MR. SHIVERS: A Review

This is a darkly creepy dust storm of a book, part Stephen King and part John Steinbeck -if Steinbeck lost most of his talent. It starts as a revenge story rooted in the harsh reality of the Dust Bowl days, and transforms into a heavy-handed examination of myth.
 

Marcus Connelly is a good man who begins a desperate trek through the ruins of 1930s American heartland on the trail of his child's murderer. As he tracks the elusive fiend the hobos call Mr. Shivers, Connelly discovers that he's not the only person whose life the killer has ruined. Connelly gathers around him a group of like-minded desperate lost souls, with each member of the group of vagabonds loosely based on some mythic figure in the literary past. As the Dust Bowl refugees pursue Shivers through a bleak and hopeless world, they gradually realize that he is the embodiment of an elemental force of destruction, and begin sacrificing their own humanity for the sake of vengeance.

The book starts off as slow as a locomotive climbing a mountain, and never reaches the top. However, for the most part Mr. Shivers is tightly written with a great economical style almost as sparse as the landscape, even though some of the symbolism is a bit forced. I'm not surprised to discover the author is a recent university graduate. His professors probably taught him that as a "serious" author, you must have literary pretensions.


BIBLIO SAYS: Recommended, with some reservations.

A DARK MATTER: A Review

If Stephen King is the Louis L'Amour of horror writers, then Peter Straub is the Henry James. King is the master of blue collar gruesome and Straub is expert in urbane psychological terror. When Straub is good, he is VERY good (Ghost Story, Mystery). When he's bad, he usually interesting (The Hellfire Club, The Throat). But with his new novel, A Dark Matter, Straub is not even interesting, he's almost incoherent.

First, the story: one evening in 1966 (damn, the 60s!) in Madison, Wisconsin, a group of students follow their guru into a meadow and perform some mysterious (and forbidden, of course) ritual. Eight people go into the meadow, six return. One body is left behind munched beyond recognition, and the second body just vanishes into the great netherworld. The leader, Spencer Mallon, is one of the phony Jim Morrison types who spout New Age nonsense to a group of wide-eyed innocent kids; he sleeps with the girls, mooches food, booze and drugs from the group - a typical 60s intellectual hack. After the "incident", he skips town, leaving the surviving kids to deal with the fallout. One goes insane, others become criminals, one becomes a writer (imagine that!) but all have deep emotional trauma that follows them into their middle years.

Through the annoying use of what critics and collegiate types like to call a Roshomon-style narrative (the same story told from different viewpoints) Straub assaults the reader with paragraphs of dense prose which any community college English 101 instructor would have slashed with red ink: "Too wordy! Be concise!"

By page 100 the reader is forced to read a fictional version of the event (by the author character) and within two pages we realize why it has remained unpublished - it's awful. So take heed and avoid this mishmash of supernatural silliness. The last thing you need is to spend time in the overrated hazy past of the 60s with a self-centered guru-on-the-make and a group of easily-fooled kids.

BILBIO SAYS: Stay away!
Alternate read: Ghost Story, by Peter Straub, a classic, and creepy horror novel.

CITY OF THE SILENT: A Review

Magnolia Cemetery is one of the greatest unknown treasures in Charleston, South Carolina. Hopefully, this book will help spread the word. For years, I've been hearing about this manuscript. People waxing enthusiastically about "this manuscript Ted has about Magnolia." They kept promising it was going to dig up some dirt of those buried there (pun intended). I even ran into a couple of people who had a copy of it and promised to let me read it ... to no avail.

I met Ted once in passing, through a mutual friend - it was a mere introduction, "hello", "how are you?" and it was over. That day, he was suffering some effects of the HIV that would ultimately be the cause of his demise. Within a year he was gone, so I never had the chance to discuss this work with him.

I have spent many pleasant hours wandering beneath the oaks and Spanish moss and taking hundreds of photos. Magnolia is thoroughly Southern (and soooo Charleston), filled with Gothic flourishes and amazing history is etched on the headstones. When tourists ask me what is the one thing to see in Charleston my answer is always "Magnolia Cemetery."

City of the Silent is a simple book - several hundred concise bios of some of the notables buried in the cemetery. If you're a Charleston history neophyte, you will learn some interesting stuff. There is a preponderance of Civil War figures (of course!), politicians, writers of questionable importance, society belles, gangsters, lawyers, and one madam. One. So much for the dirt.

If you're a Charleston history nut (guilty) ... you already know most of this stuff. So I was (and I am) a bit disappointed with the info contained within - most of it is already available in published form in one book or another.

However, the book is worth it's hefty cover price (well, almost) for the map of the cemetery and the locations of everyone mentioned. With this book in hand, and the map you can take a stroll and find the graves and read the stories. And that is what you should do with it. Read it, mark your favorite people (see my list below) and then take a trip to Magnolia Cemetery and spend an afternoon in the tranquil presence of history - scoundrels and heroines - and everything in between.



