Clerks III: The Screenplay by Kevin Smith

 

(pb; 2022: screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“After suffering a massive heart attack, Randal enlists friends and fellow clerks Dante, Elias, Jay and Silent Bob to help him make a movie about life at the Quick Stop.

“This limited-edition version of the Clerks III screenplay was made for VIPs of The Convenience Tour—Fall 2022.”

 

Review

Clerks III, screenplay and 2022 film, made me laugh a lot and (almost) cry just as much—the latter, in an ultimately great way, because it meant that not only had Smith penned and directed one of his best films, maturity-wise, but he created a oeuvre- and mortality-acknowledging work that flows in a natural-feel pace, showing you can have characterization, humor and heart in equal, effective measure, one that doesn’t feel like it was a written in genre-unbalanced, ham-fisted and talking down to the audience manner. This is how you do it right, sans sappy b.s. scoring, too-cute puppies and players, while throwing in some Star Wars, rude humor and playful takes on religion.

If you like Smith’s overall Clerks and/or Jay and Silent Bob franchises, chances are you’ll find something to like about Clerk III, even if you’re put out by its underlying seriousness. Great work, worth owning.

Shards of Space by Robert Sheckley

 

(pb; 1962: science fiction story anthology)

 

Overall review

The stories in Shards range from excellent (“The Slow Season,” “Alone at Last”) to solid and entertaining (“Fool’s Mate,” “Subsistence Level”), showing Sheckley to an overall superb, timeless-in-his-themes-and-situations author, making this classic (in the best possible way) anthology one worth purchasing, and Sheckley a writer worth looking out for.

 

Review, story by story

“Prospector’s Special”: In Venus’s Scorpion Desert, a goldenstone miner (Morrison), seeking his fortune for himself and his wife—he hopes to buy and run an “ocean farm” with dolphins as well-treated employees—tracks a red and purple vein of goldenstone, hoping to achieve the titular special. As disasters pile up on him, he keeps on, despite others, via “’port” and phone, encouraging him to give up and return to civilization.

 

This is an excellent, humor-limned, offbeat and often surprising ticking-clock/relentlessly intense tale; it emotionally hooked me, had me rooting for Morrison as the story progressed. “Prospector’s” end is fun, bringing to the fore the humor previously took a backseat to the increasingly dire situation. Memorable, superb.

 

“The Girls and Nugent Miller”: A post-nuclear war man (Miller) unexpectedly encounters something he hasn’t seen the since the start of humanity’s wipeout: a group of living people, women! Unfortunately for the bull-headed Miller, they’re fierce, feminist females. Solid story, with a chilling, too-timely ending.

 

“Meeting of the Minds”: On “the island of Vuanu, southernmost of the Solomons, almost in the Louisade Archipelago,” a team of Spanish galleon treasure hunters attempt to fend off a Martian bug (a Quedak) intent on sharing a global mind-meld with them. Good, weird-situation story with a fun alien and a solid, relatively happy wrap-up.

 

“Potential”: An amnesiac wakes up alone on a seriously damaged spaceship flying through space. Why can’t he remember anything? And what is this mysterious mission that has the pre-programmed ship planet-hopping, searching for other humanoid life?

 

Fast-paced, tightly edited tale, this, with its well-timed reveals and disturbing, interesting ideas and finish.

 

“Fool’s Mate”: A long-standing stalemate between two warring enemies is broken, when the Earth-based humans’ President’s Executive (Richard Ellsner) decides to abandon the Configuration-Probability-Calculator’s [CPC] projected, chess-minded potential casualty reports, the reason for the stalemate: both sides are using the same reports. Solid, interesting story, with familiar but effective twist-of-sorts.

 

“Subsistence Level”: Solid story about a “pioneering” couple, Amelie and Dirk Bogren, move to a planetoid on the outskirts of society, largely due to Dirk’s restless nature and dislike of crowds, only to see their rough-life home become a popular destination.

 

“The Slow Season”: A financially struggling dressmaker (Slobod) is hired to sew dresses with inhuman, wildly varied measurements by a cryptic customer (Mr. Bellis). Succinct, excellent Twilight Zone-esque work, with a memorable story and ending. This is one of the best stories I’ve read in recent years.

 

“Alone at Last”: Another gem of a Twilight Zone-esque tale, this, where a man (Arwell), seeking near-absolute solitude, embarks on a journey toward a “dangerous” destination. It’s not difficult to see where “Alone” is headed but its specific details and tonal-shift finish make this super-short story stunning, excellent.

 

“Forever”: A scientist with a world-changing serum is hunted by menacing, metropolitan strangers while heading to a patent office to register his scientific discovery. Fun, smart, quirky adventure-work.

