By William W. Johnstone
1982 Zebra
Paperback, 268 pages
Art by William Teason
William Johnstone? Werewolves!?!
Hell yes I want to read that! I mean, I have to space out my Johnstone
reading because all of his books are pretty similar but I had never seen him address
werewolves. Well, it turns out that even his werewolves are Satan-spawned
demons but that’s OK. To be honest, the first 80 pages or so didn’t grab my
attention and I was missing the usual Johnstone constructs like perverted sex,
over the top gore and humor. But when it came (!), it came in buckets (!!).
In Ducros Parish, Louisiana, 1934,
a man is put to death by the villagers for being a loup-garou. His widow,
Madame Victoria Bauterre, goes back to their home 40 years later with revenge
on her mind. Madame’s granddaughter, Janette Bauterre Simmons, also a widow
thanks to Viet Nam, is forbidden by Madame to leave her home in Paris and visit
the estate, even though they share ownership. She goes anyway, pissing off her
granny, but she has to find out what this family secret is. And just what are
those hideous hairy beasts roaming in the garden?
What? A Johnstone book with no
Viet Nam vet to save the day? Oh, he’s here, but he’s in South Carolina and
he’s a drunken, fat mess named Pat. Until one day he miraculously decides to
clean up. By the time Janette goes to find him (based on a photo of him with
her late husband), he is a fit and mean fighting machine. And, of course, they
fuck like mad upon their first meeting. But he is the chosen one and he returns
to Ducros Parish with Janette, armed to the teeth, to help her find out what’s
going on and kick some monster and zombie ass and protect his new lover.
Yeah, after a slow beginning,
the sex comes in hard and perverse. The Granny, a devil worshipper, seduces a
couple of guys in stomach-churning fashion. I pictured Mom from Futurama, all naked, wrinkled and
saggy, grinding on her poor victim. I am also a fan of Johnstone’s humor and
once that kicks in, you’ll either love it or hate it. I laughed out loud a
number of times. Satan using baseball cliches, a Shakespeare spouting
milquetoast saying motherfucker and Pat’s endless ribbing of Madame B. and
Satan (who is just a voice bubbling in the bayou). You’ll be happy to know that
the loup-garou are tough to kill but if you unload enough firepower into
them, you can do it.
As usual, Johnstone introduces
too many characters to keep track of. I didn’t bother going back to see who
they were, I just enjoyed the stream of conscious storytelling and the endless
gore. God is mentioned plenty but Pat manages the good versus evil angle with
no divine intervention. As for the titular plant, wolfsbane is mentioned once
or twice but has even less to do with the story than the nursery does in
Johnstone’s The Nursery (1983). This book’s first printing had a decent
werewolf cover but I prefer William Teason’s skeletal artwork for the 1987
reprint even if it makes little sense to the narrative. Hell, the narrative
doesn’t even make sense to the narrative! It’s a Johnstone book! Pure idiotic
bliss!
No comments:
Post a Comment