If you hate the print version of corporate horror, stuff that relies on clichéd characters and situations no matter how well they’re presented, John Saul is probably not your cup of boiling oil. Saul’s been popping out horror and suspense novels for more than 30 years now and he’s never gotten any respect from the hardcore crowd. Even Stephen King used to smack him upside the head.
Saul’s FACES OF FEAR is out in paperback now, and I experienced an odd reaction to it. I found it compulsively readable, like the work of an old pro that it is, and yet I never really liked it all that much. As I sped through it, I kept hoping it would jump off the tracks, but it never did.
Alison Shaw is a moderately attractive 15-year old in Los Angeles, where moderate just doesn’t get it done. Adding to her low self-esteem, looks-wise, is the fact that her thimble-breasts show no promise of growth. Now, there’s no point in getting all mature here and saying that breast size, especially when the size is small, isn’t important. She’s 15. Of course it’s important.
Her mom, a hotshot Realtor named Risa, marries on the rebound a plastic surgeon named Conrad Dunn, who fetishizes the female face and body, and if you can’t see where this is going, you need to quit reading so many romance novels and get with the horror program.
As you might expect, Alison has problems with her old, middle-class, Santa Monica friends when she and her mom move to the ritzier Bel Air. Nothing she has/does/wants to do is good enough for the new crowd. Maybe this stuff is included to garner empathy from female readers who already have adequate boobs, but still don’t score too high on the Popularity-O-Meter.
Some plot points are left unresolved and there’s even a character who you just know is going to serve some good purpose, but then disappears before the denouement and never returns. She’s a TV reporter who is trying to beat the police in finding out why a serial killer is stealing parts of his victims’ faces. Is she going to help solve the case, or maybe become a victim? I know, I sound now like I’m lamenting a chance for Saul to use yet another same-old/same-old situation, but you can’t avoid a clichéd character by just dropping her and pretending she was never in the story in the first place. Is he planning to bring her back in his next book?
Alison is a pleasant young woman to spend some reading time with, and her father and his new boyfriend are good guys, but most of the rest of the characters range from abrasive to not-fully-realized. It’s just that Saul comes up with no surprises, as if he doesn’t want to really get under your skin — he’s just gonna spin a spooky tale around the campfire for a bunch of kids who want to act scared but not be scared. Saul’s stuff is old-fashioned and relatively tame. Even when the new writers — guys like Brian Keene and Edward Lee — are not quite up to the high standards they set in previous books, they can still surprise you with an unexpected twist in character or plot.
So John Saul is the Coors Lite of contemporary horror fiction: professionally brewed, but not strong enough for anyone used to drinking Pabst. —Doug Bentin
Related posts:
- The Many Faces of Van Helsing
- The Face of Fear
- Anatomy of Fear
- Never Fear
- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Don’t Fear the Reaper
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the only Saul i’ve read was his first; Suffer The Children. it’s been years and i can’t really remember anything other than that it was pretty disturbing