 

“The Sweeper of Loray”: Grim, sad tale about two astronauts (Professor Carver and his assistant, Fred)—opportunistic and imperialistic in their respective missions—studying and hoping to steal a “universal panacea” from peaceful, tribal aliens (the Lorayans), who don’t want to give it to them. Well-written, one of the darkest entries in this anthology.

 

“The Special Exhibit”: A mild-mannered ornithologist (Mr. Grant) shows his wife “of such heroic proportions and meager mentality” (Mrs. Grant) a scientific exhibit-experiment exclusively reserved for the happiness of museum employees and specialists. While it’s easy to spot where it’s likely going, “Special” is an immensely satisfying, darkly cheerful and waste-no-words work about coupledom and “a far more effective problem solver than marriage counseling.” Above-average, Twilight Zone-esque.

The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus by John Burke

(pb; 1967: movie tie-in/novella collection)

 

From the back cover

“The Reptile

“From the steaming jungles of Borneo to a remote Cornish village came the fiendish curse that turned a lovely young girl into a nameless horror.

 

“Dracula – Prince of Darkness

“Blood mingles with the ashes and so becomes a life-giving force to the evil desires of a Vampire.

 

“Rasputin – The Mad Monk

“Hypnotist, seducer, libertine and drunkard—he ruled the Tsar’s court like a devil incarnate.

 

“The Plague of the Zombies

“Infamous Voodoo ritual casts its barbarous shadow over a village of ‘the undead.’”

 

Overall review

Like its predecessor anthology, Second Hammer is worth owning and reading, with three of the four based-on-screenplay novellas providing for excellent chills; the outlier tale, “Rasputin—The Mad Monk,” is entertaining, vastly improved by Burke’s writing (as is “The Reptile”) but “Rasputin” feels thin when compared to the others.

This slices of Gothic fun and terror book is out of print as far as I know of, so if you’re curious about it and see it for what you consider a reasonable price (do your research), pick it up! You can always sell it to someone who (may) love it more than you.

 

Review, novella by novella

The Reptile: Set in summer 1902 in “the village of Clagmoor in Cornwall, England, known as Larkrise,” a London couple (Harry and Valerie Spaulding) honeymoon in the rustic cottage Harry inherited from his recently dead brother (Charles Edward Spaulding), who died of a mysterious “heart attack.”

Once in Clagmoor, the newly married Spauldings encounter hostility, passive and aggressive, from most of the natives. One of them, inn keeper Tom Bailey, helps them when he can—whilst treading carefully so as to not offend his fellow, longtime patrons. Then there’s quietly hostile, emotionally strained Doctor Franklyn, a theologian, seemingly abusive father of the “lovely” Anna, both of whom are hiding a deadly secret. Will the Spauldings, with aid from Bailey, find out what’s going on with the strange silence surrounding the plague of “heart attacks” which seem to strike those around the Franklyns?

Like Burke’s four adaptations in The Hammer Horror Omnibus (1966), “Reptile” is an entertaining, waste-no-words and creepy-atmospheric tale, with quick-sketch-but-effective characterization and fast-moving action. In the case of “Reptile,” this is a vast improvement on its overlong, thin-story-stretched-to-feature-length film; at best, it was an hourlong short. Good read, especially for those familiar with the film version, or looking for a quick-read Hammer Films Ltd. Fix.

The cinematic counterpart of the same name debuted in England in February 1966; it was released stateside on April 6, 1966. The film was directed by John Gilling, from a screenplay by producer Anthony Hinds.

 

“Dracula – Prince of Darkness”: Charles and Diana Kent, a married couple, are traveling through the Carpathian mountains with Charles’s more conservative brother (Alan) and his shrew of a spouse (Helen) when ill luck befalls them and they find themselves stranded near a castle that not only offers shelter from the relentless rain and the dark forest but—dare they hope?—a telephone. Making them further uneasy is the fact that earlier a local, friendlier-than-other-villagers priest (Shandor) warned them not to go anywhere near the castle but didn’t tell them why.

They quickly find out why they were warned away but it’s too late, as Klove (the unsettling keeper of said castle) reveals himself to be in the service of another, who’s been dead for ten years: Dracula.

Burke again keeps the characters and their (mis)fortunes fast-paced, bloody, Gothic and bold (spectacle-wise) in the way that the best Hammer films are. This eighty-five-page pulp adventure is a febrile and delectable ride with vivid descriptions that thrill (e.g., “. . . making a last appeal to a thousand guardian demons”) and titillate in equal proportion. Excellent adaptation of its source 1966 film, which is also a blast, if I remember right (I haven’t seen it in a few years).

The film version, originally titled Dracula, Prince of Darkness was helmed by Terence Fisher, scripted by Jimmy Sangster and producer Anthony Hinds. It was released in Britain in January 1966.

