Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Few of my prophecies work out. I am, after all, the guy who predicted that TERMINATOR 2 would flop at the box office.

To my credit, though, I’m also the guy who crystal-balled the idea that FALLING ANGEL by William Hjortsberg would become a classic. At the time –  1978 – not everybody agreed with me. Hard-boiled purists claimed that mixing the supernatural with the private-eye genre was a defilement of both forms.

But how can you dismiss a novel that’s as well written as anything Raymond Chandler ever penned, as spooky as the best of Stephen King, and as historically fascinating (New York City in the ’50s) as Caleb Carr’s THE ALIENIST?

Millipede Press, one of the smartest of small publishing houses, has brought out a new trade paperback edition introduced by noir master James Crumley (my favorite novel of his being THE WRONG CASE, a book, as I recall, not even Crumley thinks much of; and speaking of predictions, everybody I arm-twisted into buying it went “nyet”).

I don’t have to do much selling here, do I? If you have even the barest crime fiction collection, this belongs on the classics shelf, a bloody stew of voodoo and gumshoe.

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Over the past 20 years, Christopher Fahy has written a number of novels that put him at the top of the suspense-horror genres. It’s not just his polish and wit that makes his books so special; it’s also his somber, serious take on our society that makes his book linger in memory.

Examples of all his literary virtues are easy to find in his new collection MATINEE AT THE FLAME, from Overlook Connection Press. The stories have enough supernatural razzle-dazzle to thrill the horror fan, but also enough realistic grit to please the more mainstream reader.

The best story for me is the title story. If you’re old enough to remember playwright John Osborne’s “The Entertainer,” you’ll recall that Osborne was dealing with the artist’s inability to separate the stage him from the “real” him. Fahy goes him one better. Here, the artist is an ordinary man who is thrust on the stage of a deserted (or so he thought) movie theater where he shares with a cynical audience all the ways he has failed in his life. A moving, memorable tale – a trip down the biploar vortex, for sure.

“Transformations,” “It’s in the Cards” and “Convention” (a funny take on fan gatherings) are among the other winners in a book without any clinkers. Good to see Chris Fahy back again.

• • •

I’m pretty sure I first read GRAVE DESCEND in a men’s magazine of the late ’60s – REAL BALLS ADVENTURE or one of those. I’m also pretty sure it was published there under the John Lange pen name, as was its initial appearance in paperback. Now, Hard Case Crime has brought it back with a sexy cover painting reminiscent of the ’50s and ’60s.

This is fine basic pulp written by one of the great pulp writers of our time, Michael Crichton, masquerading as Lange. You don’t read Crichton for style or character especially (though he’s much better at both than he’s usually given credit for); you read him for story and, man, can he tell a story, as here where a wrecked yacht creates a mystery that attracts (thank God) all the wrong kinds of people, including our protagonist. If you want to study plotting 101, this is a book you should analyze for setting up a mystery that grows richer with each chapter.

Not too long after this book’s first appearance, Crichton published THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and quickly became rich and famous.

If you like to relax with the kind of slicked-up adventure paperback original that came into vogue in the 1970s, you’ll want to pick this one up. The back jacket copy also lists several other “John Lange” novels, each of them as good as this one. They deserve to be in print again and hopefully Hard Case will do them.

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Among the many fine things Gauntlet Press has done over its history is to bring us Richard Matheson material that we probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

That tradition certainly continues with BLOODLINES, edited by Mark Dawidziak: Matheson’s DRACULA (his screenplay), the full-length novel I AM LEGEND, several Matheson classic short stories doing riffs on the vampire legend and tributes from various Hollywood people.

For all that’s he accomplished, I still don’t think Matheson has ever gotten his due for how much he changed popular fiction in horror, mystery, Western and mainstream fiction. The tributes here pretty much say the same thing: how powerful an influence he’s been on at least three generations of writers and yet he’s still not a household name.

This is a splendid book in every respect and many thanks to publisher BarryHoffman, editor Dawidziak and, of course, Matheson himself.

• • •

Back in the ’50s, it was the most devout of dreams of science-fiction fans to see a slick magazine devoted to nothing but SF stories The reasoning was that the slick format – shiny paper, color throughout – would convince skeptics that SF was a legitimate form of popular fiction. Thus did Hugo Gernsback create the publication called SF+. The problem being, as I recall, that for all its good looks, the fiction was almost ridiculously old-fashioned, the sort that Gernsback himself had published when launched AMAZING STORIES back in the ’30s.

Then in the Seventies came VERTEX, a handsome magazine with some extremely good stories. But it just didn’t find the audience required to support ambitions.

Less dramatic attempts were tried with mystery magazines. Most notably, MANHUNT and HITCHCOCK notably turned their digest-size formats into the size of the recently refigured TV GUIDE: much bigger, splashier. But the format change ddn’t work out and the magazines reverted to digest-size.

Finally, there’s a genre magazine that has not only survived but prospered as a large-size, slick, full-color and advertising-packed succes.

I’m taking about, of course, THE STRAND MAGAZINE, which slants its contents toward the Golden Age of detective fiction (the original STRAND being the UK magazine that dominated crime fiction at the turn of the last century), but complements this with articles and interviews with Colin Dexter, Carolyn Hart, Max Allan Collins and Martin Edwards). This is really an imposing, impressive magazine that certainly demonstrates that mystery fiction can hold its own with all other newstand magazines. This is one you need to check out right away: www.strandmag.com

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Donald Westlake once remarked something to the effect that a cult writer is someone who’s three readers short of making a living. John Shirley always has had plenty of work, yet he still seems to be a working definition of cult writer. His loyal followers are fanatical about his work and though he can turn out for-hire books quickly (based on a piece he wrote in THE ALIEN CRITIC years ago), he seems willing to defy all trends and publishing wisdom when it comes to doing his serious work. He does what he wants, the way he wants.

Infrapress’ IN DARKNESS WAITING is a good example. While an outline of the novel seems familiar enough – a large cast of characters in a small desert town come to realize that they are under siege by creatures that come to be called Gray Pilots – Shirley is really using the metaphoric invasion (ancient creatures that have long fostered the worst in humanity) to address, as he often does, the rather sorry moral state of our species.

None of this is done pretentiously. Shirley is an exciting writer whether he’s doing a fight scene, a love scene or handling backstory. He’s got plenty of pulp in him and that makes for great reading, at least when handled with his particular brand of skill and ferocity. He’s also got something few writers have – let alone sustain over a long career: true, raging passion for his people and his beliefs. That keeps his work fresh and urgent.

It’s a great read, one way too long-out-of-print. Also look for Shirley’s CELLARS, also published by Infrapress, with an excellent introduction by Edward Lee. It’s as good as IN DARKNESS WAITING, and every bit as brutal, nasty and somber in its look at our nature. –Ed Gorman

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• GRAVE DESCEND by John Lange
• STATE OF FEAR by Michael Crichton
• WOMAN by Richard Matheson