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Ellen Datlow's 1998 Reviews
Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital (Norton) is a riveting
mystery taking place in and around a tiny outback town. Outer Maroo is
caught up in millennial paranoia and opal fever, and these factors,
combined with the arrival of a charismatic cult leader make for an
explosive situation. Oyster is told from several points of view
and from several different points in time, so that the reader only sees
the whole picture at the end. Hospital, author of The Last
Magician, another excellent dark novel, weaves a richly textured
portrait of a town overwhelmed by its intricate web of deception,
suspicion, xenophobia, and greed. While being fiercely critical of the
rape of mother nature she creates fascinating characters and an unusual
world in which a reader can lose oneself.
Irrational Fears by William Browning Spencer (White Wolf) is a humorous horror novel with very serious undertones. Jack Lowry has been drinking steadily since his lover was murdered by her crazy husband. He goes into detox, becoming immersed in the politics of Alcoholics Anonymous and embroiled in very strange goings-on connected with jealousy, the Lovecraft mythos, immortality, and ghosts. As ever, an imaginative tour-de-force by this wonderful writer who regularly creates characters caught on the border between reality and fantasy. The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb (Dutton) is an entertaining dark mystery by an author who has made Appalachia her own territory. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood becomes fascinated by two murders committed almost 140 years apart. Nineteen year-old Frankie Silver was charged, found guilty, and hanged for the murder of her husband in 1832. Fate Harkyder is now on death row for a slaying he committed twenty years ago. The murders have nothing in common but their brutality and the unease they cause in the sheriff. McCrumb immerses the reader in the rough life of mountain folk who have never expected and rarely received justice from those in town. The Hunt Club by Brett Lott (Villard) also takes advantage of the divide between two cultures—the rich professional men of Charleston and their poorer neighbors who populate the Lowcountry of South Carolina—to write a lively murder mystery. The story is told by Huger Dillard, the fifteen-year old boy who helps his blind Uncle Leland get around. The discovery of the mutilated body of a prominent doctor on the grounds of the Hunt Club initiates a chain of events that reveal long kept secrets, not least of which is the circumstances behind Uncle Leland's blinding in a fire that killed his wife. The finely wrought characters, sense of place and skillful pacing make for an engrossing read. Blood Work by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) is a suspense novel/police procedural about a former FBI agent sidelined by a heart transplant. his career hunting serial killers finally has taken its toll, and now all he wants to do is work on his boat. But when the sister of the woman whose heart he received asks him to track down her killer, he cannot turn her away. Although Blood Work refers to events that presumably took place in The Poet this does nothing to diminish the effectiveness for the first time reader. Forthcoming movie. Sunset Express by James Lee Burke (Doubleday) is a beautifully told convoluted tale of family secrets, past injustices, racism, cruelty, and revenge. In this new Dave Robicheaux novel, the children of a labor organizer who was crucified against a barn wall in the 50's return to New Iberia. The orphaned siblings have grown up to be successful adults, but their veneer of success can't erase their childhood hurt or soothe the hate they feel for those they believe responsible for their father's unsolved murder. As in all Burke's novels the plot is filled with colorful characters who are rarely merely good or evil. The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford (Avon) takes place in a world where the measurements of your face and body determine your role in life and your guilt or innocence. A dictator, who is very arbitrary in the reward and punishment of his subjects, runs the Well-Built City with an iron fist. The protagonist, a Physiognomist, has the power to inconvenience, disrupt, or destroy lives and at the beginning of this odd novel does so with all the arrogance of one raised to be at the top of the heap. But a new assignment leads him into unknown territory, challenging the bedrock of his beliefs. This winner of the World Fantasy Award is an original and potent mixture of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Bombay Ice by Leslie Forbes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is a flawed but atmospheric first novel set in contemporary India. A half Indian/half Briton journalist returns to India at the behest of her half sister, who is married to a famous filmmaker whose first wife died suspiciously. There is a wealth of information on a wide range of Indian lore: brilliant bits about the life cycle of the monsoon and its relationship to chaos theory; the lives of the hijra—eunuchs considered holy by some, accursed by others; and what to do when faced with a deadly cobra. And running throughout is the making of the "Bollywood" version of Shakespeare's The Tempest and several murders. The flaws can be distracting but still, the novel is worth a look. Blindness by Jose' Saramago (Harcourt, Brace) is a disturbing allegory by the Portuguese fabulist who won the Nobel Award for literature in 1998. Blindness has a real plot, inspires real terror, and although we never learn their names-is about believable, sympathetic characters. A man driving down the street is suddenly struck blind, setting off a highly contagious plague of "white sickness." The authorities take