Knopf / July 2009
Reviewed by: Beth Harrington

In the sequel to his debut mystery thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it seems that Stieg Larsson – who was regrettably not alive to enjoy his literary success – predicted the reactions that readers would have to the characters that he created. Namely, that they would crave to become immersed in the world of the weird, aloof, yet irresistibly brilliant cyber-whiz Lisbeth Salander, who was introduced alongside investigator-cum-journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Thus, in The Girl Who Played With Fire, a sequel that can be read independently of its predecessor, Larsson revolves his novel around the miniscule, introverted heroine who was dubbed “the coolest crime-fighting sidekick to come along in many years” by the Washington Post.

The opening scenes of the novel locate Salander – a recent billionaire due to her hacking enterprises – enjoying a vacation in the Caribbean, studying mathematical texts and drinking rum and cokes as the island prepares for a hurricane. She returns to her native Sweden only to quickly find herself the suspect in a string of homicides that involve two reporters who were going to write an expose` on the sex trade for Millennium, the magazine that Blomkvist edits. The case builds against Salander as the police investigation becomes tainted by corruption and fixates on salacious tabloid motives regarding Salander’s tumultuous teenage years spent in mental institutions and foster homes, as well as her unorthodox friends — an S&M dominatrix and a fringe rock band. Nevertheless, Salander manages to accrue a diverse group of allies, including her former employer at a prestigious security firm, a renowned boxing champion, and Blomkvist himself.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, Larsson has revived a cast of characters who are vivid, likeable, and usually complex. Readers who loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will really appreciate Salander’s cleverness and unassuming wit in evading capture by the bumbling and bigoted police force, as well as the fleshed-out details of her past. A third-person omniscient narrative allows the point-of-view to skip between characters, revealing the motivations of Blomkvist, Salander, the police detectives, and even the killers themselves as their identities begin to emerge.

The primary problem with The Girl Who Played with Fire is its length: a whopping five hundred and twelve pages. It is actually not so much the book’s length but rather why the book is so long that constitutes the issue. Larsson crams his text with the most mundane details of his characters’ ordinary lives. Every meal, every article of clothing, and every coffee and cigarette break taken by a major character is recorded. In the context of some thrillers, the minutiae of characters’ lives can subtly reveal valuable clues that guide readers in the direction of identifying the culprit, but in this novel, that is not the case. Nor do these details ever seem to provide insight into the personalities of characters in ways that Larsson does not already do anyway. Meanwhile, the murders that are the point of the book do not happen until one-third of the way through the text. Larsson is also prone to a certain oversimplification in terms of how his characters view his heroine and how that relates to their morality as a whole. Characters who like and admire his standoffish, perplexing heroine are always good and sympathetic, while those who dislike her are portrayed as villains whose dislike of her stems from their own inherent corruption, misogyny, and unpleasantness.

Overall, The Girl Who Played with Fire will not necessarily have readers burning through the pages at midnight – or at least, if they are, it will be at the expense of skipping extraneous passages about the furniture of Salander’s apartment – but it still remains a fascinating and engaging read. As it is the second installment in a purported trilogy, the novel’s conclusion does not tie up the loose ends nicely, leaving open speculation as to how Lisbeth Salander will fare in her ultimate finale.

Purchase The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson.

Casperian Books / September 2009
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Kelland is likely to be the best book you might not read this year. With its non-descript cover, vague synopsis, and limited small press visibility, it would be easy for this compelling, beautifully written debut novel from native Kentuckian Paul G. Bens to be overlooked. And that would be a sincere shame.

Kelland is a gorgeous, genre-defying novel of heartrending truth, a work that builds slowly and confidently toward a page-turning climax that will leave you breathless in anticipation of the inevitable events one is never quite sure how will play out. This speculative fiction tour de force blends the concept of human interconnectivity with the devastating effects of childhood trauma and the limits of forgiveness – a literary fusion of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia meets Sleepers crossed with The Boys of St. Vincent.

