Thriller

Review: The Last Whisper in the Dark

There are not enough superlatives when discussing Tom Piccirilli. The man is a brilliant and diverse writer: He’s won awards for his horror, fantasy, thrillers and even poetry—bagging the prestigious Bram Stoker award on four occasions.

Previous novels, such as Shards, A Choir of Ill Children and November Mourns, have shocked and terrified, but with his new release, The Last Whisper in the Dark, Piccirilli takes us to a far more tender place.

A tender place, it turns out, just as disarming as his nightmares.

I’ll sum it up this way: I was shedding tears by page three. I think the only other book that has ever had me crying this early in the narrative is Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Piccirilli has a knack for character development and storytelling, and The Last Whisper in the Dark, a sequel to 2012’s The Last Kind Words, may be his deepest work yet.

Concerning Terrier (Terry) Rand, a young thief from a family of small-time criminals, Piccirilli has given us a protagonist as sympathetic as he is fearless. On the surface, the story is about the disappearance of Terry’s friend Chub and the ensuing search that drives him head on into gangsters, killers and a femme fatale.

But on a deeper level, this is a tale of honor and family and the clumsy way we go about expressing our feelings to the ones we love. The Rands are a proud and tragic clan, with dementia and criminality in their blood—as well as an outlaw tendency that keeps them on the fringes of society.

But their strongest trait is honor. Terry is loyal to an estranged friend who stole the only woman he ever loved. He quietly looks out for his sister, even as she rebels against him and helps desecrate their dead brother’s grave. He remains devoted to a family that can occasionally be distant and dysfunctional, but always has each other’s backs.

You can mess with Terry, but you’d best not fuck with his family.

You’ll fall in love with Terry by the end of the first chapter, and you’ll be cheering him on the rest of the novel. And when it’s done, you’ll applaud Piccirilli for this tender bit of noir literature.

Piccirilli is an established icon within the horror realm, but he has yet to crack through to the mainstream, which is unfortunate. This is a writer worthy of notice, and hopefully this book is the one that reaps him the exposure and attention he deserves.

Stephen King, Joyland

Joyland by Stephen King

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first three-fourths of
Joyland
are amazing, some of King’s best recent work. The ending, however, is a bit too easy and familiar. King’s previous offering through Hard Case Crime, The Colorado Kid, subverted convention and was far more challenging to the reader.

Infused with heart and the nostalgic thrills of boardwalk carnivals, Joyland is worth the ticket price. The novel begins as a rail-rattling thrill ride, but, in the end, eases too gently into the station.

View all my reviews

June Recommendations

In another day we’ll be heading off to London, and around this time Transgress will publish its annual summer book preview/review. In the coming days, we’ll be dishing out smaller portions of the issue, beginning with today’s blurbs about some books you may have missed this past month.

Joyland, Stephen King

I plan on devouring this little beauty on the first leg of the transatlantic flight. As you know, we at Ensuing Chapters and Transgress Magazine are all about funhouses and noir. So, a Stephen King paperback original about a funhouse for the imprint Hard Case Crime?

Bring it.

King’s previous offering through Hard Case was The Colorado Kid, a wonderfully creepy tale about an unsolved murder in a small Maine town. Some of you may also know it as the SyFy program, Haven.

I’ve got my ticket, and I’m already chilled thinking of the horrors that await in Joyland.

Creation: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself, Adam Rutherford

I recommend Adam Rutherford’s Creation for any fan of science writing. However, my endorsement comes with a disclaimer: The electronic review copy I downloaded was corrupted and difficult to navigate. The result is that I didn’t read this book front to back, as I normally do. However, I was able to access about half of it, and what I read I thoroughly enjoyed.

Of particular interest to Transgress readers are the graphic details of surface cuts when explaining how the skin recovers from a wound. The squeamish reader might want to tag this book as horror for this reason alone.

Though I doubt there are any squeamish readers this blog.

Stylistically, Creation blends wit and storytelling with fair doses of hard science. Fans of Sam Kean, Mary Roach and Malcolm Gladwell will find much to love in its pages.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

Not since Joseph Campbell has an author had both a profound understanding of mythology and the ability to present it to a general audience with such passion. I see Gaiman and Campbell as two sides of an intergenerational coin: the academic who deconstructs myths and the author who creates them.

His new novel, his first for adults since 2005’s Anansi Boys, concerns a young boy returning home–and reconsidering odd events from summers past.