MY LIST OF FAVORITE PEOPLE IN MAGNOLIA CEMETERY

• Daisy Breaux Calhoun - real name: Margaret Rose Anthony Julia Josephine Catherine Cornelia Donovan O'Donovan Simonds Gummere Calhoun. (I'm not joking.)
• Langdon Cheves, Jr. - father of the Confederate Air Force.
• Susan Pringle Frost - patron saint of Charleston preservationists.
• Frank Hogan - bootlegger, murder victim.
• Leon Dunlap - bootlegger, acquitted murderer.
• The Crew of the H.L. Hunley - Confederate submariners.
• Tristam Tupper Hyde - Charleston mayor who enforced Prohibition. (served one term)
• Thomas McDow - doctor and murderer.
• Josephine Pinckney - the best Charleston writer and period - period! Two classics: Three O'Clock Dinner, a superb comedy of society manners and Great Mischief, a delicious little horror book where the entrance to hell is somewhere around the corner of King and Broad Streets.
• Robert Barnwell Rhett - Secessionist firebrand and newspaper editor.
• George Trenholm - Confederate financier, and model for Rhett Butler.
• Julius Waties and Elizabeth Waring - probably my all time favorite Charleston story. If you want to know the story ... buy this book, or pick up of my own modest books about Charleston, Wicked Charleston, Volume II: Prostitutes, Politics & Prohibition. The story of the judge and his second wife is covered in great detail.

BIBILO SAYS: 4. Worth having on your shelf.

WEREWOLF SMACKDOWN: A Review

In his latest adventure, Felix Gomez, private detective and vampire, arrives in Charleston, SC
to help thwart a werewolf civil war that threatens to expose The Secret to the world at large. The Secret being the existence of vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures. If you're familiar with Felix Gomez all this sounds perfectly plausible. If you're not ... then let's back up.

Felix Gomez went to Iraq as a soldier, returned as a vampire and became a private detective. His first case was to investigate the mysterious outbreak of nymphomania at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, detailed in The Nymphos of Rocky Flats. His subsequent adventures -X-Rated Bloodsuckers, The Undead Kama Sutra and Jailbait Zombie - read like a combination of Ann Rice, Robert B. Parker and Carl Hiaasen.

Author Mario Acevedo served in the U.S. Army and flew helicopters. In civilian life he taught art, wrote hard-boiled detective novels and collected a stack of rejection slips. Finally, in a bit of desperation, Acevedo decided to write a novel "about the wackiest thing I could think of. " That idea was the outbreak of nymphomania and Felix Gomez, vampire detective, was created. Five books later, Acevedo looks to have created his own niche in the recent avalanche of paranormal fiction.

Werewolf Smackdown details the turf war between rival werewolf clans in the South Carolina low country. For history buffs, bet you didn't know that Charleston was the site of the first werewolf settlement in colonial America, and that werewolf regiments served on both sides of the War Between the States.

As in all the Gomez books, the pace is furious and the attitude is breezy with more than a bit of tongue-in-cheekiness. Within his first twenty-four hours in the Holy City, Felix survives three attempts on his life and mixes it up with ghosts, werewolves, vampire hit men and creates an uneasy truce with the local vampire leader, a ghetto kingpin named Gullah. Oh, and he has plenty of sexy women (human and otherwise) at his disposal.

The pages in Smackdown disappear in big gulps. Acevedo cleverly writes this series so it feels like a high concept, glossy TV show, which would not be a bad idea. Given the success of the HBO's soft porn True Blood (based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels), Felix could become an X-Files meets 24 style action show. I'd watch it.

Visit the author's web site: MarioAcevedo.com

Biblio Says: 4. A fun read.

THE GHOST: A Review

Every other review of this book makes reference to it's roman a clef nature - the main character Adam Lang is a thinly veiled portrait of former British Prime Minster, Tony Blair. They go on and on about the clever plot and dialogue and point out all the parallel political tidbits. But, I don't give a damn about the political nature of the story. No one single reviewer has pointed out the major glaring (and fatal) error which forced me to literally THROW THIS BOOK ACROSS THE ROOM and say "Screw you, Mr. Harris, be a better writer."

A quick summary: Former British prime minister Adam Lang is up against a firm deadline to submit his memoirs to his publisher, and the project is dangerously derailed when his aide and collaborator, Michael McAra, perishes in a ferry accident off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. To salvage the book, a professional ghostwriter is hired to whip the manuscript into shape, but the writer, who is never named, soon finds that separating truth from fiction in Lang’s recollections a challenge. The stakes rise when Lang is accused of war crimes for authorizing the abduction of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, who then ended up in the CIA’s merciless hands. As the new writer probes deeper, he uncovers evidence that his predecessor’s death may have been a homicide and begins to fear for his own life.

Okay, sounds fine. The book opens with the ghostwriter meeting with the publishers and taking on the job of finishing the Prime Minister's memoirs. He has one month to take the unreadable manuscript and turn it into something salable. It will be his largest pay day ever - $200,000 for four weeks of work. The writer has made a decent living churning autobiographies of rock stars, celebrities and sports figures, but this assignment is the opportunity of a lifetime.

