Hemlock Grove or, The Wise Wolf, by Brian McGreevy

(pb; 2012)


From the inside flap:

"The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey steel mill.  A manhunt ensues - though the authorities aren't sure if it's a man they should be looking for.

"Some suspect an escapee from White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family - their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel - where, if the rumors are true, biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place.  Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told an impressionable high school classmate that he's a werewolf.  Or maybe it's Roman, the son of the late JR Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly control freak of a mother, Olivia."


Review:

Hemlock Grove is a mostly well-written and entertaining hodgepodge of Frankensteinian experimentation, small town life and lycanthropy.  McGreevy has a clear love of striking phrases and scenes, as well as a love of language itself.   The characters are simultaneously familiar and engaging.

I use the phrase "mostly well-written" to describe Hemlock because of the author's occasional ill-advised point of view changes in the middle of scenes - he goes from third person omniscient to a different first-person present tense without section breaks and without warning (and often for only a line or two); these abrupt shifts jarred me out of this otherwise solid story. 

McGreevy easily has the potential to pen an excellent novel, but this isn't that novel - though, with a few choice edits, it could have been.  Borrow this from the library.

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The resulting Netflix series began airing on April 19, 2013.  Eli Roth serves as an executive producer on the show.

Landon Liboiron plays Peter Rumancek.  Bill Skarsgård  plays Roman Godfrey.  Penelope Mitchell plays Letha Godfrey.   Famke Janssen plays Olivia Godfrey.  Lilli Taylor plays Lynda Rumancek.  Freya Tingley plays Christina Wendell.  Kaniehtiio Horn plays Destiny Rumancek. 

Dougray Scott plays Norman Godfrey.  Joel de la Fuenta plays Dr. Jonathan Pryce.    Ted Dykstra plays Francis Pullman.  Laurie Fortier plays Marie Godfrey. 

Ripley's Game, by Patricia Highsmith

(pb; 1974: third novel in the Ripley series)

From the back cover:

"Connoisseur of art, harpsichord aficionado, gardener extraordinaire, and genius of the improvisational murder, the inimitable Tom Ripley finds his complacency shaken when he is scorned at a posh gala. The perpetrator: the mortally ill Jonathan Trevanny, a picture framer from a neighboring village. Now, while any ordinary psychopath might repay the insult with some mild act of retribution, the game Ripley has in mind is far subtler -- and infinitely more sinister. A social slight doesn't warrant murder, of course, just a chain of events that may lead to it."


Review:

Six months after the deaths and mishaps of Ripley Under Ground, Ripley once again is forced to commit "distasteful" murders to protect his interests -- as well as those of Jonathan Trevanny's, a squeaky-clean neighbor who's been duped, by Ripley and Reeves Minot (Ripley's partner-in-crime), into becoming a killer-for-hire.

Highsmith's writing tone is distinctive, cool, sly and filled with instances of macabre wit -- all Highsmith trademarks. Not only that, but, as with all five Ripley books, Ripley himself is changing -- where he was a panicked, lucky murderer in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and an incovenienced semi-wealthy expatriate in Ripley Under Ground, he is the cagey master of this novel's titular game, rarely breaking a sweat as he, with the help of Trevanny (who's scared, and sick with myeloid leukaemia), fends off Mafiosi.

All of the Ripley novels are excellent and memorable.

Followed by The Boy Who Followed Ripley.

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Ripley's Game has been filmed twice.

The first film, Der Amerikanische Freund, aka The American Friend, was scripted and directed by Wim Wenders in 1977. It premiered stateside on September 24, 1977; it received a limited release two days later.

Dennis Hopper played Tom Ripley. Bruno Ganz played Jonathan Zimmerman [Jonathan Trevanny's cinematic stand-in]. Lisa Kreuzer played Marianne Zimmerman [a cinematic stand-in for Simone Trevanny, Jonathan's wife?]. Gerard Blain played Raoul Minot [cinematic stand-in for Reeves Minot]. Film director Nicholas Ray played the long-dead painter Derwatt (whose character is mentioned in passing in Ripley's Game). Film director Samuel Fuller plays "The American Mobster".

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The second version, Ripley's Game - filmed in 2002 - premiered on American television on September 4, 2003. Liliana Cavani co-scripted and directed.

John Malkovich played Tom Ripley. Dougray Scott played Jonathan Trevanny. Lena Headey played Sarah Trevanny [cinematic stand-in for Simone Trevanny]. Ray Winstone played Reeves [aka, Reeves Minot in the novel].