immediate but futile action by quarantining victims and potential victims in an ill-equipped, abandoned mental hospital. Things rapidly deteriorate as food is hoarded, factions develop, and anarchy reigns. The one true hero is the "doctor's wife," who willingly accompanies her blind husband, although she can still see, and acts as a liaison between the blind and the rest of the world. Just after this book was published Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Freezing by Penelope Evans (Soho Press) has an unlikely detective as its hero-a misfit with a frightening appearance who works as a morgue photographer. Stewart Park lives alone with his crazy, demanding father, finding solace playing computer games and the company of his two young nephews. But the arrival at the morgue of the frozen corpse of a young woman fished out of the Thames changes his life, as he's galvanized into discovering her identity and finding out what happened to her. The Ogre's Laboratory by Louis Buss (Jonathan Cape-UK), a beautifully told modern gothic is surprising, moving, and quite satisfying. When a young Catholic priest is transferred to the country parish where his predecessor mysteriously committed suicide, his keen interest in history draws him into the murky past of the aristocrat family whose estate looks down over the village. Once upon a time there was a real ogre, the local noble, a giant suspected of atrocities worthy of Gilles de Rais. His deeds still haunt the children of the village in nightmares. Was he the ogre upon which the fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" was based, and is his evil influence still being felt in the village? Night Train by Martin Amis (Harmony) is a short, sharp shock of a mystery about the apparent suicide of the brilliant and beautiful beloved daughter of the top cop in a major American city. A veteran detective who spent some weeks drying out in her boss's home several years earlier and thus, feels beholden to him, is asked to investigate. What transpires is a tour of the suicide victim's perfect universe that simultaneously takes the detective on her own inner journey. Amis has worked in the crime/mystery genre before with his early novel Other People and more recently with London Fields. Noir by K.W. Jeter (Bantam Spectra) is an energetic and imaginative dark noir SF thriller by the author of the raw, proto-cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder and the brilliant In the Land of the Dead. McNihil is your classic antihero, a former government enforcer of the penalty for copyright violation-death. A Machiavellian corporate type traps him into investigating the murder of a young lower level executive. One of several grotesque jokes is that the "trophies" (living brain tissue housing personality) taken from the copyright violators are transmuted into antique toasters, garbage disposals-whatever the victim of the copyright infringement wishes. This brave new world also resurrects the bodies and brains of debtors, forcing them to continue to pay off their outstanding credit charges. Jeter zings some nice surprises, keeping his readers on their toes in this hate letter to L.A. One of Us by Michael Marshall Smith (HarperCollins-UK/Bantam) has some superficial similarities to Noir -both are L. A. stories about illegalities, underground economies, and men who get entangled in conspiracies against their will. Although there's a fair measure of violence in One of Us the novel maintains the lighter tone evident in Smith's first novel Only Forward. In this future the appliances have personality-lots of it and there are some laugh-out-loud encounters between Hap and his misguided alarm clock. People with money can hire others on whom to unload their bad dreams-or their bad memories. Hap, whose (illegal but high- paying) job it is to be the temporary receptacle of these dreams and memories gets stuck with the memory of a murder. If he's caught with it he rather than the person whose memory it is can be convicted of the crime. As hapless as his name, this petty and pretty harmless criminal is (like McNihil) forced into investigating a murder with no apparent connection to him. But then the Smith gets really wonky as the book launches itself into "Man Who was Thursday" territory. Does this work? I'm not sure but it is a lot of fun getting there. Subterranean Press launched its short novel series with two excellent books: Wildest Dreams by Norman Partridge, a fast-moving, hardboiled supernatural novel about a hired gun who can see ghosts. Clay Saunders will kill whomever he's hired to kill-and anyone else who gets in his way. Despite his moral emptiness he's moved by the lonely ghost of a girl he encounters, and he promises to visit her again. But first he's got to deliver the severed head of a cult leader to the ambitious daughter who paid for his murder. Published in a 500 signed and numbered hardcover edition and 26-copy signed/lettered edition; the second novel is The Boar by Joe R. Lansdale, an excellent adventure/coming of age story brimming with authenticity and warmth towards its characters. The locale is East Texas, the period is the middle of the depression and although times are hard, they aren't all that much harder than usual for the poor farmers who eke out their existence. The adult narrator recounts his fifteenth summer, a milestone year for two reasons: he decides to become a fiction writer and a crazed wild boar with razor sharp tusks brings mayhem to the area. After the seemingly invincible creature kills the family dogs and attacks the boy and his pregnant mother, the boy and his best friend swear to destroy it. Lansdale says that the father in The Boar is obliquely based on his own father. The love shows. Dustjacket art is by Mark A. Nelson designed by Gail Cross and interior art is by Keith Minnion. Available in two limited editions. |