recent read; Best New Horror: Volume 25 edited by Stephen Jones

It's hard to go wrong with any of these The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror anthologies from Stephen Jones.

This volume came out in 2014, and contains stories from 2013. It also includes a dense "Introduction: Horror in 2013" which informs about all manner of publications in the horror field for 2013. The only drawback is that titles are embedded in the prose. You'll need to distill your own list, if you are interested in following up on any of the mentioned books.

The stories are all quality, I don't need to review each one. A few weren't to my taste, which is nearly always a given with any anthology. Some of my favorites were "Click-clack the Rattlebag" by Neil Gaiman, "The Middle Park" by Michael Chislett, "Into The Water" by Simon Kurt Unsworth (an Innsmouthian tale,) and "The Sixteenth Step" by Robert Shearman.

The volume also includes the entire novella, "Whitstable" by Stephen Volk, featuring a fictionalized account of Peter Cushing's off-screen life as he deals with a real life monster. Well done and worth the read.

The thick volume ends with "Necrology: 2013," which, sadly, is an "in memoriam" essay. Many people were lost to the horror field in 2013.

As I said at the top, you can't really go wrong with any of these. Worth having. Worth reading.

p.s.; Jones has been republishing earlier volumes through PS Publishing for e-book editions. New ones are e-book and hardcover. (Dropping the The Mammoth Book Of... moniker.) They have new EC Comic style covers, too.

recent read; Dark Melody of Madness

Dark Melody of Madness by Cornell Woolrich

Woolrich is known for his mystery, crime and noir stories. In this collection of four novellas, we see a side not often shown - Woolrich working in the supernatural & horror milieu.

"Graves for the Living" tells an updated (for the 1930s) tale of Poe-esque obsession with premature burial. After his father is buried alive, a boy becomes obsessed with protecting himself from premature burial. As an adult, the man stumbles on a graveyard cult where people are temporarily buried alive to overcome their fear.  He is left with a choice of joining the cult or being executed by the cult to protect their secret activities. He chooses membership. Of course, things go wrong when his girlfriend gets involved. Technically, there is nothing supernatural in this story, but the story fits better under a horror banner or a "tale of terror" banner than any other classification.

"Dark Melody of Madness" brings us a step closer to the the supernatural. The main plot element, from a high level, isn't that far removed from "Graves for the Living" - a musician gets caught in a cult and chooses to join rather than die. This time around, however, the cult is a voodoo cult. And the musician steals their ceremonial song. The song becomes his signature hit on the nightclub circuit of New Orleans. The voodoo priest, Papa Benjamin, puts a curse on the man. Or is it all in the protagonist's mind? This story was adapted for the television series THRILLER under the title "Papa Benjamin" and has sometimes been reprinted under that title.

"I'm Dangerous Tonight" is the most plot ambitious of this collection. And it has the most direct supernatural element. One night in Paris, a demonic entity visits a fashion designer and leaves its cape behind. The seamstress uses the cape's material in a new dress. But contact with the demonic material causes evil thoughts of murder and mayhem, some of which are acted upon by hapless wearers of the dress. The plot then follows the dress, and an American detective whose path keeps crossing the dress as he tries to take down an international narcotics smuggler. Murder, mayhem, demons, drug gangsters, trans-Atlantic ship voyage, night clubs. I also thought some of the violent imagery - imagined and acted on - were quite shocking for something from 1937.

This is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Anyone else trying to weave all these plot elements together probably would be left with a jumbled mess. Under Woolrich's pen, it all feels seamless. This was my favorite of these four novellas.

"Jane Brown's Body" was another surprise. This time, Woolrich tackled the "Weird Menace" genre. The tropes are all here - a mad scientist, an isolated lair in the deep woods, and beauty in distress, and our happy-go-lucky, rakish pilot of fortune, (Bad) Penny O'Shaughnessy.

This collection also starts off with a good introduction by crime writer and editor, Bill Pronzini.

I liked these stories a lot. Woolrich definitely puts his own stamp on this territory. He imparts frenetic, frantic desperation of panicked protagonists in a way that sweeps a reader along for the ride.

three short reads; novellas and a short novel

The Dunfield Terror by William Meikle

In this short novel, a deadly interdimensional fog bank attacks an isolated Newfoundland town at the height of a disastrous blizzard. This book is a quick read with nifty backstory simultaneously explored as the "now" story rages on. There are even flashbacks to the 1800s, establishing that the phenomena genesis in the 1950s caused a rift in time, too.

The only negative was some repetitive incidental action - drink coffee, drink rum, smoke a cigarette. Then again, at the height of a Newfie blizzard, what else can you do?

Good feel of winter storms and isolation, and interesting scifi/horror monster(s.)

I am trying to explore genres and read some tales from NECON attendees before this July's next con. Bracken MacLeod and Chris Irvin both had crime novellas out last year.

White Knight by Bracken MacLeod

Tight, quick read that hits hard and fast. An idealistic prosecutor tries to help outside the boundaries and gets caught in a noir-ish trap. Things only get worse and darker from there.

I like that MacLeod's stage was quick and small, befitting the story and novella length. The tale happens quickly, over a few days, and the setting is a smaller city of Massachusetts. When we say "Lynn, Lynn, city of sin," we aren't kidding. It works far better than trying to stage this noir-ish tale in New York City or Los Angeles. It works.

(also, see review by Charles Rutledge)

Federales by Christopher Irvin

In Mexico, law enforcement comes in shades of grey, never black & white. An idealistic Federale, Marcos Camarena, finally gives in under pressure (and threat to his life) and leaves law enforcement. He can't keep from trying to help, though. He is hired as a bodyguard to an anti-drug crusader who has already had brushes with death and assassination attempts.

On the plus side, this tale has very evocative characters and tone. I felt the heat, the sweat, the hopelessness. On the negative side, the narrative sputtered and gave out at the end, I thought. It felt like a setup for a longer work, a shift into the second act, but then it hurriedly ended.

Rather bleak stuff, but the war on drugs is a bleak subject, especially over the border in Mexico.