The Weekend: A Novel of Revenge by Helen Zahavi (Donald I. Fine). This first novel opens with “This is the story of Bella, who woke up one morning and realised she’d had enough,” enough of being tormented by lowlife men in Brighton, where she’s gone after leaving London and her former life as a prostitute. This is a literate Ms. 45, a simply told tale of less than 200 pages that packs a wallop, particularly the last chapter, which universalizes in a surprisingly believable way the most extreme form of conflict between men and women. This might appeal to women more than men, but who knows? It does have a sense of poetic justice for both sexes.
Wilderness by Dennis Danvers (Poseidon) is a fast-paced first novel about Alice White, a woman who has avoided intimacy her entire life of thirty-plus years in order to protect her secret: she is a werewolf. This is not a horror novel, despite its subject matter. It deals with trust, relationships between exes [sic], the relationship between humankind and animals and the accommodations necessary between our wild and domestic natures.
St. Peters Wolf by Michael Cadnum (Carroll & Graf) is another werewolf novel, with themes, psychology and occasionally even scenes similar to those of Wilderness. Yet it is quite a different reading experience. I suspect how the reader reacts to these two novels is dependent on which is read first. I read St. Peters Wolf second and was disappointed. It’s denser and it’s beautifully written, but the author’s love affair with words sometimes gets in the way of the story. The book feels repetitious and there are too many minor characters who have no impact on the story. Also these werewolves seem more and more indestructible and even mystical, losing credence. A sharper focus would have helped.
Sleepwalker by Michael Cadnum (St. Martin’s) came out several months before St. Peters Wolf. Although the supernatural plays a large role here, the novel shares more with Cadnum’s debut novel, Nightlight, in its poetic spareness. Archeologists unearth a twelve-hundred-year-old bog man at a site in York who appears to have been murdered. Two archeologists, former colleagues years before, are brought together, their personal problems and secrets intersecting. The site, rumored to be haunted, becomes more and more dangerous as trivial incidents like tools moving around escalate to unexplained “accidents,” and the bog man himself seems to be more mobile than he should be. A good read.
Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll (MacDonald-UK/Doubleday) is another magical mystery tour by the author of Land of Laughs, Sleeping in Flame and other novels. This one concerns an arrogant genius architect named Harry Radcliffe, who, straight out of a nervous breakdown, is commissioned by the Sultan of Saru to build a museum to honor dogs. Radcliffe is not a nice guy but he seems to have been touched by a higher force to experience and possibly create great things. Carroll is an amazing writer, able to create perfect vignettes and stories within stories, but his plotting is occasionally weak. Although Outside the Dog Museum is absorbing throughout and the reader hopes Carroll can pull it all together at the end, I found myself thinking about the book afterward and wondering what happened. The book is about creativity, responsibility, God, mysticism, and fate. Despite the serious themes and minor flaws, it is quite a lot of fun to read.
The Drowners by Garry Kilworth (Methuen) is a YA ghost story set in Hampshire, England, on a flood plain. John Timbrel is MasterDrowner for his community—the person who maps out the necessarily exact science of opening and closing the locks for irrigation. One wrong decision means fields and crops are ruined for the season. Against this background a drama is played out between a rich, greedy landowner, his murderous hired hand and Tom Timbrel, the master’s apprentice/son. An atmospheric and effective slice of English regional life.
Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister (Atheneum). The author won the Somerset Maugham Award for this first novel. It’s a disturbing novel about four aged sisters trapped for decades in the Fens of England by an autocratic and psychotic father obsessed with keeping them pure. The vision is very dark, and the play between past and present is well done, but perhaps too literary for some horror fans.
Don’t Say a Word by Andrew Klavan (Pocket) is an intricately plotted psychological suspense novel. Klavan is the author of last year’s excellent The Scarred Man, written under his Keith Peterson pseudonym. Klavan has the ability to draw the reader into his world immediately, no matter how unpleasant his characters.
Nathan Conrad, dubbed “psychiatrist of the damned,” is persuaded to take on one more hard-luck case: that of an angelic-looking young woman who has been accused of slicing a man to shreds and then lapsing into catatonia. Meanwhile, Conrad s idyllic personal life is about to be ruptured by two brutal opportunists. An Edgar nominee and a definite page-turner.
The New Neighbor by Ray Garton (Charnel House) is an erotic horror novel with illustrations by J. K. Potter. The new neighbor, a beautiful young woman (’natch) is a succubus who seduces anyone she can. There’s a lot of masturbation and hot sex in this fairly standard story, but it’s a fast, entertaining read. The book looks great—the cover is elegant, the interiors sexy and disturbing. Primarily for collectors of Potter and Garton.
Tender Loving Rage by Alfred Bester (Tafford) is a mainstream suspense novel, never before published, by the late Alfred Bester, author of the classic science fiction novels The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination. The time is 1959, the place New York City, where two men fall in love with model Julene Krebs, who displays a completely different personality with each of them. All three characters are haunted by past secrets. On Fire Island just before a hurricane, Julene’s past catches up with her and her two lovers. It’s a strange, anachronistic little novel with noirish dialogue, Fitzgeraldian characters, wild parties and orgies, talk of discos and Bella Abzug. Despite the weird sense of displacement (I don’t know when Bester actually wrote it) it’s an interesting thriller.
The M.D.: A Horror Story by Thomas M. Disch (Knopf) is a horror/science fiction novel of power and corruption. The first section of the novel is a joy, with its depiction of what initially seems to be a typical midwestern childhood and the miseries of attending Catholic school. Young Billy Michaels, growing up in Minneapolis in the early seventies, sees a vision of Santa Claus one Christmas.
The vision claims Santa Claus is only one of his many guises and that he is actually Mercury, the pagan God of science and medicine—in this story, an evil god. Billy is tempted by this god to use his brother's homemade caduceus, the winged serpentine emblem of the healer's art. However, as in many fairy and folktales, its use always backfires.
There is a large gap in time from when young Billy tries to do good with the caduceus, always failing, to the middle-aged William, the M.D. of the title, who ultimately becomes a monster, consciously doing evil. Who or what is Mercury really? The devil? But could there be a devil without a positive counterpart? If this god is actually Mercury, then why is he evil? And why don’t the other gods in the pantheon make an appearance? Several characters have strong religious beliefs but none of these beliefs seem to have any connection or effect on the Mercury character. Despite these unanswered questions, The M.D. is elegantly written, ambitious and absorbing.