Readers are introduced to five disparate strangers: a pair of Vietnamese brothers, a precociously devout altar boy, and a teenage boy whose web journals provide clues to a grieving mother trying to piece together the mystery behind an unthinkable tragedy. The common thread is the chameleon-like title character that appears to each of the characters as an agent of revelation, seemingly there to help each uncover their own truth. In the hands of a lesser writer, the concept of this conscience/spirit guide character could come across as gimmicky or ambiguous, but Bens ably pulls off this mingling of reality and otherworldliness without missing a beat. In its manifestation as a kindly priest helping an anguished mother unravel the mystery of her son’s suicide, the Kelland being explains the resiliency and flexibility of human interaction:

“We all exist in relation to others and we become what is needed in relation to them. I’m no different. I’ve been a friend, a musician, a little boy, a shoulder to cry on, a lover, a son, someone to guide the way. Different times, different people, different needs.”

Kelland is told in vignettes that flash forward and backward in time, during which Bens deftly develops each character by slowly and methodically peeling back the many layers of these seemingly separate stories. The generous payoff comes as these various narrative threads are pulled together in a masterful way that belies the fact that this is a debut novel.

Bens is a writer to watch. There are hints of literary experimentation at work here in this intricately and tightly-plotted novel that conjure up Michael Cunningham’s The Hours and Specimen Days. His prose is controlled yet – although there is nary an extraneous word to be found – descriptively lush:

“Music was chaos amongst order. Those black blotches meant nothing without the staff, and even then they were foreign to most, a puzzle, some secret code broken by many but understood by a few. Move just one of those notes up or down, adjust the key or alter the signature, and love could become hate, despair could be lifted, ugliness just might bloom into beauty. It was life really, the notes standing in for decisions and words, the clefs and the shapes revealing the feeling, the intent, and the attitude.”

If there’s one book you read this year that doesn’t shout from the bookshelves with a compelling cover or grab your attention with a slick book trailer, one that you read purely on recommendation, then let that book be Kelland. Gentle in approach but devastating in its humanity, Kelland will insinuate itself into your subconscious, surprise you with its maturity, and then pull the rug out from under you with its truth.

Purchase Kelland by Paul G. Bens Jr.

Faith Words (Hachette Book Group) / May 2009
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina

Travis Thrasher told me not to doubt that his latest novel, Ghostwriter, was horror despite the fact that most of the other books his publisher puts out are shelved in the Christian Fiction or Inspirational section of the bookstore.

I flipped the book over and read the premise. Dennis Shore, a bestselling horror author, suffers from writers’ block after his wife’s death. He steals a fledgling writer’s work, and claims it as his own. Shore thinks he’s gotten away with it, until he’s confronted by Cillian Reed, the young man he stole from. What starts as harassment spirals out of control as Dennis realizes that more than his career as at stake. His actions may have deadly consequences. And while the premise sounded good, I knew from prior attempts to read so called “Christian horror” that this story had the potential to turn me off if Trasher got the balance of “Christian” versus “horror” wrong.

Thrasher quickly establishes Dennis Shore’s empty world. He lost his wife to cancer. His daughter is off to college. Dennis is left alone in a big, Victorian house with painful memories and an inability to translate any of his feelings into words on the page. He finds a manuscript sent by Cillian Reed, a fan looking for feedback. Shore reads it and discovers that it is quite good. His editor and publisher want a new book. His deadline is approaching. Dennis knows that he can’t deliver. He knows that it is wrong to pass off Cillian’s work as his own, but feels he has no choice. He’s only doing what he needs to keep his writing career alive.

Before the stolen book is published, Dennis receives warnings to not allow the book to be released. Dennis is not frightened. Would anyone really believe that a bestselling author would ever need to steal someone else’s work? After the book is released, Dennis is confronted at a signing by Cillian Reed, who used to be his biggest fan. Cillian doesn’t publicly reveal Dennis’ secret, preferring to torment Dennis in other ways, like pulling pranks that aren’t particularly funny.

Dennis launches his own investigation into Cillian’s past. When he finds out the Cillian died in car accident several years ago, he begins to doubt his sanity. Could not dealing with his grief over Lucy’s death have caused this? Or is there a supernatural force at work?

Thrasher skillfully blends action, mystery and suspense as he takes readers on a supernatural thrill ride. Much of the violence is implied, meaning the kills happen offstage. Thrasher’s descriptions of either what happens just before or just after those moments ramps the tension up, making it hard to want to put the book down. What Thrasher leaves to the reader’s imagination is what’s truly frightening. And as for the balance of “Christian” versus “horror,” I actually found myself wanting a little more of the former by the story’s end. The ending would have worked better for me had Thrasher gone a bit farther in terms of Dennis seeking redemption for stealing Cillian’s manuscript.

