From the looks of the cover, Stephen King’s upcoming novel CELL marks a return to pure horror. After all, there’s lots and lots of blood on it – maybe even more than that of his story collection EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL – so what else could it be? The plot has something to do with cellular technology turning people into zombies; beyond that, we’ll just have to wait to find out.

CELL will be released Jan. 24, which isn’t too far off, but you can pre-order it now.

Through comics, TV, movies and good ol’ word of mouth, we as Americans know the origin story of Superman by heart. So why have it told to us again?

Because IT’S SUPERMAN! – the new novel by Tom De Haven – tells the story like you absolutely, positively have never heard it before. If you thought BATMAN BEGINS was a revisionist take on a well-known pop-culture legend, you’re about to have your definition rewritten.

Covering a three-year period in the life of Clark Kent, IT’S SUPERMAN! is set in the Depression era. Portrayed as socially inept, hick-accented and just a hair shy of being dumb, the teenaged Clark leads an uneasy existence in the racist farm community of Smallville. As the novel opens, Clark has survived being shot by a gangster for defending a black man; the police are baffled when the bad guy ends up dead via an unexplained ricochet and Clark sports nary a scratch. Even Clark isn’t sure what’s going on, with his fist firmly closed for hours to hide a spent bullet.

Not knowing what his powers mean or are for can damage an already crippled adolescence, so Clark ties his belongings in a rag, hobo-style, and jumps the train from Kansas to Oklahoma, and eventually to California, where he finds work as a motion picture stuntman. Eventually, his travels take him to New York City (not Metropolis), where he meets and annoys intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane and runs afoul of politician Alexander Luthor, who has eyes for world domination using his new line of robot assassins. Along the way, Clark seeks work as a journalist, even though he’s weak in both spelling and getting the facts straight.

Doesn’t sound like the confident, cocksure Superman we know? That’s entirely the point of De Haven’s KAVALIER & CLAY-esque treatment of arguably the world’s most iconic superhero. No mere tie-in quickie, this is a fully developed, emotionally rich novel containing a strong dose of fantastic sensibilities, yet grounded by gravitas. With more realism than not, it’s a literary take on a pulp idea, with one eye cast toward the historical, as real-life figures as varied as Joseph Kennedy and Alfred Hitchcock wander in and out of the story to lend the period setting more credibility (not that it needed it).

IT’S SUPERMAN! may not pack the heartbreaking wallop of KAVALIER’s epic, generations-spanning scope, but Clark’s plight will at least provoke a tinge of ache in the ticker. This is a nice surprise, easily one of 2005’s top discoveries. Exciting enough to merit its title’s exclamation point, the book’s thrills emerge more through De Haven’s writing than any wham-bam action sequences. And the Chris Ware cover depicting the Man of Steel leaping the Empire State Building in a single bound doesn’t hurt, either.

I am in love! In little more than two months, following the kitschy, monster-themed GOTH-ICKY and the cutesy, animal-lovin’ HAPPY KITTY BUNNY PONY, the good people at PopInk are back with LOVE SICK: A SMOLDERING LOOK AT LOVE, LUST, AND MARRIAGE, a collection of Pop Art pieces dealing with all the typical aspects of romance and revulsion, all with that patented genius commentary from MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000’s Mike Nelson, who once again makes this book so worth your 15 bucks.

Never a stereotypical view on the subject, LOVE SICK manages to make love such a beautifully twisted thing that you can’t help but wish these were made into Valentine’s Day cards. Diamond rings with names like “disgraced princess cut” and “mall cut” intermingle with badly cross-dressed men and gold-digging women with an elderly gentleman on her arm. And when you add Nelson’s commentary – “Some guys were just not meant for drag. However, one way to give yourself a fighting chance is to lose the giant cookie-duster of a moustache” – it just gets even better.

If you haven’t picked up any books in this series yet, do so immediately. They not only beautify your coffee table, they make hilarious light reading, whether or not you’re in love, lust or otherwise.

• The week’s biggest new title is FOREVER ODD, Dean Koontz’s sequel to his 2003 fan-favorite ODD THOMAS, about a fry cook who communicates with the dead. That book managed to be funny, scary, thrilling, heartbreaking and practically pitch-perfect, so here’s hoping the sequel is every bit its equal. We’ll let you know just as soon as we finish it.

• Tor reissues Christopher Priest’s 1996 novel THE PRESTIGE, about warring magicians during turn-of-the-century London (shades of JONATHAN STRANGE!). This is particularly noteworthy since Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman will be filling the roles for director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to BATMAN BEGINS.