 

“Rasputin—The Mad Monk”: Set in the early twentieth century (about 1916, the year the real-life Grigori Rasputin was killed), this mix of historical fact and mostly fiction, “Rasputin” is thinly plotted, character-study-intense story, with the titular odious and greedy hypnotist grifter worming his way into the Tsarina’s St. Petersburg court with help from a “struck off the medical register,” sometimes reluctant Dr. Boris Zargo.

Others, including everyman Peter Vassilievitch, set out to stop the lascivious, wily con artist. Can they stop him before he makes everyone around him his puppet, slaves to his seemingly inexhaustible desires?

Burke’s pulpy and tightly edited writing elevates this thinly plotted, eighty-four-page story into something worth reading (can’t comment on its 1966 source film iteration; I haven’t seen it in decades). Solid, good read, this.

Don Sharp directed “Rasputin”’s film version. Producer Anthony Hinds wrote the screenplay. It was released in Britain on February 20,1966.

 

“The Plague of the Zombies”: Religion (Haitian voodoo), capitalism, romance, their resulting zombies, and death come together in this (again) tautly penned Gothic-in-a-Cornish-village story, solid in its themes, content and overall delivery. This entertaining, fast-moving and excellent different take on zombies is a great, short-ish (eighty-two pages long) tale, worth owning and reading. I don’t remember the film which I haven’t seen in a while, but I seem to remember thinking this is one of the better non-classic monsters horror films Hammer put out.

Directed by John Gilling, “Plague”’s cinematic counterpart received a wide release in Britain on January 9, 1966. Peter Bryan wrote its screenplay.

You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2023)

From the back cover

“Dreams shouldn’t kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that’s not what Elias [Thompson] learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she’s the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she’s awake. Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.”

 

Review

Always, a relatively light entry in Mellick’s oeuvre, is pure delight, poking fun at Portland, Oregon, the author’s current city-of-residence while marking the social anxiety of the recent COVID-19 outbreak as well as the uncertainties, cruelty and fickleness of collegiate youth.

The characters are deftly sketched out, fleshed enough to ring as relatable and true, while the fast-moving, often funny and sometimes gory story, with its well-placed (and often quiet) twists redirecting the plot/action into new, distinctly Mellick territory, darkly hilarious with underlying seriousness and a multilayered, disturbing-or-comforting finish, depending on your mood. This is a great read if you’re looking to read a lighter-in-tone, later Mellick work, one of my favorite novellas by him.

Alien: Covenant -- Origins by Alan Dean Foster

 

(pb; 2017: book-only prequel to Alan Dean Foster’s 2017 movie tie-in novelization of Alien: Covenant)

 

From the back cover

“The Covenant mission is the most ambitious endeavor in the history of Weyland-Yutani. A ship bound for Origae-6, carrying two thousand colonists beyond the limits of known space, this is a make-or-break investment for the corporation—and for the future of mankind.

“Yet there are those who would die to stop the mission. As the colony ship hovers in Earth orbit, several violent events reveal a deadly conspiracy to sabotage the launch. While Captain Jacob Branson and his wife Daniels complete their preparations, security chief Daniel Lupé recruits the final key member of his team. Together they seek to stop the perpetrators before the ship and its passengers.

Review

This official prequel to the events of Alien: Covenant (2017; director: Ridley Scott) is a well-written but superfluous, fill-in-all-the-timeline-blanks work. Foster, a consistently solid-to-great author, penned a solid novella-length story with solid characters—a few of whom appear in Scott’s Alien: Covenant, e.g., Daniels, Tennessee and Lupé. Unfortunately, Covenant—Origins isn’t a novella, it’s a novel, with a story that feels lightweight, character and event-wise, compared to the bigger-in-scope Alien works, an entertaining but overlong trifle in a series studded with some excellent entries, cinema and book-wise.

I’d recommend Covenant—Origins if you’re a die-hard/completist fan of the Alien franchise, looking for story- and character expansions you won’t get in the films and other books. This is a worthwhile read, if you’re of those mindsets and keep your expectations of Covenant—Origin’s stakes relatively low, and enjoy sporadic bits of gunplay/action, corporate intrigue, roughshod revolutionaries (the Earthsavers), and don’t expect a lot of monsters (besides those clawed shadow-things in Duncan’s apoplectic nightmares).

All the Rage by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2000: fourth book in the Repairman Jack series)

From the back cover

“Can you imagine a new chemical compound, a non-addictive designer drug that heightens your assertiveness, opens the door to your primal self, giving you an edge wherever you compete, whether on the street or the football field, in a classroom or a boardroom? Wouldn’t you be tempted to try it. . . just once? What happens if it releases the uncontrollable rage and makes you a killer?”

