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.

Michelle Remembers By Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.

Michelle Remembers
By Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.
1981 Pocket Books
Paperback, 334 pages

    This is a tough book to review now, over 40 years after it was first published as a true memoir. The book inevitably caused a lot of problems for a lot of people as it was the launching pad for the widespread “Satanic Panic.” Back in the early Eighties, my wife at the time read it and bought it hook line and sinker and urged me to read it. I did and even the wide-eyed and stupid, more gullible me only believed it to a point. Now that the whole thing has been thoroughly debunked, I can only go into it reading it as a horror fiction novel. Which is essentially what it is.

    Michelle Smith has been having bad dreams following a miscarriage and seeks help from her psychiatrist whom she had been seeing for four years. Her doctor, Lawrence Pazder, M.D., helps her go back 22 years to when she was 5 years old to uncover her terrifying past that she had hidden away from her consciousness. Her mother had offered her up to a group of satanists as a catalyst to raise Satan himself for the Feast of the Beast. She was beaten, caged, defiled, burned, poked and prodded for 81 days straight, all in the name of Satan. The horrors she witnessed would drive anyone insane, but being just a child, she could rely on her goodness and innocence to help her survive.
    
    There is some pretty heavy stuff going on for sure. Kitten slaughter, fetuses cut up and rubbed on Michelle, possessed people, horrid rites, shit, piss and blood. It really is some horrifying stuff. I could tell exactly where it was back in the early Eighties where I stopped buying it… when they actually summon Satan. Yeah, right. But up until then, sure, why not? Child abuse is a very real a terrifying thing and I can certainly see a bunch of losers torturing a kid in the name of a fantasy that they believe in. I might not have even finished the book back in the day; the last hundred pages are a chore, with Satan and his annoying rhyme-talk and other fictional religious characters making appearances.

    Whether or not I believed it, a lot of people did, and the age of Satanic Panic was ushered in. Most of you will remember it from heavy metal records being thrown under the bus. Thank Smith and Pazder. Much like the Salem Witch Trials, people were being arrested with no evidence and being turned in to the police on the accusation of kids being coached by money hungry psychiatrists. Eventually, it all died out and Michelle Remembers was discounted as fiction, though Pazder (who died in 2004) and Smith (who divorced their spouses and married each other shortly after the book’s publication) have never admitted that it was a hoax. But it made a lot of money for them, and they gave a lot of money to the Church to play along.

    I recommend Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor’s 2023 film Satan Wants You for an in-depth look at the book and its repercussions.

Inhuman By John Russo

Inhuman
By John Russo
1986 Pocket Books
Paperback, 221 pages

                                                 

    John Russo is no stranger to horror fans. The co-author of Night of the Living Dead should need no introduction. His novels have been inconsistent, in my opinion, but Inhuman is very good, despite horrid online reviews. In fact, it is one of my favorite non-Dead ones so far.

    There's a lot going on in the first hundred pages. An old, dying woman predicts "Great big snakes are a-comin'. To Kill us!" Her religious family don't know what to make of that. Meanwhile, a pair of married psychiatrists are preparing their remote and beautifully maintained Manor House for a marriage encounter for five troubled couples. Meanwhile, again, a bank in New York has a hostage situation, with an SLA offshoot group of fanatics, the Green Brigade, killing off the innocents until their leader and his comrades are freed from prison. They demand a plane to Cuba and get it.

    OK, set-up complete, the fun begins. Of course, an over-zealous FBI agent does not want the plane, full of terrorists and hostages, to make it to Cuba. His plan is to get to such a high altitude as to knock out the passengers, with only the pilots having access to oxygen. They try to implement that plan, but a grenade makes it irrelevant. The pilots do their best to land safely and preserve the lives of the hostages. The landing is more or less successful and most of the passengers survive. But… the lack of oxygen when they were up there has had some nasty side-effects.

    Sure, the resultant story is heavily influenced by Night of the Living Dead, with the remote plantation house being under siege by the brain-damaged and heavily armed terrorists. Russo even says, with a wink, that the basement is the safest place and should be a last resort. While none of the characters are particularly likeable, the suspense is still thick, and the “automatons” are relentless.

