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Ellen Datlow's 1994 Reviews
Wireless by Jack O'Connell (Mysterious) is by the author of
Box 9. Both novels are about the fictional town of
Quinsigamond. Box 9 verged onto sf/horror territory by
introducing a new street drug that works on the language center of the
brain, causing the user to process thoughts hundreds of times quicker than normal and in
the case of an overdose, pushing the user into violence and insanity.
The "Wireles" of the title is a retro hangout for jammers, the
radio wave equivalent of computer hackers who evade the law while
wreaking chaos on the official system. The two main groups of jammers,
of different generations are rapidly diverging in philosophy and method.
Meantime, a crazed ex--FBI agent hates them all and torches those he can
in the interest of tracking down the leaders. Antic, volatile, clever,
and entertaining.
The Horses of the Night by Michael Cadnum (Carroll & Graf) is on the surface, about a deal with the darker powers, but Cadnum's luminous writing and imagination create a far more complex piece of horror. Stratton Fields is a visionary but unappreciated architect, a humanitarian, and member of a formerly wealthy San Francisco family--a respected family despite the madness, murder, and recklessness plaguing most of its members. Stratton is approached by a mysterious being and finds himself making decisions that appear to have negative consequences for others while helping him realize his own ambitions. This novel is an incredibly beautiful journey from supernatural thriller through psychological horror to a meditation on ambition, dreams, and the price paid to achieve them. Highly recommended. Sineater by Elizabeth Massie (Pan/Carroll & Graf), was first published in 1993 in the United Kingdom, and won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Massie has honed her writing skills and made her reputation writing short stories so the richness of characterization in this novel should come as no surprise to her fans. In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the Barker family live as pariahs because Avery, the father, is the community's sineater; he who bears the sins of the community's dead. No one is allowed to look upon him, not even his children, and he lives in isolation in the woods. Joel, the younger son, is befriended by another outsider, Burke Campbell, nephew of the local reli-gious sect's leader. When bad things start to happen to those who associate with the Barker family, Missy Campbell launches a campaign against the family for not keeping to the old ways. A well-written and engaging southern gothic. Something very interesting is happening to the "serial killer" novel. Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs knocked readers out with their freshness. Since then the imita-tions have been churned out by the dozen but there have always been a few writers keeping the theme fresh and interesting. Like David Lindsay with Mercy, Bradley Denton with Blackburn, Paul Theroux with Chicago Loop, and David Martin with Lie to Me. Now, we're seeing a rash of "literary" serial killer novels, some more successful artistically and commercially than others. Going Native by Stephen Wright (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is a nightmarish journey across early 1990s America, introducing a variety of hustlers, yuppies, and other assorted characters, all bound by the thread of the "shapeshifting" serial killer who touches their lives. The brilliance of this, by turns hilarious, depressing, shocking, and ultimately haunting novel is in the writing--the author writes with a clarity and vision that will make this a classic. Highly recommended. The Alienist by Caleb Carr (Random House) is a fine novel of detection in addition to being a fascinating social history of New York City. Young transvestite male prostitutes are being murdered and Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, psychologist (the "alienist" of the title) uses his revolutionary ideas to track down their killer. The unorthodox Kreizler enlists his former Harvard class-mate and longtime friend, John Schuyler Moore a crime reporter for The New York Times, (the narrator) and Sara Howard, one of the first women with the distinction of working for the police department (as secretary), at the request of the new reformer police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. By analyzing forensic evidence, the three build a psychological profile of the killer, which helps greatly in identifying him. Carr has obviously done his homework researching the history of police detection and the development of forensics and his use of this material gives The Alienist a lovely quirkiness and additional verisimilitude. My only quibble is that the narrator occasionally has a too contem-porary sensibility and sensitivity about the societal ills of his era. Despite this authorial intrusion the book is highly recommended. In contrast, E.L. Doctorow's newest, The Waterworks (Random House) is pallid, with a bare minimum of mystery, local color or characterization. The Doctorow also takes place in New York, a bit earlier than The Alienist -- in the 1870s and the narrator is also a journalist. Nevermore by William Hjortsberg (The Atlantic Monthly Press) also mines historical New York City for its