Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

With as many anthologies as Ellen Datlow has edited, it’s a bit of a surprise to learn she’s never tackled a non-themed horror anthology until INFERNO: NEW TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL. The end result is nowhere near as iconic as some of the giants she namechecks in her introduction (DARK FORCES, 999), but it has enough good and great stories – all of them never before published – to set it ablaze with life.

Certainly it grabs your attention from the start, with K.W. Jeter’s “Riding Bitch,” an odd number set in a bar with a dead girl and a live guy with necrophiliac tendencies. Immediately following is Stephen Gallagher’s “Misadventure,” in which a team of remodelers make a gruesome discovery in the gym in which they’re laboring at night. (Hint: Don’t drink the pool water, and it has nothing to do with toddler urine).

The couple in mourning of Nathan Ballingrud’s “The Monsters of Heaven” finds solace from the grief over their kidnapped child in a clawed creature found in an alley. You know that can’t be a good thing, right? (The story, however, is.)

Lest you think Christopher Fowler is all about the buttoned-up Bryant & May mysteries, take in “The Uninvited,” the showpiece of INFERNO. Its black narrator finds himself at a series of Hollywood parties in the late ’60s, at each of which a strange incident always seems to occur, and for each of which a stranger group of guests no one seems to have invited is present. While I had an idea where it was headed, I didn’t think Fowler actually would go there. When he did, it still delievered goosebumps.

Equally as creepy is “Lives,” from John Grant, in which a child inexplicably has a knack for surviving tragedy after tragedy. Ironically, doing so rips his family apart. Joyce Carol Oates has one of the briefest entries with “Face,” but she manages to make it more grotesque than the stories five times its length – which should surprise nobody. What will is the uneasy feeling wrought by Lee Thomas’ “An Apiary of White Bees,” whose disturbing combo of bee stings and gay sex makes you think it could have been written by Clive Barker.

Heavy on British writers, INFERNO has its share of duds, most of which come in the last chunk of the collection. A back-of-the-book exception is Jeffrey Ford’s “The Bedroom Light.” In a change of all before it, it’s good-humored, yet slaps you sick with a final act of repulsion.

To varying degrees of success, Pat Cadigan, Lucius Shepard, Terry Dowling, P.D. Cacek, Elizabeth Bear and Laird Barron are among the 20 authors featured in Datlow’s INFERNO. It’s been a while since we had an excellent state-of-current-horror anthology, and this is just a couple of stories away from such distinction, yet certainly will work in the meantime. More established masters may have elevated it, but its bold choice to give ink to even bolder new voices will pay off both now and in the long run. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LAIRD BARRON:
• THE IMAGO SEQUENCE AND OTHER STORIES by Laird Barron

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF CHRISTOPHER FOWLER:
• TEN SECOND STAIRCASE by Christopher Fowler
• THE WATER ROOM by Christopher Fowler
• WHITE CORRIDOR by Christopher Fowler

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JOYCE CAROL OATES:
• AMERICAN GOTHIC TALES edited by Joyce Carol Oates
• THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE by Joyce Carol Oates
• THE MUSEUM OF DR. MOSES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE by Joyce Carol Oates

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF LUCIUS SHEPARD:
• SOFTSPOKEN by Lucius Shepard

Related posts:

1. American Supernatural Tales
2. The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense
3. American Gothic Tales
4. 999: Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense
5. Dead Man’s Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table