The Genre Bucket

Like many people I became introduced to author Thomas Harris through the 1991 movie adaptation of his novel The Silence of the Lambs. It's a powerhouse of a movie with a brain searingly memorable and iconic performance from Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I loved the movie so much that I looked up the author and found out that Lambs was actually a sequel to a prior novel called Red Dragon. Not entirely convinced yet to read the books I tracked down the 2002 film adaptation (there's a 1986 adaptation called Manhunter but it's too hard to find) and sat down to watch. Red Dragon the film was fantastic. Not as amazing as Lambs but it would be hard to even try to be on that film's level. Instead it's better to view the movie as stand alone even if it involves Lecter albeit briefly. Dragon is actually a prequel and follows Will Graham who barely survived his encounter and capture of Lecter being pulled in to help on the capture of another serial killer. This book ...

America was an infant in comparison to Europe's long, dark history that gave rich background to its supernatural and gothic tales. Not to be outdone Washington Irving would become one of America's first great writers and write some of our first supernatural tales of note. Everyone knows Irving for two specific stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hallow (1820). Unfortunately, these stories have been anthologized to death which realizing this, Penguin's American Supernatural Tales wisely chose his The Adventure of the German Student (1824) instead. The story of a German exchange student in Paris during the height of the French Revolution who has an encounter with a beautiful woman on a dark and stormy night is a bite sized bit of spookiness. Told by a narrator who seems to know just enough about the young man to pull us into his frame of mind, this is a brief but decently effective spooky story. Any modern reader will probably pick up where the story is going...

In Shirley Jackson's seminal The Haunting of Hill House three individuals are gathered at the request of a supernatural researcher to see if they can document paranormal activity at the infamous Hill House. But is it really that simple? The point of view we as the reader inhabit, is the crumbling mindscape of Eleanor Vance, who is selected by researcher Dr. Montague because of the poltergeist activity of raining stones that happened after the death of her father when she was twelve. Whatever instability triggered the event has only worsened in Eleanor as even before setting foot in Hill House her thoughts are disconcertingly childish and fixated on fairytale fantasies. She is a woman ruled by unfillment and guilt and increasingly close to the edge of what could be called saneness. This adds up to my core question when reading the book. Is Hill House actually haunted or is it simply haunted by Eleanor Vance? This has been the question that has launched numerous academic papers and d...

Somedays it's all a little too much. You're tired, maybe you had a pissy day at work, all you know is you want to be comforted. Many people turn to the aptly named comfort food to start feeling better. Everyone has one, that one dish that while nothing fancy immediately brings you back to your childhood. Maybe it's the special casserole your mom always made, roast chicken pieces, or a good ketchup slathered meatloaf. John Saul's Cry for the Strangers very much reminds me of that meatloaf. Dell's 1986 edition of Saul's 1979 novel John Saul is one of many authors who got chunked into the same bucket as Stephen King although at one point during the horror boom everyone was either the next Stephen King or had a blurb from King praising their work. But unlike his contemporary Dean Koontz, who desperately wanted to be Stephen King, John Saul was perfectly content in his own corner. Part of this contentment had to have come from the fact he had a formula and an in...

Ah the TBR or rather To Be Read Pile, the bane and reason for the avid readers existence. Like many avid readers I start out with grand plans at the beginning of a month to read a crazy number of books but plan to read and actually read are very different categories. As such, here's the round up of what my TBR pile has in it for the month of September. The excellent reissues of American Supernatural and Hill House Poor Penguin's American Supernatural Tales and Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson they have yet to be read by me. To be fair American Supernatural Tales was planned by me to read over at least 2 months since it chronologically covers America's supernatural short stories from the 1800's to the present. But unfortunately, I haven't found a spare moment to start it. I'm hoping to at least read the opening story before month's end but we'll see. As for Hill House I honestly, put it in the pile to read something classy. The last few bo...

This may have been my fault but I went into reading The Sentinel by Jeffrey Konvitz with high hopes. After all it came on the scene pretty close after the big three of the start of the horror boom ( Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Other ) and even had a well received movie adaptation. But hot damn this book was hard to get through. Following the partial formula of Rosemary's Baby that you should never trust a realtor in New York when it comes to apartments, we follow the ordeal of beautiful model Allison Parker who after returning to the city following her father's death finds the perfect Brownstone to start over in only to be beset by sinister forces. The 1976 Ballantine Books Paperback Honestly? I hated the main character and felt fed up with her behavior by the middle of the book. She's a neurotic mess with a domineering jerk of a boyfriend I will get to later in this review. Don't get me wrong I understand she's supposed to be tortured, she is por...

To preface, the book I'm about to review is in no stretch of the imagination politically correct, restrained in its depiction of violence, or striving at all for realism in how law enforcement performs its job. Saying this, I am now going to review the insanity that is William W. Johnstone's Night Mask. In the likely case you don't know who William W. Johnstone is he was the author of numerous paperback original horror and thriller novels for Zebra Books during the horror boom of the 1980's through early 1990's. Johnstone is somewhat notorious for his extreme conservative viewpoint, worship of the second amendment, and over the top plot scenarios. This brings us to Night Mask.  Zebra Books original 1994 paperback Jumping on the serial killer bandwagon that would eventually kill the horror boom, Johnstone's Night Mask follows homocide detectives Leo Franks and Lani Prejean in their hunt for a predator who is using subliminal radio messages to lure his female...