 

Review

Wilson’s Rage is full-on-screenplay/nothing-left-to-the-imagination ambitious, a mostly excellent novel with its thoroughly explored characters (some annoying, e.g., the often shrill/emotional-flip-out Gia), memorably wild and well-foreshadowed situations, and story-centric callbacks to earlier Repairman Jack books. Fans of H.G. Wells’s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (or at least three of its cinematic adaptations) may especially enjoy Rage, which often references Jack’s fondness for it.

If I have any nits about Rage, it’s that some of its near-the-end scenes run a bit longer than necessary (almost to the point of ridiculousness, character motivation-wise) or the characters do or say dumb things. But this is a minor complaint for an otherwise superb work, one worth reading and owning, despite its several overlong end-chapters. Followed by Hosts (2001).

The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald

 

(pb; 1979: eighteenth book in MacDonald’s twenty-one-book Travis McGee series)

 

From the back cover

“It was a new kind of game for Travis McGee.

“It was called love. . .

“In another season there were girls of summer, robust and playful in their sandy ways, and now here were the winter ones, with cool surmise in the tended eye, fragrant and speculative, strolling and sailing and tanning, making their night music and night scent. And then there was Gretel.

“Gretel had discovered the key to me—all of me. And suddenly I had something to hope for.

“Then terribly, unexpectedly she was dead. From a mysterious illness, they told me. But I knew they were lying. Gretel had been murdered. And now I was out for blood.”

 

Review

Narrated by series protagonist and “salvage consultant” Travis McGee in first-person past-tense, this entertaining, often conversational-toned and sometimes dark mystery/thriller is a blast-through read, with well-developed characters (even if you’re new to the Travis McGee series like me), cut-to-it pacing and overall excellence, its death cultic villains (the military-minded members of the “Church of Apocrypha”) worth hissing at whilst indicating a larger, more ominous threat, should McGee fail in his quest to avenge the needless killing of his beloved girlfriend, Gretel Howard. Green does a great job of setting up this umbrella, moneyed threat for future McGee novels (something I hope MacDonald delivered on with later McGee entries).

Worth owning and a standout (in a good way) beach read—especially in southeastern Florida, where McGee often lives—Green was followed by Free Fall in Crimson.

Black Orchids by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1941, 1942: ninth book in Stout’s Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the back cover

“The incredibly brilliant Nero Wolfe is the orchid-growing gourmet whose sheer genius at deduction is without peer. Together with his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, he must utilize his vast resources to solve two cases that concern something perhaps too close to his heart—orchids. Black orchids. Never has the big man been matched against a mystery so curious—or fragrantly deadly.”

 

Review

In “Black Orchids,” a wildly clever and deadly shooting at a New York City Flower Show compels Wolfe and his reliable, sarcastic “confidential assistant” (Archie Goodwin, who narrates Wolfe’s mystery-solving adventures) to suss out who set up the public death of a scoundrel (Harry Gould).

In “Cordially Invited to Meet Death,” a young woman (Bess Hiddleton) who’s receiving threatening letters turns up dead, her ending borne of tetanus—a seeming, strange accident (to some) that sets off Wolfe and Goodwin’s crime-solving alarm bells.

“Black” shows how Wolfe gains six rare, black orchids that he badly wants whilst solving a well thought-out killing, with a consistently randy Goodwin flirting with the ladies, often while doing Wolfe’s sarcastically commented-upon bidding.

“Cordially” is a bit racier in parts (a woman, with good reason, is accidentally seen sans clothing—with nary a description, for those who are concerned about that sort of thing), with an ending that speaks to, hints at Wolfe’s rarely seen tender side, keeping with the tone of these two consistent-with-the-series clever and fast-paced tales.

Black, structurally, is a great anthological offset to the novels that came before it, its use/linking of black orchids excellent, in a character-expanding, tonally true way. Great read, worth owning. Followed by Not Quite Dead Enough (1944).

The Scarlatti Inheritance by Robert Ludlum

 

(pb; 1971)

 

From the back cover

“Her weapons: money and power. Her target: the most dangerous man in the world—her own son. Elizabeth Wyckham Scarlatti has a plan, a desperate last-minute gamble designed to save the world from her son, Ulster, an incalculably cruel man who is working for the Third Reich under the name of Heinrich Kroeger. If Elizabeth cannot stop him, Ulster will give Hitler the most powerful instrument on earth.”

 

 

Review

Scarlatti is equal parts accounting reports and Ludlum’s trademark (sometimes emotional) character-based action, an entertaining, clever, element- and character-balanced conspiratorial ride set in the time just before World War II. Scarlatti is also a stylistic and trademark offset tale from Ludlum’s other more action-heavy novels, e.g., Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy. Worth owning, this.

Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze

 

(pb; 1954)

From the back cover

“When Tim Sunblade escapes from prison, his sole possession is an infallible plan for the ultimate heist. Trouble is it’s a two-person job. So when he meets Virginia, a curiously well-spoken ‘ten-dollar tramp,’ and discovers that the only thing she cares for is ‘drifts of money, lumps of it,’ he knows he’s met his partner. What he doesn’t suspect is that this lavender-eyed angel might just prove to be his match.”

 

Review

Black Wings, told in the first person from the perspective Kenneth McClure (aka Tim Sunblade), is an immediately immersive, exciting and sometimes violent and flirty read, detailing his adrenaline-spiked criminal run with Virginia, to its darkly humorous and karmic finish. If their trajectories, separate and together, are familiar to pulp/noir fans, it’s not to the detriment of Chaze’s work here: it merely provides the framework in which the character-driven action happens.

Fans of wild-women characters may especially enjoy Black Wings’ Virginia, who reminds me of other iconic noir/pulp femme fatatles: Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Double Indemnity (1944), Vera (Ann Savage) in Detour (1945) and Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) in Gun Crazy (1950).

Black is another great entry in the pulp genre, up there with other top tier works in the genre—worth owning.

#

Il gèle en enfer (1990; English translation: He’s freezing in hell), directed and co-scripted by Jean-Pierre Mocky, was adapted from Black Wings and released in France on April 25, 1990. Jean-Pierre Mocky played Tim. Lauren Grandt, billed as Laura Grandt, played Georgia (the cinematic equivalent of Virginia from the source novel).

Signalz by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2020: sixth book in the Adversary Cycle, aka the Nightworld Cycle)

 

From the back cover

“Twilight has come. Night will fall.

“It will begin in the heavens and end in Earth.

“But before that. . . the rules will be broken.

“The Change is coming, and the world as we know it is ending. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Tate has changed. She looks the same, but her mother detects someone else looking out through her blue eyes. Ellie builds a ‘shelter’ in her room with an entrance that leads. . . elsewhere.

“And what of the convoy of tractor trailers Hari Tate watches drive up to a mountain road and return without the trailers. . . leaving nothing on the mountain. What are they shipping?

“And the writer who finds a hole in the floor of his NYC apartment and tumbles through into. . . elsewhere.

“They will all find each other and find their answers in the electromagnetic pulses piercing the Earth from Out There, pulses that no one should hear, but some do. But they are not simply pulses. They are Signalz.”

 

Review

Nicola Tesla, or at least his legacy, again plays a part in Wilson’s work, with electronic pulses, heard by a few, taking them to scattered, faraway places, most of them within our terrestrial realm. This is a fun science fiction/horror, nightmares-melting-into-reality-and-back work, with interesting characters (e.g., Hari Tate, a tough forensic accountant) and a no-going-back, semi-cliffhanger finish that made me excited for the next and (thus-far) final Adversary Cycle book, Nightworld.

Money Shot by Christa Faust

 

(pb; February 2025. First book in the Angel Dare series.)

 

From the back cover

“THEY THOUGHT SHE’D BE EASY. THEY THOUGHT WRONG.

“It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she’d been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she’ll get to the bottom of what’s been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way.”

 

Review

Faust, with her gritty and pulp-veracious execution, penned a quick, reader-hooking read when she wrote Money—it has human warmth in unexpected places, sleaze, greed, violence, lust, gore and even a quick rape scene that’s not gratuitous and lends appropriate-but-succinct emotional weight to that last crime. Just as importantly, Faust brings together dark/wry humor, an insider’s view of the porn industry with the natural sleaze factor that makes pulp so palpable and worth reading. This is a great, if overlong novel (its last quarter could’ve been shorter, more action-intense gritty and genre effective). Worth owning, this. Followed by Chokehold.

Hatchet Girls by Joe R. Lansdale

 

(hb; 2025: fourteenth novel in the Hap and Leonard series)

 

From the back cover

“When Hap and Leonard are called in on a strange request (subduing a meth-hopped hog) by a desperate young lady, they quickly learn this woman is part of a fringe group: The Hatchet Girls, who have pledged their allegiance to a crazed and grudge-bearing leader bent on bloody societal revenge. The timing couldn't be worse to be caught in such a vile, sticky wicket of a case: both boys are wrapped up in their domestic lives: Leonard is in the midst of wedding planning with fiance, Pookie. And meanwhile, Hap and Brett are hard at work on their new home. Homemaking bliss will have to wait as Hap and Leonard are driven to stop the danger in its tracks and better understand the group's mission and the plans they have already set in place for helter-skelter-esque mayhem.