• Another title seeing reissue is GRANDMASTER, 1985’s Edgar Award-winning collaboration between DESTROYER creator Warren Murphy and DESTROYER ghostwriter Molly Cochran. It has something to do with an American CIA agent, an evil Russian and a plot of good ol’ assassinations and spies. This is the last book under the “Otto Penzler Presents” series, which has sought to spotlight the very best of modern mysteries. Look for our review soon.

• And then there’s TALES BEFORE TOLKIEN: THE ROOTS OF MODERN FANTASY, a Douglas A. Anderson-edited anthology of classic short stories in the fantasy vein that influenced (either directly or supposedly) J.R.R. Tolkien as he set to write something called THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Now in mass-market paperback, this collection features works from L. Frank Baum, Arthur Machen and H. Rider Haggard, among many, many others. We plan to read it soon, despite our LOTR allergy.

I just wasted three days reading KITTY AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR, pretty much one of the lamest, stupidest books I have ever read in my life. I normally wouldn’t, of my own volition, pay to read book like this, but since someone was nice enough to send it to me, I thought I’d give it a try.

I wanted to like it – it’s horror, with werewolves and vampires. It’s set in Denver and name-checks plenty of places I’m familiar with. And like me, its main character, Kitty Norville, works for a public radio station. Too bad it’s written by, I think, a 14-year-old Hot Topic wannabe girl who’s read one too many Poppy Z. Brite novels. It’s at that level.

You see, Kitty is a werewolf – albeit a spunky, hipster, late-night DJ werewolf – who happens to set the talk-radio world afire with her Art Bell-style show, “The Midnight Hour.” In between broadcasts, she has to deal with Carl, the leader of her werewolf pack who casually rapes Kitty as a form of discipline; Arturo, head of the Denver vampire family; and – ahem – Cormac, the local vampire hunter.

Somehow, a killer rogue werewolf figures into the plot, but at the halfway point, I started skimming more and more just to finish the damn thing. Horribly written, uninvolving and just damned stupid. There’s no other way to put it. In the end, there’s a preview chapter of the upcoming sequel, KITTY GOES TO WASHINGTON. No, thanks.

Hard Case Crime already has issued one novel from TO CATCH A THIEF author David Dodge, the adventure PLUNDER OF THE SUN. Now it’s set to do another, but this time with one that’s never been published before.

According to Hard Case editor Charles Ardai, THE LAST MATCH is “a terrific, sprawling international adventure,” and he’s working with Dodge’s daughter to copy-edit the completed draft the late author left behind following his death in 1974. “This is a major discovery for fans of classic paperback crime fiction and we’re very proud to be publishing what amounts to a new David Dodge novel for the first time in more than 30 years!” he said.

In other Hard Case news, the company is set to resurrect the work of John Lange, whose work in suspense fiction hasn’t seen print in almost three decades. In the 1960s, he authored the thrillers ODDS ON, ZERO COOL, THE VENOM BUSINESS and GRAVE DESCEND, the latter of which Hard Case will be publishing. Upon its original publication, GRAVE was nominated for an Edgar Award. Oh, and Lange is a pseudonym employed by none other than superstar writer Michael Crichton.

Here’s the bad news: SOLOMON VS. LORD is a long cliché. Here’s the good news: It’s still entertaining.

But you’ve seen this before. Stephen Solomon is a small-time Miami lawyer known for his rebellious ways, his willingness to bend the law, his contempt for authority and his general, happy-go-lucky, impetuous style. Oh, and of course, he’s a wisecracker. Now he meets rookie lawyer Victoria Lord, who is prim, proper, respectable, comes from old money, would never break the law and is the type of person who makes plans for her life far into the future. They are complete opposites. They argue and bicker with each other, displaying rapier (well, maybe letter-opener) wit. They are working together, but they would prefer to work alone. Lord hates Solomon. You know full well they will end up in love with each other.

This type of artificial conflict is an absolute staple on television. It shouldn’t be surprising we also see it here since author Paul Levine has written for TV, most notably for Stephen J. Cannell Studios and the show JAG. The scrappy, spitting, dual protagonists must somehow find a way to respect each other. Once they make this step, love and babies aren’t far behind. The method that is used here to unite Solomon and Lord is an old one: a child. Namely Bobby, the semi-autistic, 11-year-old nephew of Solomon, who has rescued the boy from a cult (awww) and who is scared of strangers (awww) and who, of course, is brilliant in so many ways and helps to crack the case. Thankfully, Levine doesn’t pepper the plot with identical twins or a subplot about having scheduled two prom dates at once.