    No, Lisa Falkenstern’s brilliant cover has nothing to do with the novel. The brain-damaged folks have a “reptile instinct” in that they want to hunt and kill and won’t stop until they do. Not sure I’ve met many reptiles who act like that, but then I’m higher on the food chain, I guess.

    Good book, great cover. Add it to your collection.

Creatures By Richard Masson

 

Creatures
By Richard Masson
1979 Pocket Books
Paperback, 299 pages

 

                This is another one I remembered fondly from my teens and wanted to revisit, but I couldn’t find it among my books. Very few survived the decades. Much to my chagrin, prices are pretty high for this one now. I found an almost affordable one and grabbed it, so intent was I on rereading it. I remember it as being very good, if a bit disturbing with animal cruelty and racism.

 

                Four horrible men, crocodile hunters, are deep in the pit of the Fly River swamps in New Guinea. Karns is a killer, a racist and a short-tempered asshole… and he’s the good guy in the group. The others are even worse; Quilter, an Aussie croc-hater that would just as soon kill everything in sight, Van Ocken, a deranged, murderous rapist with a burned off face, and “Phobosuchus” Smith, an ousted professor whose insanity has him believing there is a species of prehistoric crocodile out in those swamps.

 

                Meanwhile, a flight from Australia to Tokyo, carrying about 130 passengers and crew, has a bit of difficulty. In addition to faulty mechanics taking them off course, some of those passengers are a real piece of work. One of them blows a hole in the back end of the plane when he is spurned by a stewardess. The plane lands about 15 miles from the four murderous crazies. Among the few survivors are a pair of mercenaries, a man who lost his family in the crash, a prostitute (yay!), some stewardesses and the co-pilot. Will the crocodiles get them? Will the swamp men? Both?

 

                Masson weaves this tale perfectly, going from the flight to the psycho-quartet, showing exactly how each “side” deals with the disaster. The plane doesn’t crash land until 100 pages in, and the suspense is thick as swamp muck. Once it does and the swamp men decide to go pillage the wreck (about 15 miles away through uncharted swampland), Masson lays on another new round of tension. Then once they all meet up… forget about it! Madness ensues.

 

                I really can’t stress enough how intense this book gets. Who will live? Who will die? Who will wish they had died in the crash? Who is worse, the swampies or the survivors? Yes, those guys do some horrible things to crocs but there is some comeuppance and the abundance of hungry crocodiles is a wonderful thing to think about.

 

                All this and more, behind a killer cover painting by Roger Kastel (a painting I’m lucky enough to have seen in person!) done in the style of his Jaws masterpiece. This book is highly recommended.

A masterpiece... in the flesh! 

Satan’s Snowdrop By Guy N. Smith

Satan’s Snowdrop

By Guy N. Smith

1980 Pocket Books

Paperback, 256 pages   

                              

                    

                                                                                    Polish edition, Phantom Press 1991

                My love of Guy N. Smith is well known. As an addict of nature-strikes-back novels, many of his books are near and dear to my heart. Some of his non-animal books can be hit or miss with me but he always weaves an interesting story. Satan’s Snowdrop is an excellent book by anyone’s standard and there aren’t even any killer crabs in it. It is a hard-core haunted house tale.

 

                A rich American dude buys a picturesque Swiss mansion that had been the stomping ground of a Nazi torturer. Within the walls walk not only the tortured souls of the victims but the very evil that made all of the shit go down. Even moving the house, brick by brick, to America doesn’t quell the spirits. His family falls victim to the house and he finally sells it… to a new buyer who fares no better.

 

                The story is told in two parts, essentially from the viewpoint of two young boys who are forced to live there by their fathers, one after the other. Smith doesn’t blink when it comes to putting children in harm’s way and that is a welcome change from a lot of horror literature. Normally, I’m not into creepy kid novels but when the kids are innocents and the supernatural threatens them, I’m in.

                Satan’s Snowdrop is a haunted house book that works; there are many unnerving passages and Smith toys with the reader, setting up scenes that he knows will mess with you, and he succeeds. This sits in my top-5 of non-animal Guy N. Smith books. For now.