“Life changes, midnight sneaks, and dark encounters with misguided dames who yell ‘Chop, Chop,’ lead Hap and Leonard into one of their darkest adventures yet.”

Review

Hatchet, as with other Hap and Leonard [H&P] works, finds the colorful, quip-exchanging duo (as well as their friends and family) taking on  another “simple job” only to have it metastasize into bigger, uglier, offbeat, timely and infinitely more dangerous situations. Unlike Sugar on the Bones, the previous H&P book, Hatchet feels downsized storywise, with only a few H&P core characters (Brett, Hap’s wife; Pookie, Leonard’s fiancé; Justin, the newest local sheriff; etc.) involved in the action—a nice offset from the excellent, warm Sugar, making for a more intimate, equally warm, occasionally nasty and (at times) hair-raising follow-up.

There’s a lot of meditation about getting older in Hatchet, a relatively lighter tone that further shows the maturation of Hap and Leonard, as well as those around them. I love this series; every entry inspires a sense of visiting old friends within me. Another great read from Lansdale, worth owning.

Reprisal by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1992: fifth book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka Adversary Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“In The Keep, a squad of Nazi soldiers unleashed a terrible life force far more monstrous than the Third Reich.

“In Reborn, a human embryo struck fear in the hearts of the chosen few who could feel its power from the womb.

“Now, in Reprisal, bestselling author F. Paul Wilson resurrects the ancient, vampiric evil in a young man born of flesh and blood. A young southern college student named Rafe hides his true and secret identity. But soon the whole world will know. All of humankind will suffer. And Rafe will feed, forever, on their tears and pain.”

 

Review

Reprisal is a relatively straightforward (with a few big twists, fewer than usual) read. A good number of its characters, e.g., former Jesuit priest Will Ryan, now going under the name Will Ryerson, are returnees from Reborn, and two of them—Mr. Veilleur, aka Glaeken and Glenn; Rasalom, aka Molasar—appeared in the first Nightworld Cycle novel, The Keep.

But things are different now for them. Veilleur/Glaeken is a septuagenarian man, whose wife (Magda, from Keep) now has Alzheimer’s. Rasalom, who’s gone through a few incarnations, is now Rafe Losmara, a collegiate edgelord-type who’s in tune with his dark, murky-world powers—powers he means to unleash upon the world in full, once he’s accomplished his current mission, something that has to do with Ryan/Ryerson and those around him.

An easy-to-gauge-its-“secrets” novel, Reprisal is a fun-blast offset from some of Wilson’s more ambitious works. I enjoyed it for its almost B-movie-simple plot, its tight editing, and straightforward pushing-toward-a-Rasalom-Glaeken-climax writing.

One of my favorite Wilson books, this. It’s not a wrap-up—it has a semi-cliffhanger-ish finish—but it’s a satisfying and hard-to-set-down bringing together of familiar characters worth rooting for or loathing. Followed by Signalz.

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin

 

(pb; 2025)

 

From the back cover

“A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.

“The Baroness, an infamous [1935] exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer―deeply closeted and pathologically repressed―begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

“As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real and is happening to her―and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

“Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind: Do you want it? More than anything?”

 

Review

Set in New York (Staten island, Brooklyn), New Jersey (Clifton) and Delaware (Dover) in 1983, this only-for-die-hard/gorehound and LGBTQ+ friendly readers is a fiercely feminist, button-pushing read that slips seamlessly between Ellen Kramer’s nightmares and reality, rife with antisemitism, body horror, rape and sexism, bringing to me (at least for this reader) Poppy Z. Brite’s (aka Billy Martin) 1996 queer- and body horror-centric Exquisite Corpse as well as Clive Barker’s early to mid-career works.

Making Black even more horror-giddy, truly-cinematic fun is Felker-Martin’s love of film—explicit, fond mentions of Alien (1979), Halloween (1978), director/screenwriter David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby. Black’s finish brings to mind the following films: Demons (1985), Knife + Heart (2018), The Lords of Salem (2012) and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009). Real-life piece-of-fecal-matter Sen. Strom Thurman and a delightful Rodney Dangerfield (he’s filming Easy Money) make an appearance in this nunsploitation-flirtatious and tightly written, ambitious work, one worth owning.

Columbus: His Enterprise--Exploding the Myth by Hans Koning

 

(pb; 1976, 1991: nonfiction)

From the back cover

“Most of us been taught to think of Christopher Columbus as a single-minded, courageous visionary whose navigational skills led him to ‘discover’ the Americas. In this . .  revisionist biography accessible to people of all ages, Koning gives us the true history of Columbus’s life and voyages.