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You have to love a novel that begins with the lines, “The name is Cordell. I’m a drunk.” There are no two ways about it; you have to.

That novel is THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, Ed McBain’s all-but-lost 1958 noir detective yarn, now lovingly rescued from obscurity by Hard Case Crime. Its hero, Matt Cordell, was a successful private investigator until he caught his wife in the arms of one of his employees. Now he’s just a homeless, alcoholic bum who panhandles simply to keep the booze flowing through his veins.

He’s reluctantly lured back into his old line of work when Johnny Bridges, a friend he hasn’t seen in 10 years, finds him in a park and asks him to look into a perceived cash register shortage at Bridges’ tailor shop. When they arrive at the shop, they find Bridges’ partner shot dead, with Bridges’ initials written on the wall in blood. Thus begins a complex plot (but simply written, of course) of murder, revenge and mistaken identity, with a cast that includes three femme fatales, untold shots of hooch and an equal number of old wounds.

McBain (who passed away this past July) was an old pro when it came to crime stories and GUTTER is early proof, a real electrifying read. The plotting is characteristically tight, but his dialogue is so crisp, it crackles. Through the direct, first-person narration, he makes you care about Cordell – no small feat given an apparent absence of redeeming qualities – leaving you no choice but to be utterly wrapped up in the tangled web that is his investigation. For pure, flawed-hero detective fiction, this is the real deal. Of the handful of Hard Case Crime books I’ve read so far, this one easily shares the top spot with Lawrence Block’s THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART. Both illustrate that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, but GUTTER is more bittersweet since McBain is no longer around to make any at all.

My prodding (no pun intended) worked, and we had a couple of last-minute entries in our contest to win THE X LIST: THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS’ GUIDE TO THE MOVIES THAT TURN US ON. Using the Official BOOKGASM Randomizer – a 20-sided Dungeons & Dragons die we borrowed from the kid next door – our winner has been selected: Jeff Carroll.

Congratulations, Jeff! Check your e-mail for a plea to send us your address, and THE X LIST will be on its way to you. Thanks for playing, everybody!

Your fellow literate pals at BOOKGASM wish all our readers a very happy and safe Thanksgiving weekend.

By the way, if you’re wondering who won our contest for THE X LIST book, the answer is … me! No one who qualified entered, so I win by not having to spend the postage to ship it to you. I’ll extend the contest through Monday, Nov. 28, anticipating you may have some downtime over the long break and wish to share your cinematic sexual preferences with the world. See you then with more news and reviews!

A money-hungry grifter, an egotistical card counter and a rage-prone casino security guard team up to swindle the head honchos of Las Vegas out of tens of millions of dollars. It almost sounds like the setup for a joke; if so, the punchline is that THE DRUPERMAN TAPES is one of the best thrillers of the year.

New in paperback, the book takes its title from the target of the extortionists, Galaxy hotel/casino head Emmett Druperman, who doubles as the head of the super-secretive Las Vegas Casino Association and the town’s unofficial most notorious sonofabitch. One day he receives an unmarked package containing a Dunes poker chip, a strangely worded threat and a videotape with a clip from SEVEN – the combination of the latter two suggesting the group plans to poison someone at the Galaxy to make its power known. Druperman immediately involves his security chief, former LVPD cop Steve Forrester, who obviously picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

Forrester isn’t sure whether to take the threat seriously, and if so, to what degree. When a gambler succumbs to a fatal dose of Spanish Fly, however, it’s evident the group isn’t playing games. Their second package, found at the scene of the crime, warns of an impending electrocution. And as for the third and the fourth … well, let’s just say the ante is upped. Significiantly.

In any other thriller, the criminals may be faceless. But Goodger plays his cards correctly by stopping the action before any crime is committed and jumping back six months to show how the terrorist trio came together and why, allowing us to see them as characters rather than caricatures. Though we follow their steps of their sinister plot, we aren’t made aware of their true intentions until Druperman and Forrester are, making it all the more tightly wound.