He also has to sign a confidentiality clause and is under strict guidelines as how and where he can work on the manuscript. He can only work on the manuscript at the palatial house on Martha's Vineyard where the PM and wife are living. He cannot discuss the manuscript with anyone. He cannot make copies. His laptop on which he is writing and editing the book, cannot leave the mansion. The writer has no problem with that ... hey, he's making $200,000 to basically re-write a completed manuscript.

So what does this idiot do? On page 98 of the novel, after an interview session with the PM, the writer e-mails a copy of the manuscript to himself so he can work on the book at night while he's in his hotel room -in essence, he makes a copy of the manuscript. That was the moment when I tossed this book. The only reason for this idiotic action was to give the novel its plot. Who cares if it goes against everything we have learned about the character? It's the plot that counts.

And another thing: if it was so important for the manuscript to stay secret until publication why in the hell is the writer staying at a deserted hotel in off season Martha's Vineyard? Why wasn't the writer sequestered in the mansion with the PM and wife and staff and secret service? Why? Because then, there is no plot.

"Screw you, Mr. Harris. Be a better writer."

BIBLIO SAYS: Stay away from this piece of junk.

Recommended Alternative Reading: The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.

THE GOLD COAST & THE GATE HOUSE: A Review

Okay, so I know how much other critics love these two books. I am also a Demille fan. The
Charm School, Word of Honor, The General's Daughter and Plum Island are all good books. Exciting thrillers and well written.

I read The Gold Coast when it was first published in 1990, and remember not being impressed at all. FAST FORWARD to 2009 - with great hype, Demille's sequel to Gold Coast was published so I decided to go back and re-read the book before I read the new one.

Halfway through Gold Coast for the second time I found myself very impatient. One question kept popping up in my head: Who the f*@k cares? I found nothing about any of the three main characters sympathetic.

In fact, by page 350 I was hoping everyone would die. Alas, only the so-called "bad guy" Frank Bellarosa gets it in the end. Frank's crime was being an Italian and daring to move into the cloistered white-bread preppy culture of snobs and shallow people along the Gold Coast - and tempting his ultra uptight neighbors John and Susan Sutter. According to the book description, John's narrative voice is "sardonic - often hilarious." Someone at the publishers has a different definition of hilarious than most of us.

I was thankful when it was finished, and pissed that John and Susan were still breathing valuble oxygen. So it was with trepidation that moved on to The Gate House. Ten years after his wife Susan killed Mob boss Frank Bellarosa, John Sutter returns to the cloistered life on the Gold Coast. John spends pages and pages ruminating about how terrible life is at the country club, on his yacht and in his mansion. Most of his problems are due to the fact that he is too much of a wienie to actually say "screw it" and leave the so-called good life behind. His annoying wife Susan is still annoying. She has a six-figure income from a family trust fund and is a spoiled bratty bitch. What John sees in her - other than her money and taste for kinky sex - is beyond me. So, if you enjoy reading about spoiled, self-important people clinging to an out-dated lifestyle I can recommend several books about Charleston in the 1860s. Stay away from this piece of boring crap.

HINT: next time have the editor actually edit the book. Cut out the boring shit -75% of this book.

BIBLIO SAYS: Stay far, far away.

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD - A Review

Margaret Atwood is the perfect example of the concept that quality is determined by general consensus. That is, something is good when enough people agree it is good, even if it truly is crap. Other examples would be the music of Madonna, the fiction of James Patterson, TV's Survivor and every Quentin Tarrentino movie.

Not only is Margaret Atwood a hack, she's a boring hack. And, worse than that, she is a deluded hack. The Year Of The Flood is a companion novel to 2003's Oryx and Crake, which portrayed the world being destroyed by catastrophic climate change and genetic engineering.

TYOTF centers on the lives of Ren and Toby, female members of a fundamentalist sect of Christian environmentalists, the God's Gardeners. Led by the charismatic Adam One, whose sermons and eco-hymns punctuate the narrative, the God's Gardeners are preparing for life after the prophesied Waterless Flood. The believers are ingrained with Adam One's pacificist and environmentalist's teachings - enviro-theology. They are vegetarian - unless you get really, really hungry, and then you start eating from the bottom of the food chain up.

Just to show you how nutty the entire thing is, Atwood had created new saints for God's Gardners to emulate - Al Gore and Rachel Carson.

Al Gore has been proved to be nothing more than a modern-day flim-flam man making millions of dollars off sketchy and unproven theories of global warming. He is either one of the most evil men in the world, or one of the most deluded.

Rachel Carson is nothing less than the greatest mass murderer of the last century. Her book Silent Spring so effectively advocated the banning of DDT against mosquitoes that politicians blindly rushed to pass a ban. Fifty years (and 30 million deaths from malaria) later, Carson's theory that DDT is harmful to the environment, humans and other creatures has been so thoroughly discredited than anyone who uses her name to defend environmental causes must be delusional, like dropping Hitler's name to discuss your support of Jewish culture.

But politics aside, Atwood has violated the first law of writing fiction: IT'S BORING! Nothing happens. And what does happen is so silly and flimsy that only someone as deluded as Al Gore could take it seriously.

BIBLIO SAYS: Ignore!

Companion Read: The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. A true dystopic masterpiece.