Introducing this ninth volume of an usually vigorous series, F. Paul Wilson decrees that horror is ``not dead''; the mostly lackluster tales that follow, though, say little for the genre's state of health. A prime case in point is ``The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank,'' the gruesome lead-off novella by Tessier (Rapture, 1987, etc.) that treads no new ground even as it takes full advantage of the publisher's proclaimed tolerance of explicit sex and gore. Dr. Ladybank is a sadistic telepathic psychiatrist whose mental reach extends only to Tony, a 16-year-old transvestite prostitute, and to Snake, a vile drug-dealer. Within graphic scenes of masturbation, anal stimulation, murder, and dismemberment, Ladybank toys with his two guinea pigs until one stabs him in the eye. A distasteful tale, but Tessier, a careful stylist, just salvages it with lively prose and genuine sympathy for his grimy characters. Not so Kisner (Nero's Vice, 1981), whose ``Fugyu'' crudely reiterates Tessier's hackneyed theme of the vengeance of the oppressed by having a foul baglady dispense with a madman who's been killing homeless people. Two other weak Kisner tales deal with vampirism (sentimentally) and Jack the Ripper (portentously). His remaining pair, however, display glimmers of wicked humor, particularly ``Moose Oysters,'' in which a hunted beast turns bloody, ironic tables on its hunters. Popular mass-market-novelist Hautala (The Moonstone, etc.) winds up the collection with its only genuinely entertaining work, ``Untcigahunk,'' four linked and suspensefully chilling, if truncated, tales of traditional gory horror in which an ancient race, deformed cousin of humanity, wreaks havoc throughout Maine. Undistinguished horror: these night visions are, for the most part, grainy and dim.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1991
ISBN: 0-913165-63-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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