As colorful, dangerous and addictive as the city in which it takes place, THE DRUPERMAN TAPES is a stellar achievement for Goodger, for whom this is – quite remarkably, given its polish – a debut novel. If Michael Connelly’s recent MURDER IN VEGAS anthology left you longing for something more long-form, your wish has been granted. Like all good crime stories, it’s suspenseful throughout, thanks to a crafty plot and Goodger’s lively writing style. It’s all also quite funny, without growing unrealistic or absurd. A subplot about Forrester’s budding romance with a Galaxy floor supervisor is a little forced, but not to the point where it becomes a detriment. With its many fine twists and good-natured humor, DRUPERMAN is a caper that reads in such a way it should be called OCEAN’S THREE, except you won’t be rooting for the bad guys, but Goodger himself.

Let’s just get this out right at the beginning: The title is a tad misleading. Actor Michael York’s ARE MY BLINKERS SHOWING?: ADVENTURES IN FILMMAKING IN THE NEW RUSSIA has really very little to do with filmmaking. Sure, there are a handful of sequences that deal with his USSR B-movie actioner MOSCOW HEAT, starring “the Russian Arnold Schwarzenegger,” but for the most part, it’s a travelogue of New Russia and how much it’s changed since the early ‘70’s.

And this is actually a very good thing.

York’s non-stop anecdotes and foibles are consistently entertaining. He’s got a surprisingly hilarious sense of humor, something that at first you wouldn’t expect from a Shakespearian-trained actor with a reputation for playing stodgy, uptight-Brit roles (AUSTIN POWERS and LOGAN’S RUN excepted, of course). But York’s humor, usually self-deprecating, really humanizes him in a way you’d never expect. He never takes himself seriously, falling into one situation after another, all with a self-effacing charm that, especially when read, in your head, in that distinct Michael York voice, makes this the funniest York project since THE OMEGA CODE.

Now if only he’d write a book about that.

I’m sure there’s a great book out there about the secrets of the supermarket tabloid publishing business, but RABID NUN INFECT ENTIRE CONVENT: AND OTHER SENSATIONAL STORIES FROM A TABLOID WRITER is not it. Nice authentic Enquirer-esque design, though.

As a freelance writer for The Sun, Tom D’Antoni made up lots of stories during his tenure – the crazier, the presumably better – with subjects ranging from a taxicab defecator and a human termite to a denture bandit and a woman who loses her head (literally) while she sleeps. From the very first article, “Grandma Turns Pet Dog Inside Out for Lost Lottery Ticket,” it’s evident the stories are complete fabrications. It’s also evident that they’re completely not funny.

What I found most interesting were the brief interstitial paragraphs in which D’Antoni describes life at the tab, but it’s all too brief to be satisfying if you’re hungry for insider detail; after all, inquiring minds wanna know! He also talks about appearing as a guest on Oprah, during which, he constantly reminds us, he got “big laughs.” I’ll take his word for it. Then again, that audience pisses its pants over a free kitchen utensil. Supermarket tabloids are good for a laugh while you’re standing in line at the grocery store, but even then I’m only talking about glancing at the covers. God forbid you actually pick one up to leaf through. If you’re not willing to pay a couple bucks for it there, why would you want to pay $13.95 for this?

A recent post at Weirdwriter alerted us to the existence of a survey by Guardian Unlimited’s Technology blog, naming the top 20 “geek novels” since 1923 (the same year cutoff as Time’s recent best novel list).

If the news that Douglas Adams’ THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – the basis for this summer’s utterly lame movie – tops the list shocks anyone, it should only because THE LORD OF THE RINGS isn’t there instead. In fact, it’s nowhere to be found! To be honest, I’m surprised at the strong showing of 1984; I wouldn’t expect something that’s assigned to many a high school class to be considered geeky. Interesting how you could pretty much substitute “sci-fi and fantasy” for “geek” in the list’s title, isn’t it?

Of these 20 geek novels, I’ve “only” read four: 1984, WATCHMEN, AMERICAN GODS and I, ROBOT. Does that make me just one-fifth geek? I’d like to think so.

The list is as follows:
1. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
4. DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? by Philip K. Dick
5. NEUROMANCER by William Gibson
6. DUNE by Frank Herbert
7. I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov
8. FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov
9. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC by Terry Pratchett
10. MICROSERFS by Douglas Coupland
11. SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson
12. WATCHMEN by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. CRYPTONOMICON by Neal Stephenson
14. CONSIDER PHLEBAS by Iain M. Banks
15. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
16. THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K. Dick
17. AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman
18. THE DIAMOND AGE by Neal Stephenson
19. THE ILLUMINATUS! TRILOGY by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. TROUBLE WITH LICHEN by John Wyndham

If you’re looking for something new to read over the long Turkey Day weekend, here are three suggestions, fresh from the truck to your grocer’s freezer your local bookstore shelves.

