You have to be very careful with this book. You don’t want to leave it lying around the house where your kid can pick it up because if s/he’s wandering around with it and one of those people show up — nosy neighbors, social workers, youth ministers — and see what you allow your child to read, you’re going to jail. Edward Lee’s THE BLACK TRAIN contributed to my delinquency, and I haven’t been a minor since the Johnson administration.
Justin Collier is a celebrity in the worst way: He hosts a program on the Food Channel, on which he is known as “The Prince of Beer.” Lee has a lot of fun with the Food Channel connection. At one point, Justin is voted Sexiest Man on the Food Channel, which is something like being chosen Sexiest Girl in the Convent.
But Justin’s program has run its course — three seasons — and his contract is not being renewed. He’s also the author of several books about beer and he’s on the verge of completing a new one. He’s writing about the best microbreweries in America, and his topic has taken him to Gast, Tenn., home of Cusher’s Civil War beer. He meets and falls instantly in lust with Dominique Cusher, owner and brewmeister.
He finds he’s having a hard time keeping his hands off her. In fact, he’s having a hard time keeping his mitts off every woman he sees since checking into Gast House, the town’s largest B&B. Helen Butler, who operates the place, is into her 60s, but still has the looks to attract a weaker man than Justin. Even her mute, possibly marginally retarded daughter, Lottie, looks good enough to nibble on. A tourist from Wisconsin, of all places, comes on to Justin as well. What is it with this place?
Every so often, Lee cuts in with a flashback to the days before the Civil War when Harwood Gast, who built the house, spent six years constructing a railroad to the nowhere city of Maxon, neither a railhead nor a bustling city on the rise. His motivation, revealed late in the novel, is both a cause and a symptom of his overwhelming evil. Deal-with-the-devil evil.
Lee spends a lot of time following the day-to-day doings of his contemporary cast, much of it naughty and a good deal of it borderline-pornographic. I know horror is supposed to be transgressive, but it’s also supposed to scare you and most of the fear generated by THE BLACK TRAIN comes from pondering what your wife’s parents would think of you if they knew you read stuff like this. Kinky sex isn’t scary, unless it’s forced on the protagonist, which it isn’t.
The spooky part of the story involves ghosts intruding on the living. Lee comes close at times, especially with a pair of spectral little girls and their dog. Their nymphomaniacal mother, trying to induce Justin into spook sex, is just so silly that it’s tempting to think that Lee is putting us all on. But I doubt it. This one isn’t a well-placed screwball — it’s just a wild pitch.
I wonder if at times professional commercial horror writers run out of inspiration and have to produce books like this one to meet a contract, hoping that the next one will be better. We’ll see when that next one comes along. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BRIDES OF THE IMPALER by Edward Lee
• TRIAGE by Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Edward Lee
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- Cuts
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Doug, You might want to check out the limited edition Gast, which was what The Black Train was originally. While I have not read The Black Train yet, I understand that it is a tamed down version of Gast, as Lee’s Leisure releases are never as extreme as some of his hardcore “siction” for small publishers.
Steve, thanks for the tip. Some of the small presses send us books to review. In fact, I just finished one last night. Review to come. dgb
While he may not be putting us on exactly, I don’t doubt that Ed Lee has a lot of fun writing the stuff he comes up with. Like he’s doing his best to keep it entertaining for himself.
i’ve given Lee more than enough chances and his stuff always comes off as silly.