 

“Koning describes how Columbus’s consuming drive to send ‘mountains of gold’ back to Spain shaped his life, beginning the story with his childhood in Genoa and ending after his return from his fourth and final voyage, an old man in disgrace. He shows how Columbus’s ‘discovery’ led to the enrichment of the conquerors through the plunder and murder of the native peoples of the Americas.

“In an afterword for teachers, Bill Bigelow—a high school social studies teacher and the author of several curricula—shows how the book can be imaginatively used in the classroom to teach students to read history skeptically.”

 

Review

The “From the back cover” description pretty much sums up what I’d write as a review for this compelling, disturbing, necessary, cut-to-it and more honest portrayal of Columbus and the world he inhabited and exploited. It’s a simply stated, stunning and smart nonfiction book that I will keep—I usually give away or sell books when I’m done reading them—and plan to read again, sometime in the distant future. Worth owning, and one of my favorite reads of 2025.

S by Koji Suzuki

 

(pb; 2012 – English translation release: 2017: fifth book in the Ring Cycle. Translated from Japanese to English by Greg Gencorello.)

 

From the back cover

“Takanori Ando, son of Spiral protagonist Mitsuo, works at a small CGI production company and hopes to become a filmmaker one day despite coming from a family of doctors. When he’s tasked by his boss to examine a putatively live-streamed video of a suicide that’s been floating around the internet, the aspiring director takes on more than he bargained for. His lover Akane, an orphan who grew up at a foster-care facility and is now a rookie high-school teacher, ends up watching the clip. She is pregnant, and she is. . . triggered.

“Sinking hooks into our unconscious from its very first pages with its creepy imagery and rewarding curious fans of the series with clever self-references, here is a fitting sequel renown for its ongoing mutations.”

 

 

Review

S, whose storyline plays out, template-wise, like that of Ring, is truly a “mutation” (Suzuki’s word) of its source novel. This time, though, it’s not Sadako—at least not directly—whose will births a variable and updated cycle of strange deaths (in this case “suicides”). Eerie and compelling (again) like Ring, S ably mixes science fiction and horror as well, imbuing its reader-resonant vibe with a sense of societal sin(s) and history. This is a great read, worthy to be called a sequel to the landmark Ring. Followed by Tide (2013).

Conspiracies by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2000: third book in the Repairman Jack series)

From the back cover

“Repairman Jack, F. Paul Wilson’s vigilante hero from 1984’s The Tomb and 1998’s Legacies returns in a thriller that thrusts Jack back into the weird, supernatural world that he thrives in. Looking for clues to the mysterious disappearance of leading conspiracy theorist Melanie Ehler. Jack attends a convention of bizarre and avid conspiracy theorists. It is a place where aliens are real, the government is out to get you, and the world is hurtling toward an inevitable war of good versus evil incarnate. Jack finds that nobody can be trusted—and that few people are what they seem. Worse yet, Jack’s been having vivid dreams that make him wonder whether he’s headed for a clash with his own past—maybe The Tomb’s evil rakoshi beasts are through with him quite yet.”

Review

Conspiracies takes place almost immediately after the events of Legacies, with Jack searching for a missing woman (Melanie Ehler) at an unusual conspiracy theories convention where danger, human-based and supranatural, threatens its attendees. Then there’s the nightmares—not just Jack’s, which center around the terrifying and fierce rakoshi, whom he thought he’d vanquished in The Tomb, leading Jack and others to wonder: why are its other attendees having nighttime terror visions as well?

Stephen King fans may especially enjoy Wilson’s vivid, cinematic writing (with its affectionate and pulpy-at-time descriptions of New York) as well as Conspiracies’s often suspenseful multicharacter B-storylines and neo-noir/conspiracy thriller elements. Conspiracies, lots of humor and Lovecraftian fear dominate Wilson’s prose and characters as they try to make it without losing their minds—and their lives.

Conspiracies, which runs long at times, expands on the characters, storylines and Wilson’s “secret history of the world” (which unifies his published work), while setting up future vigilante action and (possible) villains in later Repairman Jack books, the next one All the Rage.

Sugar on the Bones by Joe R. Lansdale

 

(pb; 2024: thirteenth novel in the Hap and Leonard series)

 

From the back cover

“Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie’s daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She’d been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?”

 

 

Review

Sugar, Lansdale’s follow-up to the last Hap and Leonard [H&P] novel, The Elephant of Surprise (2019), finds the longtime friends, along with Brett (Hap’s wife) investigating a suspicious arson-murder case, with (possible) help from friends (or frenemies) from past H&P novels and stories. These characters include: Jim Bob, Vanilla Ride, Veil and Kung Fu Bobby.