mystery plot. In this entertaining fantasy, Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle, uneasy friends (uneasy because of their wildly diverse views on the cult of spiritualism prominent in the 1920s) join forces to track down a killer who is using Edgar Allan Poe's fictions as inspiration. Poe himself, makes an occasional appearance in the book. Houdini is portrayed as vain and egotistical and deeply sentimental about his dead mother. Nevermore suffers in comparison to The Alienist, as Hjortsberg never completely succeeds in bringing the New York of the era alive. Lovers of the hardboiled horror novel, Fallen Angel might be disappointed by this light romp. Headhunter by Timothy Findley(Crown) is a modern (and self-aware) retelling of Conrad's the Heart of Darkness. Kurtz, who possibly has escaped from page 92 of the novel according to schizophrenic Lilah Kemp is a thoroughly modern man. A psychiatrist who indeed uses his power in evil ways. The story takes place in a futuristic Toronto during a plague allegedly carried by birds and a government campaign to rid the city of them. (Where is PETA in all this and why aren't there signs of demonstrators against these massacres? Something feels askew without at least a nod to this). Peopled by extraordinary characters including (a woman convinced that birds are flocking to her for safety, a grotesque men's club for the powerful and wealthy, an unhappy wife whose plastic surgeon husband has remade her into a beauty she can not recognize and who takes extreme measures to recreate herself. The literary games don't hurt the novel's flow. Suspenseful, dark, twisted, and complex. Findley is utterly in control of the material. The Game of Thirty by William Kotzwinkle (Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence) is a deftly written mystery by the author of the World Fantasy Award winning novel Doctor Rat. A dealer in antiquities is found murdered in New York City, his internal organs missing. His grieving daughter hires Jimmy McShane, an unusually (for the genre) compassionate private eye to catch the killer. A missing solid gold scepter having belonged to Egyptian royalty might be the motive--or might the motive be born of something uglier than mere greed? The game of thirty is an ancient Egyptian board game that behaves as oracle and occasional commentator on the action. Kotzwinkle's light touch makes a striking counterpoint to the dark undercurrents. Entertaining. In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence) is by the author of the National Book Award-winning novel Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. John Wade, an unhappy boy turned magician turned soldier and later politician, is ruined by the disclosure of a secret he has kept for twenty years. He and his beloved wife leave civilization after the electoral disaster to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. She disappears. Told as material gath-ered by a journalist intrigued by this man who magicked a life for himself by his deft sleight of hand. O'Brien continues to mine the Vietnam War and U.S. involvement in it for riches that he transmutes into art. Distinguished by beautiful writing, interesting structure. Compulsively readable novel. (I read the bound galley of this novel and I've been told that the ending is different in the final book. I've never checked.) Curfew by Phil Rickman (Berkley) published as Crybbe in the UK, is an excellent example of how a certain type of supernatural horror can be revitalized in the right hands. What makes the difference here is the quality of characterizations. Rich arrogant pop-promoter/entrepeneur has a dream to make the Welsh bordertown of Crybbe--dour and dull--into a new age center, despite the wishes of the townspeople. Crybbe is one of those "bad" places and the standing stones that have been removed have been removed for a good reason. The townspeople won't talk but the Preece family continues to ring the curfew bell one hundred times nightly at 10 p.m. A heroic dog, several intelligent sceptics, new agers, ex-husbands, and impressionable adolescents all contribute to the nice mix of historical evils reasserting them-selves into the present. Not the first novel Berkley declares it to be (the first was published only in the UK) but an excellent second novel anyway. They Whisper by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt) is a mesmerizing novel about a man who loves women and the woman who unwit-tingly destroys him emotionally with her slide into insanity. Fiona, abused as a child, and emotionally damaged beyond repair--she hates herself and cannot fathom that she is loved or deserves to be loved. Constantly challenging her husband Ira, the narrator, to prove his love and desire for her, she becomes increasingly irrational and destructive both physically and emotionally. This erotic novel is beautifully written and painstakingly structured to reveal bits and pieces a little at a time. It reminds me in its tone and in its oblique depiction of the manifestations of madness of William Goldman's The Color of Light. Literary with horrific elements--there is an air of menace bearing down on the entire novel. Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas (Cutting Edge), while flawed, is the best first novel of the year. A post-modern journey into sexual obsession and perversion. Some beautiful writing. Koja territory. A man wanders into a porn theater and watches an oddly erotic movie that eroticises women's throats. He is drawn into the obsession, breaking up his happy marriage but unleashing a creativity previously missing. The throat is the bridge between the mind and body, "it exists to put distance between the head--the house of our higher soul, of our spiritual nature--and the body of our animal passions and appetites.... In the drama of our minds and bodies, our throats—which share the tissues of both, and the torment of both-- the "throat" is a Disaster Area." (pp 51-52). Film as narcotic, as dangerous device. Not heavy on plot and the last third doesn't quite work but the sense of dread is pervasive. Unnerving, sophisticated and passionate. Lucas's film expertise comes in handy. Suspenseful and terrifying. Highly recommended. From the Teeth of Angels by Jonathan Carroll (Doubleday) is an exuberant novel about Death. Facing death. Death as entity with more power and more substance certainly than the iffyness of God and the Devil. The characters in Carroll's novels face real tragedy--AIDs, rape, the horror of Yugoslavia's self-dismember-ment. His characters talk cool but the writing is full of emo-tion. Carroll successfully uses letters, tapes, and stories within stories to tell his tale. Gorgeous, diamond sharp prose and characters whom the reader longs to meet off the printed page. Satisfying. Highly recommended. Strange Angels by Kathe Koja (Delacorte Press) starts off with a difficult problem to overcome -- its unlikable protagonist, Grant, a photographer with no imagination, a loser and a user. His girlfriend, Johanna, an art therapist, has been supporting him for some time. One day she brings home drawings by one of her patients, a young man named Robin. Grant becomes obsessed with the art and artist, and with an idealized view of mental illness believes only he can save the schizophrenic Robin from the big bad psychiatric establishment. Selfishness and possessiveness drive Grant. He wants to possess Robin's brilliance. But Grant takes on far more than he expected when he brings Robin home to live with him. With the entry into the mix of Saskia, another "strange angel," the story starts taking a deeper look at the demands of mental illness on others. Saskia in her own way loves Robin. Grant becomes the observer/caretaker of both of them, losing himself but becoming more sympathetic in the reader's eyes. There's something fascinating about watching these three characters crash and burn and by the end the reader does sympathize somewhat with Grant. The Totem by David Morrell (Donald M. Grant) is the first hardcover of the expanded edition of this entertaining 1979 novel about a former city cop who thinks he's escaped the violence of the city by becoming Police Chief in the largish town called Potter's Field, near the Rockies. Fat chance. This is a horror novel after all. An outbreak of a rabies-type virus that spreads like wildfire dovetails with the town's guilt over its murderous actions toward a bunch of hippies years earlier. Updated slightly, and according to Morrell's interesting introduction, very different from the earlier, truncated version. The book is beautifully designed and illustrated by Tom Canty. Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell (Putnam) is an important suspense debut with a fascinating protagonist -- another outsider woman (as in last year's runaway success, Smilla's Sense of Snow)--Kathleen Mallory, a hardcase adopted off the street as a child by a policeman and his wife being caught stealing a car. Now at twenty-five, Mallory, only partly civilized, works for the police as a computer whizz. An invisible serial killer, occult-ism, magic, and inside trading. Plus interesting characters. An Edgar nominee for Best First Novel of 1994. Highly recommended. (subsequent novels about Mallory have become a quite successful). Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) is a beautifully written literary novel about ugly, violent misfits. Violent menace. Scene of surreal moment -- wild pigs rampaging through a rundown shack, ripping each apart. An owl swooping down on its prey, watched by a starving young man who expected to catch that prey himself. Tannhauser, a vicious, wannabe drug lord, is a man so without morals that he doesn't understand why intelligent men would rather eat grubs than turn to cannibalism. The novel ends with hallucinatory transcendence. Complicity by Iain Banks (Little, Brown, UK/Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) is a mainstream mystery about politics, morality, and violence, but should hold the interest of the horror reader. Cameron Colley is a burnt out Scottish journalist who stays stoned on grass or speed, is involved in a highly sexual relationship with a friend's wife, and lackadaisically follows up dubious leads on various political goings-on. Despite or perhaps because of his inability to take responsibility for his actions or inaction, he is implicated in a series of violent attacks on greedy, unethical politicians and businessmen. After a long interrogation, the police are convinced that even if he didn't do it he knows who did. Colley is forced to dig deep into a past he has almost forgotten to come up with perpetrator and motive. A good read. |