all along, being the crooked Evangelicals that they are. Once both boys are fatherless, their true emotional boundaries are revealed and they hitch up with very different groups of people who “help” them on their way through their personal Mystery Walks.

 

                It is an epic tale, for sure. Unfortunately, it reads as though McCammon thought up the next part each time he got to it, stringing together a bunch of different ideas and scenarios with the characters playing along. I guess it all fits by the end but there’s so much extraneous exposition that I was getting fidgety. The typeface is small and dense (41 lines per page) and the book just went on and on. I stayed with it thanks to McCammon’s excellent writing style but the story meandered and the characters, even though the story is about the boys’ personal growth, never really develop. Incredible things get accepted too rapidly and, well… it made me sigh a lot, wishing I was finished.

 

                This was McCammon’s first book to be published in paperback, the Ballantine book coming out a year after its hardcover from Holt. The first edition Ballantine cover pretty much sucks but later printings had a nice crawling corpse cover by Jim Thiesen.

Legend of the Werewolf By Robert Black

Legend of the Werewolf
By Robert Black
Based on a screenplay by John Elder
1976 Sphere Books
Paperback, 158 pages

                                                 

                As a Peter Cushing fanatic, I have long been a fan of Tyburn Studio’s Legend of the Werewolf (1975). I am the proud owner of the kick-ass one sheet poster and as I wait for Tyburn’s Kevin Francis to become less insane about licensing the title for Blu Ray release, I wanted to revisit the story via the novelization. While Les Edwards’ amazing cover is enough to make me open my wallet, I wondered if Robert Black’s (Robert Holdstock, 1948-2009) adaptation of John Elder’s (Anthony Hinds, 1922-2013) screenplay would do the film justice. I need not have worried. Even though “Elder’s” name isn’t on the cover or title page, “Black” follows the script to a T and does so with excellent, descriptive and often eloquent prose.

 

                If you’ve seen the film (and you should seek it out if you haven’t), you know the plot. Etoile is a young man who was raised by wolves who joins a traveling circus and then winds up in Paris. He finds work with crusty old Duvic, a sleazy zookeeper who gives Etoile a place to live and a tiny bit of money for his services. While there, Etoile meets Christine and becomes smitten, not knowing she’s a prostitute. When he does discover her line of work, the men who see her wind up shredded. Morgue doctor Cataflanque (the Cushing character) starts looking into what is making Christine’s clients become his clients despite the police’s warnings to back off the case. Meanwhile, Etoile is obviously conflicted for many reasons, as is Christine.

 

                As noted, the novel follows the script quite closely, but Black fills in a lot of background detail and employs many colorful descriptions to make this much more than a carbon copy. Cataflanque’s detective work is very exciting despite the reader knowing a werewolf is at large. The scenes in the bordello are perfectly elegant and sleazy and provide a welcome sense of humor while Cataflanque investigates. It was easy to read that character as played by Cushing and that made my experience with the book that much better. The written gore is plentiful and the suspenseful ending is a rip-roaring good time. This is one novelization that gets it just right and I recommend it howlingly!

 

                Now, Mr. Francis… don’t be a putz. Get this film out on home media soon. My creaky old VHS tape wants to retire.

                                   

                                                            My one-sheet from the film.

Moonbog By Rick Hautala

Moonbog
By Rick Hautala
1982 Zebra
Paperback, 410 pages

 

                Rick Hautala (1949-2013) was one of the more ubiquitous names on the Zebra roster in the 1980s, but this is the first time I settled down to read his work. No question about it; he is a very good writer, and he tells a compelling story. He manages to go from a setting like a Pepperidge Farm commercial to a violent rape/ murder without really changing tone. Not easy to do, but does that make this a great novel?

 

                New York yuppie David Logan goes back to his hometown of Holland, Maine to settle his family’s estate. He brings along his ever-complaining girlfriend Allison and leaves her in the motel room while he revisits his past. Chief among his memories is the Bog, a huge, dangerous swamp that always had scary stories and tall tales told about it in his youth. It looks no more friendly to him as an adult. Especially when he finds a mutilated dead kid in there with his pecker cut off.

 

                The bog had been blamed for a few missing kids the year before, as well. Then more kids go missing and search parties scour the bog. It seems that Holland has a child killer who is sexually assaulting his victims as well. Can the old sheriff find the perpetrator? Can David be of any help or is he a suspect? David’s Uncle Marshall sure is an odd duck. We, the reader, learn halfway through who is responsible and only then does the real cat and mouse game begin.

 

                The book does feel a bit padded to me, with characters and situations that really add nothing when all is said and done, but I guess that’s fine while trying to keep the secret of the killer’s identity. And I’m sure that having all of the town’s kids have cutesy “ee” names (Bobby, Sammy, Jeffy, Robbie, etc.) is to add to the horror of the brutality when it appears. From loving family values and treacly small-town values to disharmony to violent assault, torture and murder, Hautala manages to keep you from getting whiplash with his deft writing skills.

 

                True to form, Zebra’s cover art and back cover blurb have nothing to do with the actual story inside. If you think you’re getting a supernatural Bog Beast, you are wrong, but that shouldn’t reflect on your opinion of the book. Moonbog goes by quickly and is a satisfying read even if you can’t stand any of the characters and the children’s dialog makes you ill. My first impression of Hautala is not entirely horrible.