And just so we’re clear, Travis Thrasher does write horror. If you can’t find Ghostwriter in the horror section of your local bookstore, take the time to locate it wherever it’s shelved.

Purchase Ghostwriter by Travis Thrasher.

Cemetery Dance Publications / December 2009
Reviewed by: Blu Gilliand

Okay, just listen to this:

"Sometimes the insanity you leave behind just settles in and waits for a new ear to crawl into."

That’s from “Shadder.” And this:

"Nell moved with the consistency and gravity of the setting moon."

That’s from “Jonah Arose.” Then there’s this one:

"He used glazes between the stratum of color so light reflected through each coating. The pigments appeared suspended, as if ready to break from the landscape and splash free. The physical substance of the picture seemed less important than the fact that it was chosen as a vehicle of expression. Shadow and relief were what counted most. His style was fiery, exhibiting life, movement, and harmony but the boundaries were softened to blurs and smoke."

That’s from “Jesus Wrestles the Mob to Feed the Homeless.” These passages were written by Tom Piccirilli, and the stories they come from all appear in his new Cemetery Dance collection Futile Efforts. If these excerpts alone aren’t enough to convince you of the quality and craft inherent in each page of this collection, I doubt that anything I say will make a difference.

I will go ahead and say this, though – Piccirilli is a prose writer with a poet’s soul. (Oh, and of course he’s a poet, too – an accomplished one at that, as evidenced by the 45 poems that stuff the back end of this collection.) His words cut and wound, leaving marks and scars for the reader to pick at for days afterward. Take the above-quoted “Shadder” for example – it’s a story about a haunting that will haunt you for days afterward. Even through the next few stories, I couldn’t shake “Shadder.” My advice is to read that one, then stop for a while and let it sink in.

Actually, that’s probably the best way to approach all of these stories. Read one, then put the book down and study on it for a while. You don’t want to wash away the taste too quickly by diving into the next story immediately. These aren’t one-note shockers with a twist at the end (not that there’s anything wrong with those). These are layered experiences, ones that are to be sipped and savored individually, not bolted down in one quick gulp.

Piccirilli publishes so much stuff in so many places, it’s great to have so much of it pulled together in one collection. Kudos to Cemetery Dance for gift wrapping some of his best for us – let’s hope they do it again some time.

Purchase Futile Efforts by Tom Piccirilli.

Scribner / October 2009
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina 

For ten years, Loren Rhoads took readers of Morbid Curiosity magazine on a journey exploring true tales of the “unsavory, unwise, unorthodox and unusual.” Had I known of the magazine’s existence when it was being published, I surely would’ve been a fan. I learned of the magazine after its run, while discussing a story idea with a collegue at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. My collegue’s advice was, “Get in touch with Loren Rhoads and see if she still has a copy of the essay about the guy who used to work for the Coast Guard.”

The essay in question, “The Jumper and The Crabs” by Kalifer Deil, is about a young Coast Guard recruit’s first look at death when charged with retrieving a “floater” from the bay near Sausalito, CA. Imagine for a moment, not only what the experience of seeing a dead body for the first time would be like, but also having to touch the body in an attempt to find clues that might identify the deceased. As the chef’s assistant, it wasn’t exactly the type of assignment he was expecting. But it was hardly the strangest thing that happened to him that day. In the process of retrieving the body, Deil and his boss, Van, also caught a bucket full of crabs. And as Deil soon learned, when someone asks “What’s cooking?” volunteering information about where dinner came from isn’t strictly necessary.

I was pleased to see that Diel’s story made the cut when Rhoads had to decide which of the over three hundred essays she originally published would be included in this anthology.

The anthology begins with a brief history of how Rhoads came to publish the magazine in the first place.  Her choices are subcategorized in six sections: Childhood’s End: Growing Up Morbid, Far From Home: Morbid Curiosity on the Road, Gainful Employment: The Morbid Things People Do For Money, Curious Behavior: The Morbid Catchall Category, Medical Adventures: Morbid Medicine, and Beyond Death: Exploring Behind the Curtain. The essays range in tone from humorous to melancoly to frightening. 

