The Hangmans Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb (Scribner’s) is even better than her first Appalachian mystery, If Ever I Return Pretty Peggy-O, and this one has supernatural aspects to it. Laura Bruce, pregnant wife of the town minister (who is serving in the Persian Gulf) is called by the sheriff to give comfort to the survivors of a scene of inexplicable carnage at the Underhill house. What happened there and why is only one strand in this rich novel that transcends its genre. The sheriff, dispatcher, and deputy return from the earlier novel. McCrumb has great respect and love for her characters, even the most marginal ones, and seems to know the region and understand its sensibilities. A beautiful, evocative, moving mystery. The supernatural elements (second sight and ghosts) are seamlessly integrated into the story and the lives of her characters. Highly recommended.
Her Monster by Jeff Collignon (Soho Press) is a marvelous retelling of Beauty and the Beast, in which Edward, the protagonist, is indeed a monster—at least physically. He is born horribly deformed, is hated by his father (who tries to kill him), and is then hidden away in the mountains by his mother, the only person who knows of his existence. Edward publishes Conan-like adventure novels quite successfully under a pseudonym and has never spoken to a woman other than his mother until Kat, a young orange-haired punkette, comes to stay with her uncle, who dates Edward’s mother. It is the kind of novel wherein the reader wants everything to work out, knowing it can’t possibly, given the nature of society and people. Her Monster may not end happily, but is very satisfying. Highly recommended.
Tribes by Alexander Stuart (Doubleday) is a short, searing novel about contemporary England—an England of skinheads, racism, and soccer riots. Nick Burns, a young film producer, is both attracted and repelled by the violence he witnesses around him. He and his partner are procuring film rights to a futuristic play about warring soccer gangs called Tribes. Nick’s life is about to undergo a major upheaval as a result of two actions: his increasing involvement with his employee, Jemima, and her daughter; and his spur-of-the-moment decision to hire Neck, a young thug hanging around the set of his current production. The book is about violence, aggression, dominance, tenderness, and love. It’s also about the ease with which a seemingly peaceful group of people can suddenly divide into warring groups. Stuart keeps fine control over his writing, veering at will from sexual to violent intensity. This novel is a powerful follow-up to The War Zone, Stuart’s controversial first novel, which won the prestigious Whitbread Prize in England and was subsequently stripped of the prize when one of the judges objected to the book’s treatment of incest. (The War Zone, published in the United States by Doubleday in 1989, is a terrifying novel about a family on the verge of disintegration.) Although neither novel is within the horror genre, both will appeal to readers who enjoyed Ian McEwan’s and Iain Banks’s early novels. Highly recommended.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Knopf), a first novel, is a heady, slightly twisted trip into existential Hell with six college students. The small, select group studies Greek with a dapper, brilliant, fatherly figure. Four of the impressionable students immerse themselves in Greek thought, culture, and religion—which leads them to a deadly experiment. The consequences of this naive act on all members of the group are devastating. The story unfolds from the point of view of Richard, the outsider, who joins the close-knit group of four boys and one girl (twin to one of the boys) late. It is Richard who reveals, from the opening, one small bit of what has transpired. Richard (and author Tartt) manage to tantalize the reader through 500-plus pages of sly obliqueness, carefully crafted characterizations, and secret histories. A brilliant first novel. Highly recommended.
The Course of the Heart (Gollancz, U.K.) by M. John Harrison is a novel based on Harrison’s story “The Great God Pan” (reprinted in The Years Best Fantasy and Horror: Second Annual Collection). It too emanates from a secret ritual enacted by credulous college students and their mentor, but The Course of the Heart goes in an utterly different direction from The Secret History. The four main characters of Harrison’s novel are so guilt-ridden that they can’t remember what it is that they’ve done, but spend the next twenty years trying to escape its consequences. The narrator hides out in his successful life—happy with career, wife, and child. Yaxley, the mentor, slips into perversion, magic, and despair. And Pam Stuyvesant and Lucas Medlar, both of whom see visions, marry. During their marriage they attempt to comfort each other by reading the mysterious autobiography of the travel writer Michael Ashman, who writes of a country called the Coeur that only exists under the most special conditions, and is a place of visionary splendor where anything is possible. While Tartt’s novel is concerned with earthly issues and tangible consequences, Harrison’s is more intent on mining the unconscious, the intangible, the mystical. Less accessible than the Tartt but very much worth the effort, The Course of the Heart is a visionary and brilliant combination of horror and fantasy. Highly recommended.
Ghostwright by Michael Cadnum (Carroll & Graf) is a satisfying psychological suspense novel by the author of Nightlight, Sleepwalker, and St. Peters Wolf. Taut and lean, yet with the poetic language of St. Peters Wolf, Ghostwright displays Cadnum’s most fascinating characters. Hamilton Speke, a songwriter and playwright considered “brilliant and a genius” by his contemporaries, is successful, charming, and seems completely in control of his life, as he lives idyllically on his estate with Maria, his wife of a few months. One day his old friend Timothy Asquith reappears after ten years, accusing Speke of stealing his ideas, his talent, his very life—and Asquith demands it all back, in spades. Cadnum walks a tightrope with this chilling novel that moves with the unpredictability of charming, deadly insanity. Highly recommended.
Breaking the Fall by Michael Cadnum (Viking) is a short YA novel about Stanley, a teenager at a crossroads. His friend Jared entices him into “playing the game,” a dangerous nighttime quest that terrifies him yet makes him feel alive while everything else in his life seems out of control and deadening. There are no traditional horror elements present, but the momentum and edginess built into the fast-moving story might interest readers of horror, and certainly will interest Cadnum fans.
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite (Delacorte/Abyss) deservedly attracted a lot of attention as one of the best first novels of the year. Brite tells the story of an adolescent vampire named Nothing in rich, evocative prose that alone makes the book worth reading.
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore (Citadel) was first published in 1933, and was later the first book ever published by Pocket Books. It still reads well today and this new edition, which features an introduction by Robert Bloch, is well worth finding.