Tis the season for spooky, creepy, scary. One of my favorite authors of such books is Laura Benedict, author of Isabella Moon, Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts and co-editor of the Surreal South anthology series with Pinckney Benedict. She also wrote a great book called The Devil's Oven which had its roots in The Gingerbread Man and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - (I really dug this book and hope somebody steps up and puts it on paper 'cause you would love it too). Over at her blog she posted some thoughts about Bliss House (her work in progress), and the new FX program American Horror. It's a great bit about the use (and overuse) of genre tropes and I encourage you to go check that out.
It got me thinking about the diverse ways horror and mystery have been blended in books I've read the last couple of years. The new novel Black Light by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, (also known as those guys responsible for the latter half of the Saw movie franchise) and Stephen Romano, looks to me like just one more innovative (and bloody - yes) take on the genre mish-mash that I'll have to dive into. Others include:
The Burning Soul by John Connolly. Anybody who's read the Charlie Parker books know the conceit of the haunted detective aint nothin new, (what's with the Irish and phantasm guided crime books, anyway? You like Connolly's brooding stylings like me? Give his countryman Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast a go, okay?) Don't know Charlie? Why not start with Every Dead Thing? Already started? Then, you don't need me to recommend this latest episode.
Come Closer by Sara Gran. You like the spirits? They like Amanda, or one of 'em seems to, anyhow. A possession tale unlike any I've ever read. You may be a few steps ahead of the protagonist, but Gran will surprise and terrify you without ever breaking a sweat. Perfect one sitting read. Yeah, it's not brand new, but it's just come back into print and it's a corker.
Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs - If you ever read William Hjortsberg's terrifying Falling Angel or seen the fantastic film it inspired (Alan Parker's Angel Heart) then you know just how well the mid-century detective novel can work when inflected with ancient spirits. You wish John D. McDonald, William Faulkner and H.P. Lovecraft had collaborated more often? This one's for you.
The Grove by John Rector. A whodunnit with the eerie backbeat of Oh-God-please-say-it-wasn't-me driving it and flavored with a creepily sweet longing from its emotionally unstable and blackout drunk protagonist Dexter McCray. When Dexter finds a dead girl in the cottonwood grove on his property and can't recall his own last couple days, he has to investigate her life and death in secret. Rector's clean, direct prose balance the dread with a lead character you want to help without ever trusting and for once the reality questioning doesn't wear thin. An elegant little creep story.
The Devil by Ken Bruen. Bruen took his Jack Taylor private eye series into a hard left turn with this one which pitted Taylor against old scratch himself. It was a bold and potentially divisive move for fans of the otherwise gritty and terra firma-bound series, and while it would not have been my first choice for directions to send the series in, it did pique my interest in and whet my appetite for a straight horror novel from KB.
The Pack by Jason Starr. Like his sometime collaborator, Ken Bruen (read their Max and Angela books now) the horror bug seems to have bitten Mr. Starr, one of my dependable go-to, blackest heart of the city noir meisters. The result? Yuppie werewolves. Sort of the anti-Twilight. These beasts don't get mopey-sexy, they get uh, feral. There's lots of hair and pheromones and copious amounts of red meat consumed. A series to come? I'm up for that.
It Came From Del Rio by Stephen Graham Jones. Another monster book, but this time the infected is a border smuggler and the book is just as much a crime and revenge tale - think The Hunter as a chupacabra family epic with Parker as an avenging undead bunny. Don't laugh (until you), read.
Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke. Let's stick with revenge for a moment. Then let's add another chapter at the end of Deliverance or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now you've got a starting point for this nasty backwood, deep south tale of returning to the scene of the crime... with weapons. Lots of weapons.
Shadow Season by Tom Piccirilli. Sure he does straight horror (A Choir of Ill Children) and straight crime (The Cold Spot) but he operates every bit as smoothly and masterfully with a foot in each. This one about a former cop whose been blinded and deals with crippling fear and remorse who now teaches at a private school where a killer is preying on the students over a particularly blizzard-y Christmas holiday break is a great introduction to Pic.
A Killer's Essence by Dave Zeltserman. Playing another riff on the theme of sight and perception, but from the other side of the effect this time, Zeltserman has his NYPD homicide detective trying to solve a series of killings in the midst of a multi-dimensional maelstrom of personal crisis saddled with a lone witness to the killings with an annoying extra-sensory perception issue. Last year saw Zeltserman's first long-form foray into horror Caretaker of Lorne Field and this one takes his new tools and ingredients to successfully blend mystery and horror to great satisfaction.
What else? Who else? Joe Lansdale? Jack Ketchum? Shirley Jackson? Lemme know.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