In the section Far From Home, Brian Thomas describes his experience of visiting Auschwitz. At one point in the tour, the guide showed Thomas a room containing four brick-walled booths in various states of construction. The one closest to him was a single layer of bricks forming a square outline on the floor. The second was knee high. The third was shoulder high. The final booth reached from floor to ceiling and had an 18 x 24-inch door at the bottom. These booths were some of the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. The guide invited those on the tour to step inside the chambers if they wished. A few stood in the knee high booth but none dared to try the others. Thomas lagged behind as the rest of the group proceded on the tour and decided to give the fully enclosed booth a try. While one can argue whether or not what happened to him once inside was the by product of his imagination or a supernatural encounter, Thomas renders the experience with vivid details. At times, he gives readers the sounds and smells bringing life to his tale only to show what the other side might have been like when he is deprived of certain sensory data while inside the chamber. By the end of the tour, Thomas is forever changed and readers should be as well.

In the Medical Adventures section, T.M. Gray recounts her experience as a victim of “Anesthesia Awareness.” This phenomena is a closely guarded secret in the medical community. No one wants to admit that there are times when anesthesia during surgery doesn’t work as it should. In Gray’s case, she was awake, aware, and in pain during the procedure being performed but was unable to move or communicate with the doctors to let them know that the anesthesia didn’t work. After the procedure was over and she regained her ability to communicate, she told the doctors of her experience. The doctors tried to convince her that either she was dreaming or she was crazy. Not only did she have to recover from the problem that she initially sought treatment for but also had to battle to get care for the post-traumatic stress that occurred as a result of being awake during the surgery.

Rhoads ends with her own essay, “The Mortician’s Gift,” and leaves readers to ponder her theory about how experiencing a little “real” horror can change your perspective on life and hopefully make you appreciate what you have.

Morbid Curiosity Cures The Blues is a must read for those who want a glimpse into the dark side of people’s lives. With forty essays to choose from, there is something to suit everyone’s tastes. From the cradle to the grave and beyond, these stories tantilize and terrify.

Purchase Morbid Curiosity Cures The Blues, edited by Loren Rhoads.

Shroud Publishing / June 2009
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

There are writers who are so talented that they can make you see the external manifestations of horror in all their full-blown Technicolor ghastliness. And then there are even more talented writers who make you feel horror’s heartrending internal effects. Rio Youers falls squarely into the latter category. 

Mama Fish is proof that big things come in small packages. This tightly-written 91-page novella follows protagonist Patrick Beauchamp, from his days trying to befriend Harlequin High School’s resident misfit to his adult life more than two decades later. The story begins in 1986, with Patrick fascinated by the class oddball, Kelvin Fish, “the square peg, the kid that doesn’t fit.” As Patrick tries to reach the reticent Kelvin, he discovers that despite his own ability to fit in by going through all the motions of teenage convention – debate club, team sports – that he’s also a square peg in a world full of round holes. This unspoken kinship leads to Patrick’s desire to know more about Kelvin, and his speculation about the strange boy’s home life and family brings him to a pivotal moment involving an ill-fated encounter with bullies that leads to an increasingly bizarre (and ultimately tragic) sequence of events. 

Mama Fish is a hard work to categorize – there are decidedly horrific moments, with bits of science fiction and surrealism thrown in amongst the richer coming-of-age material. To Youers credit, he uses the parallel narrative threads between teenage Beauchamp and adult Beauchamp to maintain a steady pace in which the tension mounts and pages turn faster. He imbues Mama Fish with a deceptive literary lushness that belies his crisp, economical prose:

Belief is coupled with the soul, so it stands to reason that if the soul is eternal, so too is belief. However, this is not the case; age generates wisdom, and wisdom engulfs belief. With every morsel of fact or reality, our soul loses its shine. We die inside.

Mama Fish is a highly readable yet thematically heavy story that takes on everything from the loneliness of the teenager’s search for connection and self to the gap that separates generations, from the injustices of fate to the rectifying power of karma. It’s the speculative fiction bridge between The Breakfast Club and The Big Chill, full of truth, perspective, and an emotional resonance that will haunt you long after the last shocking twist.

Purchase Mama Fish by Rio Youers.

