Fatherland by Robert Harris

 

(pb; 1992)

 

From the back cover:

“Berlin, 1964. The Greater German Reich stretches from the Rhine to the Urals, and keeps an uneasy peace with its nuclear rival, the United States. As the Fatherland prepares for a grand celebration honoring Adolf Hitler’s seventy-fifth birthday and anticipates a conciliatory visit from U.S. president Joseph Kennedy and ambassador Charles Lindbergh, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin’s most prestigious suburb.

“But when Xavier March discovers the identity of the body, he also uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with the American journalist Charlotte Maguire, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth—a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.”

 

Review

Fatherland is an excellent alternate-history thriller, near-flawless in its flow, action and often nuanced characters. I was immediately immersed in its familiar-yet-strange world (set in Germany). I was put off by a key character’s noble but (I felt) unnecessary, plot-convenient sacrificial actions—I can see why Harris might’ve been tempted to have said character do that, in order to set up a cinematic set-piece of a memorable ending but it seems there was a simpler, less character-dumb way of getting to that finish/scene. That said, Fatherland is a great book, and one of my favorite reads of 2025.

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Fatherland’s cinematic counterpart, a cable/HBO film of the same name, began airing on November 26, 1994. It was directed by Christopher Menaul, its screenplay penned by Stanley Weiser and Ron Hutchinson. Rutger Hauer, who played Xavier March, and Miranda Richardson (Charlie) starred, supported by other great players.

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.

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).

The New York Ripper 2 by Stephen Romano, Alex Sarabia and others

 

(pb; 2025: limited release, for mature audiences only graphic novel. Graphic novel-only sequel to director/co-screenwriter Lucio Fulci’s 1982 film The New York Ripper. Publisher: Eibon Press/Vinegar Syndrome.)

 

Review

Caveat: spoilers in this review if you haven’t seen The New York Ripper (1982).

Ripper 2 picks up seven years after the grisly, especially nasty and sexual serial murders shown in Fulci’s 1982 source film. The Ripper (Peter Bunch) is officially dead, killed by the world-weary Lt. Frederick Williams near the end of Ripper. Now, it seems someone—a somehow-not-dead Bunch?—has resumed a relentless, similar spate of gut-spilling, crudely surgical killings, sometimes boldly executed in front of the cops even as they’re helpless to stop them. Nobody is safe in this lots o’ nudity, character- and plot-twisty tale, certainly not Paul Davis (the academic psychiatrist who helped hunt Bunch) nor Fay Majors (Bunch’s ex-girlfriend). A new player is equally traumatized by the Ripper’s offal-stench rampage also: Bob Hansen, Williams’ younger, thirty-something partner, whose life is about to seriously go off anything resembling rails.

Ripper 2 is a "for mature audiences"-fun, Times Square sleazy, gory and wild story, with over-the-top extreme horror illustrations (often involving a big knife ripping through red-splatter flesh), one that lives up to the source film’s screenplay, penned by director Lucio Fulci, Gianfranco Clerico and Vincenzo Mannino. This is a “Video Nasties” flick in graphic novel form, worth purchasing you’re into that sort of thing. One of my favorite reads of 2025.

Ripper 2, a limited release, can be purchased (in three package options) here.

The Fifth Profession by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1990)

 

From the back cover

“Two masters of protection.

“Savage, a former Navy SEAL and American state-of-the-art security specialist. Akira, Japan’s most brilliant executive protector and a master of the samurai arts.

“Their mission: the retrieval of Rachel Stone, a beautiful American woman whose ruthless millionaire husband is out to destroy her. But quickly Savage and Akira realize they are trapped in a mission more far-reaching than the protection of one person.

“For they are bound together in a common nightmare, a set of horrifying memories, a terrifying past that never happened., but is somehow inextricably real. Only together can they confront the mystery. Yet when they do, an even more chilling scenario awaits them—one with the power to shatter not only their world but ours as well.”

 

 

Review

 

Fifth is one of my favorite Morrell novels, as excellent and gripping as his Abelard trilogy (1984-1987:The Brotherhood of the Rose; The Fraternity of the Stone; and The League of Night and Fog). Like them, Fifth is a top-notch action/conspiracy thriller, with interesting, deeply realized characters (I especially liked Akira, whose Japanese background was fascinating). Morrell’s use of and respect for Japan’s history is also evident, with Akira and his home country adding new and exotic layers to Morrell’s oeuvre. This is a stunning read, the work of a culture-expansive author, a standalone novel worth owning, and one of my favorite reads of the year.