• The lucrative STAR WARS franchise continues with its latest surefire bestseller, James Luceno’s STAR WARS: DARK LORD – THE RISE OF DARTH VADER. With REVENGE OF THE SITH still flying high on DVD, the nation is still crystal-meth-high on Vadermania. We should have a review shortly after our review copy arrives from a galaxy not so far away (New York).

• For more adventure, look no further than, well, ADVENTURE: VOL. 1, edited by Chris Roberson. The first of a promised annual series of pulp anthologies, it provides thrills and chills in not just the adventure genre, but horror, western, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy and, um, boxing. If you didn’t already read our review from last week, shame on you, child.

• Lastly but not leastly, Hard Case Crime offers its December selection, Ed McBain’s THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, formerly published in 1958 under the dumb title I’M CANNON – FOR HIRE. Just before his death earlier this year, McBain gave Hard Case his blessing for the reprint, provided he be able to restore his original title and character name as he intended. Hard Case said yes, of course. What more do you want, a review? Check back next week and we’ll make it right, toots.

Imagine you’re a teenager. Imagine you’ve finally got the hottest guy/girl in school in the backseat of your car. And imagine that you have some of the best sex of your life.

But then imagine, if you will, that a few weeks later, your partner tell you they have “the bug.” The “teen plague.” The new sexually transmitted disease. Only instead of painful urination or strange warts, you grow tentacles on your face. Or a new mouth on your chest. Or even something as simple as a regenerating tail.

Now mix this with the typical teen angst and you’ve got BLACK HOLE, the new graphic novel from Charles Burns that inventively mixes MY SO-CALLED LIFE with a David Cronenberg screenplay of your choosing. And they say there are no original ideas left.

Weaving multiple narratives, BLACK HOLE deals not with the disease itself, but how the teenagers deal with it. Most run away from home, living in the woods, creating a small community, while others try to hide it, trying to stay assimilated, fearing being discovered. In between, the kids worry not about how long they’re gonna look like this, but if the girl they’ve loved for years will finally go out with them or dealing with first-time acid trips.

Burns’s highly stylized woodcut-esque art is beautiful, compounding the beauty of youth with the pain of deformity in such a way, it’s like putting a cigarette out on your arm, grinding it down until it’s fully out. Painful as hell, but it leaves a beautifully round scar. Much like real teenagerdom, right?

Fresh off a stint in the Air Force, young Ray Kelly steps off the plane and into a reunion with his father in New York. Out on the road, a man drives up alongside them and empties a few rounds into Kelly’s pop. Their car crashes and Kelly wakes up in the hospital minus a dad and an eye, looking like “a turkey’s ass, plucked.”

“Then,” as the back cover copy so seductively reads, “things started to get bad.” And that’s just the first 10 pages! First published in 1962, Donald E. Westlake’s revenge-minded 361 – titled after a slang phrase for violent death – is now widely available again, thanks to Hard Case Crime’s reissue.

Even madder when he learns a sister-in-law he’s never met has perished in an equally mysterious hit-and-run, Kelly vows to avenge these deaths, with the help of his newly widowed brother and a two-bit detective who helps uncover information that suggests Kelly’s father may have led a secret life, which may have involved working for the mob. Another tragedy later, Kelly’s life takes an even stranger turn of events, making him question not only who his true enemy is, but who he is himself.

To say more would give away the many surprises Westlake has in store over a lean ‘n’ mean 200 pages. 361 starts off at a near full-throttle pace and gradually floors it as it races toward the end, rarely braking to turn the hairpin corners. Westlake is considered one of crime writing’s masters – of both page (PAYCHECK) and picture (THE GRIFTERS) – and it’s easy to see why. In both plotting and dialogue, his style is one of economy; he gets it said and gets out. The result is a punchy little novel with enough twists to keep you on the ol’ toes and plenty of action to get you there. Needless to say, it’s another valuable gem unearthed by Hard Case Crime, which clearly knows how to pick ‘em.

I absolutely love music-related books that deal with the making of a single album – the background of the songs, the in-fighting, the reasonings for the packaging – to me, it’s all so completely interesting. Since 2002, my favorite behind-the-scenes book was David Quantick’s REVOLUTION: THE MAKING OF THE BEATLES’ WHITE ALBUM, but that has just been replaced by JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON.