Skullvines Press / August 2009
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Zombie outbreaks are about as commonplace in horror fiction as reality shows are on television these days, having seemingly eclipsed haunted houses and werewolves combined and perhaps only second in market saturation to the vampire. We’ve seen the undead take to the high seas (Brian Keene’s Dead Sea) and hobnob with the likes of Jane Austen (Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and Dante Alighieri (Kim Paffenroth’s Valley of the Dead). There have been manuals written on how to survive a zombie attack (Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide) and even a book of zombie Christmas carols (Michael Spradlin’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies). Even Chicago’s Columbia College offers a three-credit course on the undead called Zombies in Popular Media.

But just when the sub-genre appears ready to cannibalize itself with cuteness, along comes something with some real…meat.

Michele Lee’s Rot is an impressive debut novella that applies everything we’ve come to know as readers about the zombie and adds a weighty sociological twist that will surprise in its implications.

The Silver Springs Specialty Care Community is a residential care facility for the undead who are willed back to life by loved ones not ready to let go only to be promptly discarded when the realities of caring for a loved (undead) one prove too much to bear. The facility offers daily exercise and raw meat to keep zombie hunger at bay, and even a promise to re-kill the undead resident upon his or her inevitable decline into savagery or complete decay.

Enter protagonist Dan, a retired military veteran whose combat training makes him an ideal security guard at Silver Springs. During his first day on the job, he meets a pair of higher-functioning zombies — Amy, an endearingly sarcastic twenty-something four days back from a fatal stroke and placed in Silver Springs because of her husband’s inability to touch her again after resurrecting her, and Patrick, an openly gay man killed in an accident and restored to life by parents convinced his homosexuality would damn his soul to hell for all eternity.  Despite his misgivings, Dan bonds with the pair, who have been assigned to help him with office work. The revelation that both Amy and Patrick are being abused by the facility’s staff prompts Dan to investigate Silver Springs’ resident files, and he quickly discovers that zombie residents are disappearing from the facility. When Amy suddenly goes missing, Dan reluctantly teams up with Patrick to save her and, in the process, the pair uncovers an insidious plot that involves corporate greed and the depths of depravity man will sink in his quest for entertainment.

Using widely-accepted zombie mythos as a framework, Lee crafts an ingenious allegory for the warehousing of the elderly in America. As a nursing home administrator, I was struck (repeatedly, as if in the head by a sledgehammer) by the similarities in how Lee’s fictional undead were mistreated, discarded, and overall discounted by an uncaring, on-the-go society moving too fast to realize the contributions still able to be made and the apathy with which much of our society (barely) considers the old and infirm. Thankfully, government regulations (connected to payment sources) protect the real-life institutionalized elderly from enduring the same fate as the denizens of Silver Springs when they run out of money to cover their stay, but the very human aspects of abandonment, dehumanization, and an outside life moving on without you ring loud and true in Lee’s surprisingly insightful tale.

As the fictional world in Lee’s Rot demonstrates no respect for the dead by not allowing them eternal peace for a life well-lived, neither do we, by and large, show respect for the contributions of older adults, often relegating them to self-contained communities – both in the physical and psychological sense – and failing to tap into the wealth of knowledge and experience they possess. Like the residents of Silver Springs, our elderly are reduced to inconvenient visits and sources of burden upon the young and able. But while most build defense mechanisms to avoid facing that unpleasant and ugly reality, Lee uses the widespread appeal of the zombie to lull us into a false sense of security, springing that same ugly, hard-to-digest reality on the unsuspecting reader. Prepared for bloodlust but confronted with stark, human truth, the reader will be jolted in a way no recent ghost story, vampire tale, or urban legend could achieve. That, dear readers, is the discomfiting effect of true horror. 

That said, Lee isn’t completely off the hook. After quickly finishing this meager 53-page story, one is left wondering why the author didn’t recognize the ingenuity of her own material and opt for full-length novel treatment here. Indeed, there are lost opportunities aplenty for exploring more of this “civilized” world in which living and undead co-exist and the complexities of the human-zombie dynamic. Surely there were more layers to be unfolded: perhaps an exploration of the other side – the caregiver – which here seems committed to one-dimensional villainy in the interest of time. Or the idea of further exploitation of the undead, hinted at here in the form of zombie escorts.

Word count and missed opportunities aside, Rot still stands as a notable piece of work worthy of readers’ attention. Blending bloodshed and perceptive humanistic commentary, Lee creates a singularly unique entry in the zombie canon, one likely to cause readers to wince as much from the rawness of the human emotion at play here as the visceral images of flesh ripping from bone.

Purchase Rot by Michele Lee.