The Night House by Jo Nesbø

 

(hb; 2023: YA novel. Translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith.)

 

From the inside flap

“In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. His sleuthing leads him to an abandoned house in the Mirror Forest, where he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear. . .

“She’s going to burn. The girl you love is going to burn. There’s nothing you can do about it.

“When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence—and preserve his sanity—as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursing his destruction.

“Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.”

 

Review

House starts with a horrific, reader-hooking and icky-slurp bang and, with its tightly written and horror-effective set pieces, maintains that character-building (and sometimes twisty) pace throughout the book. The key twist at the end, noted in the book’s cover-flap description, likely won’t surprise seasoned genre readers, but it works and Nesbø makes fresh use of it in House. Set around 1990—filmmaker/FX artist Tom Savini’s remake of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) has recently been released— Nesbø’s House is a great, truly horrific-at-times coming-of-age read, one worth owning for those who appreciate turned-on-their-head terror tropes. Fans of Stephen King's early work, Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, 1962) might especially enjoy House.

The Brave by Gregory McDonald

 

(hb; 1991)

 

From the inside flap:

“Rafael’s world is a place where armed guards patrol a dump to prevent poor families from foraging through the garbage. With his family, Rafael lives on the edge of the refuse heap in a forgotten corner of America’s Southwest.

“Desperately poor, he is determined to give his family some respite from their dire poverty, even if it means trading his own life to do so.

“Rafael finds a man who says he will pay many thousands of dollars in exchange for his life:  so he agrees to ‘star’ in a snuff film.”

 

Review

Brave, with its stark language, grim-flat tone and likely doomed characters is a work of horrific beauty, with Rafael (a simple, largely illiterate young man) willing to sacrifice his life to improve those of his family and his also-impoverished community. No words wasted in this fast-moving, taut-emotions-between-the-lines (and relatively short) novel, its third chapter—which comes with a foreword/warning from Mcdonald—fairly (possibly) stomach-churning for those not used to bluntly stated inhumanity and potential horror (in a weird way, Brave put in the mindset of director/co-screenwriter John McNaughton’s 1986 film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). This is one of the best books I’ve ever read in any genre, up there with Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959) and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), and highly recommended for fans of Cormac McCarthy and Richard Stark’s twenty-four-book Parker series.

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The resulting 1997 film, directed, co-scripted by and starring Johnny Depp, was not released stateside. Depp was upset by the negative reaction of U.S. film critics and refused to release it in that country. It debuted at Cannes Film Festival in May 1997 and was released in other countries throughout the remainder of that year. (Brave’s co-screenwriters also included Paul McCudden and D.P. Depp.)

Depp played Raphael (not spelled “Rafael” as it is in Mcdonald’s source novel). Marlon Brando played McCarthy, a snuff filmmaker who spells it out for Raphael. Marshall Bell played Larry, McCarthy’s shifty nephew.

Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman played Raphael’s “Papa.” Luis Guzmán played Luis, Raphael’s older brother. Pepe Serna played Alessando, Raphael’s other brother, who whines a lot and is an especially doomy do-nothing.

Frederic Forrest, Brando’s co-star in Apocalypse Now (1979), played Lou Sr. Clarence Williams III played Father Stratton. Max Perlich played Lou Jr. Iggy Pop played “Man Eating Bird Leg.”

Nightlife by Thomas Perry

 

(pb; 2006)

 

From the back cover

“When the cousin of Los Angeles underworld figure Hugo Poole is found shot to death in his home in Portland, Oregon, homicide detective Catherine Hobbes is determined to solve the case. But her feelings, and the investigation, are complicated when Hugo simultaneously hires Joe Pitt. As Joe and Catherine form an uneasy alliance, the murder count rises. Following the evidence, Catherine finds herself in a deadly contest with a cunning female adversary capable of changing her appearance and identity at will. Catherine must use everything she knows, as a detective and as a woman, to stop a murderer who kills on impulse and with ease, and who becomes more efficient and elusive with each crime.”

 

 

Review

Nightlife, like Perry’s best writing, is a near-impossible-to-set-down, tautly penned and edited police-procedural thriller, with well-developed characters worth rooting for or hissing at (even the emotionally immature/defensive, cold-blooded killer,Tanya Starling, aka Charlene Buckner, aka other names, can be sympathized or at least understood, given her fully realized backstory). That Perry provides effective character motivations imbues the resulting violence, all of it masterfully edited and written, with an impressive, reads-fresh, character-sourced intimacy, even as he sidesteps certain action-thriller tropes, and an ending that deftly blends key-character trepidation and hope into a “would love to see these characters again” finish. Top-notch book, top-notch author.