The Hole, William Meikle

And what summer would be complete without a subterranean adventure? This twisted treat comes from one of my favorite publishers, DarkFuse, and concerns a chasm (literally, not figuratively) snaking through a rural town. What comes next promises to be delightfully morbid. I’ve got this on my to-read list and can’t wait to descend into its depths. A review will come later this summer.

Come back tomorrow for a review of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories by Saki, illustrated by Edward Gorey.

Hilary Davidson: Evil in All Its Disguises

If I were writing a one-word review of Hilary Davidson’s Evil in All Its Disguises, released March 5, that word would be: incongruous. And it would be a massive compliment.

In this subtle crime novel, the third in the Lily Moore series, Davidson drops us in an Escher-like room of distorted realities. Everything looks normal, just slightly askew, and it’s these atmospheric incongruities that make Evil such an enjoyable read.

For series initiates, such as myself, Lily Moore is a travel writer with a checkered past: a mentally unstable family history; a deceased, junkie sister; a quasi-gangster business tycoon ex who will do anything to get her back. This is the baggage she takes with her to Acapulco to review the once-glamorous Hotel Cerón.

It’s nothing unusual: just another press junket with a circle of travel writers, and a PR flak, she’s known for years. Yet, when she arrives at the hotel, Moore is surprised to find it in disrepair, and disturbed to learn that one of her closest friends on the trip, Skye, is in over her head on an investigative piece. During their brief and baffling conversation, Skye expresses concern for her safety, and then steps away to take a call.

And so the unraveling begins. Skye doesn’t return from that phone call, and nobody at the isolated resort seems concerned. Through her exploration, Lily learns that the hotel is a recent acquisition by her ex’s company, manned by his henchman, Gavin, and before long she realizes she’s been lured to the Hotel Cerón under false and deadly pretenses.

There is a breathless quality to the prose that I enjoyed. The action is tightly contained (the plot unfolds in around 48 hours), and, from one chapter to the next, I couldn’t put it down. Aside from a superfluity of internal dialogue and redundant flashbacks, the writing is well-paced and tightly organized, and Davidson manages to give us a tour of the resort, including the unfinished bungalows, the empty wings and even the rotting interior, without feeling like a travelogue—probably due to her actual background as a travel writer. (To my fellow gluten-intolerants I recommend her Gluten-Free Guidebook blog.)

But as with a travel review, the pros must be weighed against the cons. Evil suffers from an overload of plot twists. The phrase “trust no one” certainly applies. This isn’t all bad, as the finer twists reveal character complexity (and that delicious incongruity). But as the plot turns pile up, they begin to lose credibility.

Evil diverges from the transgressive and brutal horror literature usually reviewed in this space. There’s a cozy quality to the story that is actually kind of refreshing. The book kept me up at night not because it was disturbing, but because it was engaging.

I predict big things for this book, and I’m sure it will earn a deserved place on the best-seller list.

Stephen Dobyns: The Burn Palace

Stephen Dobyns‘ new novel, The Burn Palace, is a difficult book to deconstruct. The narrative is a tangle of shifting perspectives and sharp turns, and stylistically, is a bit disarming at first.

However, we’re in the hands of an old master. What Dobyns does better than most is capture the quirks and suspicions of small-town America, and similar to his 1997 masterpiece, The Church of Dead Girls, The Burn Palace offers us an eagle-eyed, warts-and-all perspective of residents of Brewster, Rhode Island.

As with the loose-ended Church, the horror lives not so much in the conflict, but rather in how the residents respond to the conflict. In this novel, Dobyns’ first in more than a decade, the catalytic event is a dramatic kidnapping. A newborn has been stolen from the local hospital, replaced with a corn snake, and thus, the town of Brewster is shrouded in mystery and controversy.

And fear.

From the local diner to holistic healing centers, Brewster is that odd amalgamation of new age/old age found in many small towns. It is also a town of secrets and tragedy and disaster. Dobyns brings to life the town’s diverse personalities, going to door to door in a literary trick or treat.

It’s kind of like Winesburg, Ohio—if Sherwood Anderson had grown up on Stephen King’s street.

Of course, the prose is excellent, and only someone like Dobyns could reconcile this many narratives and POVs in one book. That said, this is a dense work, more so for the constant shifting of perspectives, never setting us on stable ground.

But then again, isn’t that the point? Rather than simply using his words to construct a referent, Dobyns, with his background in poetry, uses the words themselves to disorient, to make us confused, uncomfortable and always uncertain, but excited, about what comes next.

