The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (Alfred A. Knopf) is, believe it or not, a fresh take on the werewolf novel. The titular last werewolf, Jacob Marlow, is smart, has a literary bent (he quotes from Nabokov’s Lolita), and is ready to die. His nemesis is a werewolf hunter who can hardly wait until the next full moon to finish off Marlow. But vampires who for their own reasons don’t want him dead complicate matters interestingly.
Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Quercus) is a long, complex novel by the author of Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead that begins with the inexplicable disappearance of a child from an isolated Swedish island community. Two years later the parents have broken up and the father, native to the island but who moved away to marry, returns — because he’s got nowhere else to go. There is no real protagonist and that, plus the fact that the story rambles a bit, mar what could have been brilliant. But with patience, the eerie happenings (returning dead), hints of monsters, and unholy deals will keep readers reading.
The Devil all the Time by Donald Ray Pollock (Doubleday) is horrific at times but would be difficult to classify as horror — which shouldn’t put off those who enjoy a good dark mainstream novel about rural southern Ohio and West Virginia and the people who live there. The story has the rawness and unpredictability of the movie Winter’s Bone (I haven’t yet read the Daniel Woodrell novel). Among the characters are a man who believes that only by making more and more elaborate animal sacrifices can he save his dying wife, a murderous couple who pick up and torture young men, and a pair of scam artists posing as a preacher and his acolyte. Highly recommended.
Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson (HarperCollins) is about a woman who wakes up one day, doesn’t know where she is, who she is, or who the man in bed with her is. This is the kind of book that at the three-quarter point, this reader worried that the writer wouldn’t be able to pull off the delicate balancing act of ending the story properly. Although there are a few loose ends, Watson does so brilliantly.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk Books) is a fine first novel marketed to young adults about a suburban teenager who’s been raised on his grandfather’s fanciful tales of an island off England where he and other child refugees from Nazi Germany were given asylum in an orphanage. The boy doesn’t really believe the stories until his grandfather is brutally attacked and with his dying words directs his grandson to clues proving the existence of both the home and its unusual inhabitants. The book is charming and magical but also horrifying. It’s liberally illustrated with photographs of “peculiar” children and adults resulting in a nice looking and totally readable package.
Regicide by Nicholas Royle (Solaris Books) is an unsettling novel about a disaffected young man who enters a Kafkaesque parallel world inspired by the Robbe-Grillet novel he’s reading titled Regicide.
Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster) — although I enjoy the Dave Robicheaux novels a lot, I — like his creator, sometimes need a break from them. So Burke’s newest novel, featuring Sheriff Hackberry Holland, a man haunted by his experiences as a POW in the Korean War, is welcome. Holland has been central to two of Burke’s previous novels, including the early Lay Down My Sword and Shield with Holland having recently returned from the war. Feast Day of Fools is not supernatural but it’s a dark, complex riveting story about evil doings and good deeds taking place along the Texan-Mexico border. An alcoholic ex-boxer witnesses the torture and death of a man in the desert and reports it to the Sheriff, setting in motion events that spotlight some of the flashpoints of contemporary U.S. society: illegal immigration, drug running, the exploitation of children, psycho killers, corrupt politicians, and religious extremists.
The Edinburgh Dead by Brian Ruckley (Orbit) is an atmospheric police procedural (kind of) about a nineteenth-century mad scientist and the body snatchers who enable his experimentation in raising the dead. Ruckley deftly blends historical figures and events into the plot (Burke & Hare and their murderous ways of supplying anatomical schools with bodies).
The Cypress House by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown and Company) is a fine supernatural suspense novel about a WWI veteran who sees death in the eyes of the living. This curse and gift provides the impetus for a detour he takes with a young companion en route to a job down in the Florida Keys. Instead, they end up at a boarding house in western Florida and become trapped by circumstance and evil doings of the county bossman.
A Killer’s Essence by Dave Zeltserman (Overlook Press) is a fast-moving crime novel about a disaffected New York City detective trying to solve an uncommonly brutal murder witnessed by a man who sees monsters rather than human faces.
Eutopia by David Nickle (ChiZine Press) is an excellent novel about a 1911 scheme by a naïve philanthropist and a mad doctor to build a utopian community in Idaho by means of eugenics. A boy who has been orphaned by a mysterious and deadly plague is brought to the community and with another outsider might be the only hope for the future. And there are monsters.
Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory (Del Rey) is a wonderful novel about a new-born discovered in a snowstorm after his mother has died. He’s dead. And then he opens his eyes — he’s a zombie. He’s named Stony by the family that takes him in and is hidden from the authorities, who will exterminate him. Despite all scientific reason, Stony grows up. And that’s where it gets even more interesting. This is a terrific new take on the zombie trope.
This is not meant to be all inclusive but merely a sampling of dark fiction available in 2011.
11/22/63 by Stephen King (Scribner) is a time travel novel about a man who tries to prevent the Kennedy assassination. Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing) is a darkly humorous novel about a radio show host suspected of knowing more than he should about a missing girl. Gemma Files follows up her lauded A Book of Tongues with A Rope of the Thorns (ChiZine Publications), the second book in her Hexlinger series. Conrad Williams’ novel Loss of Separation (Solaris) hinges on the secrets of a small coastal village in England where the pilot protagonist and his girlfriend go to escape from the stress of a near-miss air crash that leaves him with nightmares. Alan M. Clark’s Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim (Lazy Fascist Press) is told from the point of view of the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper, Catherine Eddowes. The Burning Soul by John Connolly (Simon & Schuster) is his tenth Charlie Parker novel, a series that usually adds a dash of the supernatural to its mystery/suspense plots. My Soul to Take by Tananarive Due (Simon & Schuster/Washington Square Press) continues the author’s Immortal series. Vacation by Matthew Costello (St. Martin’s Press) is a post-apocalyptic horror novel in which some survivors become cannibals. Rotters by Daniel Kraus (Random House) is about a young boy who discovers that his father is a grave robber. Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Centipede Press) is where monsters of all kinds go on vacation.