Empires of Edomia by J.M. Kind

 

(oversized pb; 2024: fourth book in the Edomia series; aka Empires of Edomia: Tales from the Edomian Mythos (Book 4). Followed by the forthcoming Warriors of Edomia.)

 

From the back cover

“All that glitters is not qualicite in the legendary queendom of Quavex: The long-standing Daughter of the City of fabled Taugwadeth is rocked to its foundations by a crisis of regal succession and the threat of war between shadowy adversaries who see the power vacuum as a means to their own self-serving ends. And what’s to stop their sinister agenda when the ancient legacy of the enlightened Goddess-worshipping matriarchy hands by a thread in this city on a mountain where privilege now outweighs simple justice, and once-pure, well-meaning religion has itself become a tool of greed?

 

“Meanwhile, a beautiful slave’s virtue is jealously guarded by a wealthy merchant who intends to sacrifice the girl to gain favor from the old gods; a lowly monk, ignorant of his parentage and past, becomes a pawn in his superiors’ schemes for political advantage; a once-and-would-be queen struggles to recall her duty and her desinty in a foreign land where she and her family are being hunted by fanatical inquisitors; and a group of young refugees from late-20^th century Earth hide in plain sight, trying to blend in with their neighbors in this strangely-backward alien civilization. Together, all of them may hold the key to the fate and future of Edomia.”

 

Review

Kind returns to Edomia for the fourth time with Empires, which blends the first book’s neologism-and-action-heavy first quarter with the streamlined writing of Rogues of Edomia, third entry in the series. (It should be noted that Empire is less dense with new Edomia-centric vocabulary than Edomia: A Fantasy Adventure, and that Kind’s writing provides vivid context and footnotes for the neologisms.)

All the elements that make up an Edomian work are here: high-adventure fantasy; a feminist/LGBT+ friendly tone (which includes R-rated sexuality); sometimes loquacious and fierce characters who embody and reinforce its free-love-clashing-with-brutal-religiosity-and-kakistocracy tones, including an abbreviated, rough male-on-male rape scene. All of this comes together in another ambitious, engaging, immersive and character-intricate work from Kind (who also writes under other names in other genres).

Empires, like its predecessor Edomian books, is highly recommended for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1977 encyclopedic Silmarillion, George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series and those who appreciate complex-ilk, erudite, Old School fantasy that doesn’t shy away from necessary-to-the-work sexuality, politics and action/brutality. Followed by the forthcoming Warriors of Edomia.

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1981: first book in The Nightworld Cycle, aka the Adversary Cycle)

From the back cover

“The message is received from a Nazi commander stationed in a remote castle high in the Transylvanian alps: ‘Something is murdering my men.’

“Immediately an elite SS extermination squad is sent to destroy whatever enemy dares to challenge the might of the Third Reich.

“And the battle is joined. A battle more awesomely terrifying than anything ever experienced. Between the ultimate evil created by man. . . and the unthinkable, undreamed of, undead horror it has awakened from centuries of darkness to suck the life from living souls again.”

 

Review

Keep is one of my all-time favorite reads. Its setting (World War II-era Romania), with its pulp-meets- classic-story elements, is immediately immersible, Wilson’s penwork deftly balancing horror, story- and character-organic development and turns, action, pacing, and overall writing. It takes familiar tropes and characters and adds intriguing wrinkles to them, making Keep stand out in a wow-that's-great way—worth owning, this, if the above description sounds intriguing to you.

Keep is the first of seven theme- and character-linked books, originally titled The Nightworld Cycle (later, it was supposedly officially renamed the Adversary Cycle). While the first technical sequel, publishing-wise, is The Tomb (1984), Wilson’s official site—according to Wikipedia in February 2025—suggests that the next story-chronological entry is Reborn (1990).

I’ve read that Wilson also has stories linked to the Nightworld/Adversary universe but I’ve yet to check them out.

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The studio-butchered film was released stateside on December 16, 1983. Director/screenwriter Michael Mann’s 210-minute version was trimmed to 96 minutes by the studio; because of this, Keep is said to have a jump-around-storyline feel.

The film features these actors: Jürgen Prochnow as Klaus Woermann; Gabriel Byrne as SS Commandant Erich Kaempffer; Ian McKellen as Dr. Theodor Cuza; Alberta Watson as Eva Cuza (in the book her name is Magda Cuza); Michael Carter as Radu Molasar; Scott Glenn as Glaeken; and Robert Prosky as Father Fanescu.