Writer Michael Streissguth goes above and beyond, not only focusing on the strained attempts to get the Folsom show recorded when Columbia had no faith in the project to the fears of how the inmates would react in general, but also on the complex history of Folsom Prison itself, to the point to where the stained prison walls actually become a real person in the book.

What Streissguth also does remarkably is wash away some of the legendary veneer the record companies placed on Cash, like how he never truly went to prison, much to the disbelief of many latter-day, newbie fans to Cash’s stage act to get the prisoners on his side. Also, you get intensely interesting side notes, like the story of inmate Glenn Sherley, whose song “Greystone Chapel” was illegally passed to an impressed Cash by a chaplain, and upon release was hired by Cash to work for his company, only to lead to a tragic end.

It’s these little things that make JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON such a great read, so much more than just the typical track-by-track anecdote dissertation. Loaded with gorgeous, black-and-white photos, this is the complete and total story of the one of the greatest albums of all time and a perfect way to orient yourself with another side of the Man in Black, as he was behind the scenes.

By now it’s common knowledge that the original fairy tales of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm were far gorier and explicit before the likes of Walt Disney watered them down for the kid-friendly masses. R. Patrick Gates’ GRIMM MEMORIALS rather cleverly draws upon these stories’ horrific roots as a source for its own tale of outrageous terror.

Eleanor Grimm, a descendant of the Brothers, is an elderly witch who lives in a rundown crematorium in the middle of the woods. A part-time necromancer, she’s seeking immortality via a ritual requiring her to collect – and sacrifice – 13 virginal boys. She lures the youths by telepathically casting hallucinations involving various nursery rhyme characters. Under these visions meant to distract and disturb, Humpty Dumpty’s fall becomes a grisly spectacle befitting of a crime scene, Snow White is serviced by seven naked midgets and the dog of Old Mother Hubbard compensates for an empty cupboard by sinking its teeth into her.

Unwittingly drawn into this plot of madness and murder are the four (and a half) members of the Nailer family, newly relocated to the area – children Jennifer and Jackie, stepfather Steve and mother Diane, pregnant with child. Each is needed and thus used by Eleanor in her pain-racked, drug-addled bid for eternal life, with the children in particular placed in a modern-day Hansel and Gretel role.

Gates’ device of incorporating time-honored folklore and fairy tales into a truly twisted narrative is a novel one; otherwise, MEMORIALS would be rather routine and unmemorable. As it stands, though, it plays to many a childhood fear – from giant spiders to kidnapping – that often carry over into our adult lives. This results in some nightmarish scenarios, some of which are built for extreme horror, others wired for well-designed shocks.

Perhaps the best example of the latter is when – and even my mere spoiler can’t live up to the insanity of the printed page – Steve is seduced by a hot young thing in a bar; so engorged with desire, he takes her right there on a table in plain sight. The other bar patrons, however, see the scene as it really is: Steve boning the withered, wrinkled and altogether age-ravaged body of Eleanor, the witch. With situations like this, Gates out-Laymons Richard Laymon, unafraid to mix sex and violence for simultaneous revulsion and laughter. What Gates does best is provide a high body count and a high-concept story; what he doesn’t do well is write credible dialogue for the kids – a failing of most writers, regardless of genre. With all the carnage and its perverse ending, you won’t care a bit.

GRIMM MEMORIALS was first published in 1990 and has been out of print, but now has been newly reissued by Pinnacle in preparation for February’s release of the long-time-coming sequel, GRIMM REAPINGS, a preview of which you’ll find in the book’s back. And believe me, you’ll get there quick, because this is something of a real horror treasure – a novel that’s not widely known, yet should be because it doesn’t chicken out on any level.

Ed McBain may have left this world, but his works are likely to be enjoyed by generations. And the works keep on coming.

Following his final 87th Precinct novel, FIDDLERS, and next month’s Hard Case Crime offering, THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, Harcourt will release a short-fiction collection called LEARNING TO KILL: STORIES.

LEARNING TO KILL will feature 25 stories McBain wrote under his real name (Evan Hunter) and two pseudonyms (Richard Marsten and Hunt Collins). Twenty of them made their debut in the pulp mag MANHUNT. Given that, you can expect 25 stories of P.I.s, cops, crooks and other players in the crime trade. McBain introduces each story. The collection his stores July 3, 2006, but you can pre-order it now.