Reading a H&P story is like visiting old friends—they’re raw, sometimes salty and scary, but always interesting and sincere in their intentions, and Sugar is no exception. There’s plenty of quip-quotable dialogue, raw action, hissable villains, fully realized and often warm frenemies/friend, though this time out it feels like it “H&P and friends” reunion, with a few new characters. It’s also, like other books in this series, a burn-through read, tonally falling somewhere between darker and recent lighter H&P fare. If the last third ran a bit long for me, it might be because I listened to this an audiobook and wasn’t doing my usual series-beat-familiar fast/physical book read. Worth owning, this, as are other H&P works, book- and television-wise. Followed, in book form, by Hatchet Girls.

Conan the Barbarian: Marvel Treasury Edition #4 by various artists and authors

 

(oversized pb; 1975: Marvel Comics graphic novel. Based on two of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories: “Rogues in the House,” originally published in January 1934, and “Red Nails,” originally published in July-October 1933. . . This oversized graphic novel is a collected reprint of several Marvel Comic comic book issues: Conan the Barbarian #11 [1971: “Rogues in the House”] and Savage Tales #2 and 3 [October and December 1973: “Red Nails”].)

 

Review, story by story

“Rogues in the House”: Betrayed by one of his many women (Jenna) after he “revenged” himself on “that priest of Anu,” Conan finds himself chained in a dungeon. An opportunity presents itself in the form of Murilo, a nobleman who offers to free Conan in exchange for the Cimmerian’s services as an assassin. Murilo’s stated target: Nabonidus, “red priest” and “master” of the unspecified city they’re in.

Conan accepts the offer, unaware that his liberator (Murilo) also has snuck into Nabonidus’s castle to make sure the targeted “man of science” meets a violent end—a mission further soured with a just-discovered horrific twist: Nabonidus is also a “wereman,” a giant ape creature calling itself Thak. Conan and Murilo immediately decide it’s best to flee the castle, as dealings with the supernatural rarely result in a survivable, positive outcome, something Conan knows all too well. They quickly find out escape is not an option for them.

Further twists in this illustrated tale make themselves known, making this fun, tightly penned and fast frame-paced comic, based on Robert E. Howard’s tale of the same name, originally published in Weird Tales magazine, January 1934.

Fans of Howard’s oeuvre might especially appreciate “Rogues”’s explicit reference to another Howard-penned Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant,” originally published in Weird Tales in March 1933.

The artwork, perhaps because it was blown up for the oversized edition, has linework that is hazy, not solidly defined as well as slightly washed-out colors. This is not a complaint; I note this so readers of The Savage Sword of Conan magazine, which sports stellar, highly defined black and white artwork, don’t compare Savage to this more mainstream, less adult Marvel Treasury version.

 

“Red Nails [henceforth referred to as “Red”]”: Conan, trying to get into the loin cloth of a loath “Aquilonian she-pirate” (Valeria) he met in Sukmet, stalks her—he’s beguiled by her sword skills as much as he is by her wild beauty.

Just as she becomes aware of Conan’s creepy attentions, they sight a walled city in a barren plain. About the same time, Conan and Valeria fend off a horse-eating “dragon” (which looks like an uncommonly aggressive stegosaurus), compelling them to enter the mysterious, fortress-like city.

Upon entering the city-fort, Conan and Valeria encounter complicated dangers: they get caught in an intrametropolitan conflict between two feuding factions: the superstitious Xuchotl and the magick-wielding Xotalancs, whose long-term, internecine warfare is rooted in a broken brotherhood (Tecuhltli and Xotalanc’s), further betrayals and a seemingly ageless “witch,” Tascela.

“Red” is one of Howard’s most ambitious and character-complex Conan stories, even with its basic Hatfield/McCoys feud structure. Its original, print 1933 version, while impressive in intention, felt “weak. . . part of the reason for its disappointing delivery is because of its extended length—it’s a novelette, not a short story” (so I thought on 8/23/11, in my review of the print/story collection, Red Nails).

This Marvel Treasury Edition comic book version trims “Red”’s print-only excessive verbiage and length to its core, between its storytelling (if line-hazy and color faded) artwork and concise descriptions and dialogue. This makes the Marvel version of “Red” a better, more fun read, one that makes me appreciate Howard’s expansion of Conan’s world, along with his more fully realized characters, namely Valeria, whom even Conan recognizes as more than a beddable conquest by tale’s upbeat end.

(Valeria appears in director/co-screenwriter John Milius’s 1982 classic, Conan the Barbarian. Sandahl Bergman played the fierce “Aquilonian she-pirate.”)

This is a good, worth-owning read if you’re a Conan and/or early-1970s comic book fan.

“Red Nails” originally appeared in Weird Tales (July – October 1933, published in three serial parts).