Review: Legion

Author Brandon Sanderson is one evil dude. That was my reaction to finishing his novella, Legion, concerning the peculiar (and haunted) Stephen Leeds. To be clear: Sanderson is a master storyteller, and this is one of the greatest works of short fiction I’ve read in years.

What makes Sanderson evil (in that bad-ass writer sort of way) is the fact that the story came to an end.

In December, Audible offered a free copy of Legion, which I greedily downloaded and enjoyed in one sitting. This story is compelling on so many levels that when it ended I needed complete silence to process everything.

Leeds is a peculiar man with a mental condition akin to dissociative identity disorder (a dubious diagnosis; see Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed). However, Leeds doesn’t have multiple personalities. He has what he calls “aspects,” sort of like imaginary friends with benefits — meaning they sleep in their own rooms, require seats on a plane and bail you out of jams.

In truth, the aspects are the manifestations of Leeds’ genius. He is smart to the point of insanity, and, in my opinion, his aspects allow him to maintain his self-view as a “regular guy.” For example, he doesn’t perform critical analysis of arguments. He leaves that to Ivy. He isn’t a skilled marksman, so he leaves the self-defense to his munitions expert, J.C. And when he attempts to learn Hebrew during the course of a transatlantic flight, he manifests a new aspect who is already fluent.

This is a master stroke, in my opinion. A functioning protagonist who had all these skills wouldn’t be credible, unless they were super-human. And a functioning human who had all these skills would be, well, dysfunctional if they had to store all this knowledge and know-how in their brain.

So Leeds, in cerebral self-defense, delegates the multi-tasking to his apparitional A-Team, and they are a source of depth, humor and revelation. This is a great device, but something of a literary high-wire with little room for error.

Sanderson deftly manages the narrative so that it never becomes silly or gimmicky. In fact, the presence of the aspects deepens the protagonist, as his inner conflicts and contradictions play out before us.

This is played to maximum effect when the novella takes a philosophical turn. The premise of the story is that a scientist has invented a camera that can photograph the past — and now he has gone missing. Leeds determines that the scientist has gone to the Middle East in search of photographic evidence to confirm or deny Biblical history.

The nature of this quest, by a scientist in particular, leads to an interesting discussion among his various aspects, each offering a different take on religion. Here, Sanderson captures the internal struggle that comes with asking the big questions: How does one reconcile science and spirituality? Theological desire and empirical evidence?

No matter your conclusion, I’m sure we’ve all had similar conversations in our heads.

In Leeds, the discussion is thoughtful and entertaining, and enriches the story with a pensive undertone. And mention must be made of the terrific narration of Oliver Wyman.

Featuring compelling action, organic dialogue and complex characters and situations, Legion is a must-read (or must-listen).

I’m not surprised. As a longtime fan of the podcast Writing Excuses, which Sanderson co-hosts (along with Dan, Howard and Mary… who are that smart), I’ve joked that I’ve learned more from Sanderson and company than I did during my three-year MFA.

And I’m only sort-of kidding about that.

But I’m serious when I say that we need more Stephen Leeds adventures. And soon. A full-length novel, series of stories, film, TV… all of the above.

Leeds is a character brilliantly devised and fully realized. I didn’t want this story to end, and I hope to read more of Legion in the (near) future.

Unsettling Chapters: King Apocalypse

In “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “This is how the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.”

It’s obvious that Eliot never read any Stephen King!

King has destroyed the world many times over, and by many different means (plague, cars, cell phones, even exploding meth labs), and each time it is most certainly with a bang. My personal favorites are The Stand and The Mist, but there’s something for everyone on his buffet of world-ending visions.

Any longtime reader of King’s knows that his strength is character development. His end-of-days narratives are so strong not because of the impending doom but for how his characters respond to it.

For example, The Stand is horrific when Captain Trips decimates the globe, but heroic when its survivors stand up to Randall Flagg. The Mist enthralls with the interpersonal conflicts that emerge within the grocery store. I’m not afraid of fog-shrouded aliens, but I’m terrified of religious extremism in closed quarters.

Another favorite trick of King’s is what I call the extrapolated horror. “Trucks,” the short story that inspired the film Maximum Overdrive, focuses first on the ordeal of the survivors holed up in the diner. In many ways, the story is quite silly (a semi-trailer apocalypse!), but where it haunts the reader is its ending: The moment when you realize that all the horror that has come before is merely the opening act for something far, far worse.

