Poe, a distant relative of Edgar Allan, follows up his debut psychological thriller, Return to the House of Usher (1996), with another variation on a classic Poe story, again set in Crowley Creek, Virginia. Returning as protagonist is John Charles Poe, also a distant relative of Edgar Allan, who writes a ``barely syndicated'' column for Fannie Boynton's Crowley Creek Sentinel and who's inherited a brassbound oak casket bearing the papers of the great dead writer. It appears that Margaret Cully, the wife of the veterinarian, has vanished under mysterious circumstances; Julie Noir, a waifish raven-haired girl with a tiny gold stud in her nose, shows up and quickly replaces Margaret in Dr. Cully's clinic; and John Charles seems to be haunted by a small black shape that follows him around. Julie, who carries her black cat Asmodeus about on her shoulder, advertises the fact that she fancies herself a witch. After John Charles helps Dr. Cully deliver a two-headed calf (in the best scene here), the bad omens begin piling up. When Poe's story of ``The Black Cat'' seems to be coming to pass in Dr. Cully's own person, John Charles opens his cache of Poe letters and notes, looking for insight. Julie holds moonlit rites and dances naked, and the Reverend Rollie Fairchild whips up the town's antiwitch fever. Finally, Julie discovers a buried ax, seemingly having the missing Margaret's hair and blood on it. A town meeting is called, and some demand that Julie be arrested—or at least run out of Crowley Creek. (The town's rabid feelings are the plot's most feeble device.) Then Dr. Cully starts hearing rats in his cellar behind a freshly bricked wall. John Charles has a drinking habit meant to mimic Poe's, but Poe had an allergy to, not a craving for, alcohol. Gentlemanly, undemanding variation on the master's work.
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86013-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
The revenge of a cellphone-hater.
King’s apocalyptic cautionary tale suggests that cellular communication could be as pernicious as it is pervasive.
Artist Clay Riddell has just traveled from his native Maine to Boston to sell his first graphic novel when all hell breaks loose. Vehicles crash at random. Language turns to gibberish. Bystanders devour the flesh of strangers. As King (From a Buick 8, 2002, etc.) describes this urban meltdown in gory, graphic detail, it becomes increasingly obvious to Riddell that all who have suddenly become crazy were talking on their cell phones. Some sort of simultaneous transmission has transformed the city’s citizenry into mindless zombies. The author taps into the collective dread of a society battered by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as he depicts a battle for survival that pits “normies” such as Clay, the few who didn’t have cellular access, against hordes of “phoners,” who quickly develop a flocking instinct and telepathic communication. The plot can’t sustain the sizzle of its sensational opening: More concerned with the effects of this cell-phone terrorism than its cause, the author never indicates what’s happening beyond Clay’s immediate vicinity. Yet the hero’s odyssey remains compelling as he attempts to return home to estranged wife Sharon and beloved son Johnny, and the surrogate family of refugees he attracts along the way adds a human dimension. Clay doesn’t have a cell phone, but his son does, and he has no idea in what form he might find Johnny if he manages to find the boy at all. As King acknowledges in his dedication, he owes a debt to zombie-flick director George Romero and horror/fantasy author Richard Matheson.
The revenge of a cellphone-hater.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-9233-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
A gloriously funny and involving fourth novel from the author of such comfortable-as-old-shoes fictions as Mohawk (1986) and Nobody's Fool (1993). Writing teacher William Henry Hank Devereaux Jr. is a one-shot novelist (Off the Road) who's settled into an embattled stint as department head at an academic sinkhole where he finds it prudent to simply tread water and go with the flow (anyway, promotion in an institution like West Central Pennsylvania University was a little like being proclaimed the winner of a shit-eating contest). Hank tries to keep his wits about him by adopting the philosophical principle known as Occam's Razor (that the simplest explanation of a phenomenon or problem is usually the correct one), but his life keeps getting in the way. A nearby married daughter is having husband trouble. The state legislature promises to eviscerate his departmental budget. Hank's crushes on various women, including a colleague's adult daughter, complicate his otherwise passive devotion to his no-nonsense wife Lily. And, in addition to possible prostate cancer, Hank is assailed by even more undignified woes: His nose is bloodied by a poet's notebook, and he's suspected (with good reason) of murdering a goose—and of even worse things—by a hilarious, vividly rendered cadre of fellow academics, townspeople, and students, each of whom is sharply individualized. Though the quests for tenure and priority are generously detailed, and though Hank's relationship with his long-absent father reaches a satisfying closure, plot is only secondary (or maybe tertiary or quaternary) in a Russo novel. This latest seduces and charms with its voice (i.e., Hank Devereaux's): Laconic, deadpan, disarmingly modest and self-effacing, it's the perfect vehicle for another of Russo's irresistible revelations of the agreeable craziness of everyday life. Besides, how can you not like a writing prof who counsels an overzealous student to Always understate necrophilia?
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-43246-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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