The Nameless By Ramsey Campbell

The Nameless
By Ramsey Campbell
1985 Tor Books (Macmillan, 1981)
Paperback, 312 pages

                Man, Ramsey Campbell can sure write a pretty book. His descriptions and similes are second to none. “Cigarette butts snaggletoothed the ashtray.” “The sky was the color of steam.” Everything is so easy to picture and the words flow beautifully. That, of course, makes it a slow read for me as I go back and admire the wordsmithing. Campbell is a master. This is the first full length novel of his that I have read. Would his florid style be too much over 300 pages? Hell no.

 

                Barbara Waugh is a literary agent whose husband died before their daughter Angela was born. Angela was kidnapped and murdered when she was four years old. Now, nine years later, Barbara gets a phone call from a young girl, calling her Mummy and asking her to come and get her. This, of course, sounds impossible but the calls persist and Barbara is convinced that her daughter is not dead. This opens up a lot of searching for answers that might be very hard to find.

 

                Her searches lead her into many seedy, dusty, abandoned buildings and meeting many different strangers who may or may not be able to help. It seems a nameless cult (that even the Manson Family thought were too crazy) might have taken Angela to tap into her possible psychic power. (Angela could be heard talking to her late father on the baby monitor in the past.) People who try to help Barbara out always seem to wind up dead. She scours the United Kingdom, searching with the slimmest of clues, but her lover seems to have found an address where the cult, and Angela, might be.

 

                There are a few harrowing scenes where Barbara’s helpers are caught in a hell-like situation. Margery, another mother who lost her kid to the cult, explores a dark, dusty, abandoned house in a chapter that had me squirming, just knowing something could grab her at any moment. Gerry is an investigative reporter who infiltrates the cult and has a nail-biting walk through the darkened building where sleeping cult members could bust her at any moment. Campbell really knows how to ratchet up the suspense, raise your blood pressure and make you uncomfortable, albeit with gorgeous prose.

 

                The chill factor stays high right up to the end, though I must admit that the ending was a bit of a letdown. Even Campbell has admitted that it feels forced, but that in no way will take away from my high recommendation of this book. I felt a lot of compassion for Barbara and was in her corner the whole way. The Nameless was first published by Macmillan in 1981. It was made into a movie in 1999 by Spaniard Jaume Balagueró, entitled Los Sin Nombre and remade as a six-part miniseries in Spain in 2025. The handsome Tor cover features a flaming Angela painted by an uncredited artist.

Shadow Child By Joseph A. Citro

Shadow Child
By Joseph A. Citro
1987 Zebra
Paperback, 366 pages

                You really never know what you’ll get with an old Zebra paperback. The title and the blurb on the back make it sound like a typical creepy-kid Zebra novel and the cover (by David Mann) makes it look like a creepy clown story. It isn’t either. There is a kid in it (who has a clown-with-balloons nightlight… that’s it) but the kid is really just a catalyst, a plot point to make the evil more evil. As I dug in, it appeared that there would be whimsical “little people” in it and I became wary again. I decided to just shut up and read and I was rewarded with a well-written book that actually gave me a few tingles along my spine.

 

                Suffering from the death of his wife, Eric Nolan accepts an invitation from his cousin Pamela Whitcome to join her and her family at their grandfather’s former house, now owned by Pamela and her husband Clint. The cousins, Clint, and Luke, the kid, all get on very well, even though this is the place where Eric’s brother disappeared all those years ago. Well, a few more disappearances occur, a few deaths and they have all happened since Eric showed up. A historian becomes interested in a stone “root cellar” on the Whitcome property, which also sparks Eric’s interest in the local folklore. Too bad the historian becomes one of the missing. Then Clint thinks he shoots a kid up on the hill and soon he is among the missing. Just what the hell is going on?

 

                This is an excellent folk-horror novel that manages to keep the pages turning, even during slower passages, with a town populated with excellent, full-blooded characters and a sense of impending dread that never lets up until it fully explodes. These stone cairns are littered throughout the Vermont mountains in real life, so that lends an extra layer of creepiness to the tale. While one’s suspension of disbelief has to be turned up to eleven in the third act, Citro’s prose is good enough to make that not so difficult. His “monsters” are pure badassed evil and will do everything to keep their secret. You get some suspense, some gore and plenty of secluded hopelessness.

 

                One gripe, for me, was the character of Pamela. While all of the men in town had full-blown storylines and dimension, Pamela was merely there to be a wife and mother, plan meals and read Redbook. When Clint is missing, she becomes a possible “will they or wont they” incestuous partner with Eric, or am I the only one that thought that? At least local historian Elizabeth McKensie, a wheelchair bound elderly woman, gets to use her brain to help out the troubled family.

 

                Better than a lot of Zebra releases, I have no problem recommending this one, warts and all. Citro is a good writer and I will look for more of his stuff. (I have no idea how I came into possession of this one!) A sequel, Guardian Angels, came out a year later, also from Zebra. I have that one, too but again, I know not from where it came. Maybe the little people dropped them off.