This is a small sampling of King’s apocalyptic works:

The Stand

The Mist

Under the Dome (sort of)

“Night Surf” (prelude to The Stand)

King has also penned his fair share of dystopian literature:

“The Long Walk”

“The Running Man”

“The Children of the Corn”

With more than 100 novels, stories and screenplays to his name, King’s bookshelf is long. Pull one or two down from the shelves this Halloween. Believe me, the end of days never sounded so good.

Unsettling Chapters: The Church of Dead Girls

Frequent readers have probably noticed a pattern among the entries of Unsettling Chapters. That is, the overt theme of a story is more often a sleight of hand. Put another way: The thing is not really about the thing.

Lovecraft’s Old Ones are a manifestation of his insecurities. McEwan’s transgressions are a front for the anxiety of individuality in the face of rigid and arbitrary social mores. Murakami’s gore portrays mental disturbances rather than literal scenes.

And so it goes with Stephen Dobyns’ 1997 mystery, The Church of Dead Girls.

As with Birdman, Mo Hayder’s debut discussed on Oct. 5, the ghoul in this novel uses human corpses as an artistic medium. But while The Church of Dead Girls offers terror and thrills, it also has high-minded literary aspirations.

The thing is not really about the thing.

This is less a whodunit and more a sociological work. What are the fears and biases of small-town folk? What prejudices are lurking in the shadows? A rash of murders and missing teenagers brings them all to the surface. Things get ugly.

“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” ugly.

Once threatened, the townsfolk begin pointing fingers in every possible direction. This compelling arc makes for a fascinating read. And gruesomely detailed horrors make this a must-read for Halloween.

Speaking of fingers, whatever happened to those missing left hands?

Read the book and you’ll understand.

Parts of this post are adapted from an earlier article of mine, “Thirteen horrifying reads for Halloween,” which appeared in the Boulder Camera in 2008.

Unsettling Chapters: The Wasp Factory

Welcome to The Wasp Factory, where by the age of 16 Frank Cauldhame has already killed three children, including his younger brother. These days the teenager passes his time killing animals on the tiny British island he shares with his father.

Other favorite activities? Long walks on the beach, going to punk-rock shows with his drunken dwarf buddy, Jamie, and gathering wasps in his elaborately engineered torture chamber.

This 1984 debut from Scottish writer Iain Banks stirred up a mess of controversy when it was initially released, and remains a dark and twisted read nearly a quarter century later.

Another great example of effective first-person POV, the narrator’s tale disorients and disturbs. No doubt, this is one of the greatest works of transgressive fiction I’ve ever read.

Like most works of suspense, the terror comes from what may happen rather than what actually happens. In this case, the novel’s tension — and greatest literary device — is Frank’s sadistic older brother, Eric.

Throughout the book, Eric, who has just escaped from a mental hospital, calls his younger brother from pay phones, each time closer to home, each time more psychotic, threatening to kill Frank upon his return. It’s a classic example of the shadow figure. We have a serial killer narrator, and he’s not even the craziest member of the cast!

Or is he…? The tension builds to a violent climax with a shocking twist that reframes the entire story. It’s the kind of ending that makes you want to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.

Parts of this post are adapted from an earlier article of mine, “Thirteen horrifying reads for Halloween,” which appeared in the Boulder Camera in 2008.

Unsettling Chapters: Night Shift

Of course, no list of Halloween reads would be complete without an entry from the master of horror, Stephen King. In recent years, he has produced more fantastic literature than true horror. He has also plumbed a deeper emotional depth in recent works, such as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key.

As great as these novels are, for pure chills, there’s no beating King’s early work. To get maximum bang for your October buck, revisit King’s first short-story collection, 1978’s Night Shift.

This is King at his most ruthless, featuring some of his darkest material, such as one of his forgotten treasures, “One for the Road.” Set amid the backdrop of a blizzard, a wife and daughter are stranded in a snow bank. With connections to Jerusalem’s Lot, they learn that the elements are the least of their fears.

“I Am the Doorway” is the creepy account of a retired astronaut who learned he was not alone in deep space — and he brought back a souvenir that just might drive him mad.

Some of King’s best-known works are in this collection as well: “Children of the Corn,” “Trucks” (which became the film “Maximum Overdrive”) and “The Lawnmower Man.”

My favorite fright is “Sometimes They Come Back,” an epic homage to childhood trauma and a reminder that, no matter how many years may pass, our demons are never far behind.

Of course, this is only King’s first entry in Unsettling Chapters. We will certainly see more of the master in future installments.

Parts of this post are adapted from an earlier article of mine, “Thirteen horrifying reads for Halloween,” which appeared in the Boulder Camera in 2008.