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.

SOULLESS: A Review

This may be the most entertaining book of 2009.

Poor Alexia Tarabotti. Living in Victorian London as a spinster is not the most enjoyable of lives. However, Alexia has the extra burden of not having a soul - which has the power to neutralize supernatural powers. She is also half-Italian (another burden) and has just murdered a vampire with her parasol in the library during a party, breaking almost every rule in polite society. When the officials arrive to investigate the murder, the head officer is none other than Lord Maccon - loud, messy, gorgeous and werewolf - who is nursing a secret hankering for Miss Tarabotti.

That's Chapter One. Where do you go from there? Into the realm of hysterical hijinks, drawing room dilemmas and passionate kisses, all served with the very best of tea. SOULLESS asks a very simple question: Can a soulless spinster find love with an Alpha werewolf in Victorian London?

SOULLESS is a delicate literary lampoon, seamlessly merging the darkness of Bram Stoker with the sensibility of Jane Austen set in Charles Dickens' London. Gail Carriger pulls it off with aplomb. The heroine has much in common with Austen's Elizabeth Bennett - witty, forthright and headstrong - but also has the additional talent of being lethal with a parasol. The writing style is very much Austenish, with its formality and cleverness, which induces not merely giggles and snickers but out right guffaws.

Here is a typical paragraph:

Professor Lyall was reminded of his Alpha's origins. He might be a relatively old werewolf, but he had spent much of that time in a barely enlightened backwater city in the Scottish Highlands. All the London ton acknowledged Scotland as a barbaric place. The packs there cared very little for the social niceties of daytime folk. Highland werewolves had a reputation of doing atrocious and highly unwarranted things, like wearing smoking jackets to the dinner table. Lyall shivered at the delicious horror of the very idea.

Sweet, and sublime. Unfortunately, SOULLESS will be invariably compared to the recent Jane Austen "rewrites," Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters, but this is much better. In addition to her Austen sensibilities, Carriger also has a bit of Terry Pratchett, P. G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams in her psyche. SOULLESS contains a complete re-imagining of vampire and werewolf lore, an accurate portrayal of Victorian society, a screwball comedy and a splash of steampunk tossed in for entertainment.

As part one of The Parasol Protectorate, this paves the way for 2010 CHANGELESS, which we are already awaiting with breathlessness. Time for some tea. Bravo, Ms. Carriger.

BIBLIO SAYS: Outstanding! Read it immediately!

COMPANION READ: Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

THE STRAIN: A Review

So far, this is the most entertaining book of 2009.
A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold. Everyone is dead, and as the hours pass the bodies do not decompose. What's more, the autopsies reveal that their blood has been completed transformed ... to white. What's more, four of the corpses on the plane revive and are taken to the hospital where ...

No, I can't tell you. That is part of the delicious horror that awaits you. Meanwhile, the non-decomposing autopsied bodies disappear from the city morgue and end up wandering the streets of New York, naked, with toe tags dangling.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows what is happening. He's seen it before. And he knows the time has finally come, a war is brewing . . . and knows that his collection of antique esoteric weapons will come in handy, if he can convince someone - anyone! - the truth about what is happening. The most esoteric item in Abraham's collection is the human heart the old man has kept in a jar since the 1960s. And it's still beating.

Across town, Vasiliy Fet, a tough New York City pest control expert, is puzzled by the millions of rats that are fleeing Manhattan. Fet knows rats flee their domain only when the habitat is taken over by another, more vicious vermin. So he descends into underworld of the New York subway system where a bewildering horror awaits.

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian, Fet and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city--a city that includes his wife and son--before it is too late.
This is part one of a trilogy, volumes two and three are being published in 2010 and 2011. It is an heady mixture of part I Am Legend, part Salem's Lot, part Outbreak, part Blade. The authors are an odd team. Academy Award winning director Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Mimic, Blade II and Hellboy) and award winning mystery novelist, Chuck Hogan have written a medical/sci-fi/ horror thriller of epic proportions.

Fast-paced, filled with quirky characters, and moments of sublime horror, this is a must read! Folks, we are talking about an instant classic.

BIBLIO SAYS: Highly recommended!!
Companion Read: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.