Snowblind by Christopher Golden

Published by St. Martin's Press on January 21, 2014

People die in blizzards, usually by crashing their cars, freezing to death, or having heart attacks while shoveling heavy snow. But during the worst blizzard that Coventry, Massachusetts has seen in many years, people die for mysterious reasons, after hearing whispers in the wind and feeling the chill of icy fingers. Twelve years later, people in Coventry still get nervous when it snows, remembering the eighteen deaths. The dead have an impact on the characters who make up the ensemble cast of Snowblind, an imaginative and (pardon the expression) moderately chilling horror novel that makes me glad I no longer live in blizzard country.

Having lost his job and then his wife during the blizzard, Doug Manning has focused his disintegrating life on a series of small-time burglaries. He attracts the suspicion of Joe Keenan, a police detective who is haunted by memories of the child who died in his arms when he was a uniformed cop on patrol during the blizzard. Jake Schapiro, whose little brother died in the blizzard, is now a part-time police photographer. TJ Farrelly, a musician/electrician, was thrown into the arms of the woman who is now his wife during the storm, but that relationship is fraying and their daughter ... well, when another storm comes, their daughter's behavior is unsettling -- as is true of many of the people who interact with the main characters.

I don't go out of my way to read horror fiction but there are good stories to be told in every genre. Snowblind tells a good story. It does so by putting characters first, by creating people who seem real, who are easy to care about, and by letting the reader experience vicarious fear when those characters are endangered or encounter the unknown. Christopher Golden relies on psychological horror rather than blood and gore which, for me, is a more effective means of triggering emotions.

Much of the novel revolves around the low-key domestic dramas in which the central characters are involved. Tension builds slowly as the characters confront the dangers that lurk in the new storm, but it never climaxes in a truly frightening moment as does the best horror fiction. It does, however, reveal the turmoil of the characters as they wrestle with their inner demons, and those provide better drama than the creatures that inhabit the wind and snow.

Sometimes the story is a little obvious -- it is fairly easy to figure out why people are behaving strangely -- and I'm not sure whether Golden meant for the secret to be so easily guessed. I found it difficult to buy into the phenomenon that drives the story, in part because it isn't convincingly described and in part because it is too easily battled in the end, but I liked the characters so much that my reservations about the plot were not a serious obstacle to my enjoyment of the novel.

RECOMMENDED

The Lords of Salem by Rob Zombie

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 12, 2013 

Rob Zombie recorded a song called "The Lords of Salem" in 2006. His movie of the same name is scheduled for release in April 2013. This book is a novelization of the movie, which I haven't seen. Is it a great novel? No, but I wasn't expecting much, and I was pleased that the novel exceeded my limited expectations. The Lords of Salem isn't The Crucible, but it's a surprisingly well written tale of witchcraft in modern Salem (for which I assume co-author B.K. Evenson deserves a fair amount of credit). There is nothing of Arthur Miller's subtlety in this version of Salem's witching -- it is a story for fans of gruesome, and in that regard it suffers from a lack of originality. If you're looking for a book that will scare you out of your socks, this isn't it. Still, I've read many horror novels that are less interesting than this one.

The novel begins in 1692, as Salem's judicial authorities put to death a number of witches, including Margaret Morgan. As she comes to a bloody end, Morgan vows to return and avenge her death, and those responsible for it -- particularly Mather and Hawthorne.

The story quickly turns to contemporary Salem, where Morgan tries to make good on her promise. One of her targets is Maisie Mather, whose unfortunate boyfriend is enjoying the afterglow of intimacy when Maisie is possessed. Another is the novel's central figure: Heidi Hawthorne, a recovering drug addict who works as a Salem DJ. A heavy metal song (or maybe it's not a song) by The Lords is delivered to Heidi anonymously, and when she plays it on the air, women love it. The song empowers women to do some ghastly things. An historian is the only character bright enough to figure out the connection between the song and a couple of very bloody killings.

When people aren't being ripped to shreds or having their eyes gouged out, the story maintains interest with humor, likable characters, and a coherent if unsurprising plot. The characters and the humor kept me reading. The elements of horror have been done in the same way many times before, although I give the writing team credit for describing them in vivid language. The best horror novels convince the reader that the shocking events in the novel are actually happening. That isn't true here; events are too predictable and sometimes a little too silly. This isn't the sort of book you'll stay awake reading because you're too frightened to turn the lights off. I liked it because it's entertaining, not because it's great horror.

As you might expect from Rob Zombie, the story revolves around music; as you might not expect, the DJs at the radio station are fond of bands like Earth Wind & Fire. Maybe that's Rob Zombie being ironic, or maybe he's a fan of old pop music. In any event, the use of music as a plot thread adds an extra dimension to the story.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Little Wolves by Thomas Maltman

Published by Soho Press on January 8, 2013 

Creepy and atmospheric, Little Wolves mixes two kinds of horror -- awful reality and fear of the supernatural -- while building suspense with the steadiness of precision machinery. The emphasis, as it should be in a truly frightening novel, is on the horror that lurks in human behavior.

Lone Mountain is a sleepy, mostly empty town in Minnesota that balances liquid and holy spirits. It is also a town in the grip of wickedness. A boy named Seth shoots Will Gunderson, Lone Mountain's sheriff, before killing himself, leaving his father, Grizz Fallon, distraught and overwhelmed by guilt. It is Pastor Logan Warren's first test and he can't find the words to offer succor. His pregnant wife, Clara, feels responsible for Seth's death because she had been teaching his class about doom, the end of life tale told in Ragnarok. She also feels her own brand of guilt because Seth came to her door before he shot Gunderson, but she left his knock unanswered. Is that why she sees Seth in the corn field after his death, or is she witnessing the return of a spectral Seth?

According to town gossip, the Fallon family has long been cursed. Was Seth possessed by evil spirits or did he have a good reason for killing Gunderson? Grizz doesn't want to know yet he's haunted by a need to learn the truth. He gets a clue from Leah, a girl Seth was dating before her father forced them to break up. It isn't a story the town wants to hear.

In addition to being a fan of Beowulf and its concept of wergild (blood debt), Seth had an affinity for coyotes (the titular little wolves), having raised some from infancy. After Seth dies, the coyotes in Lone Mountain behave strangely. Clara also has an affinity for coyotes, perhaps due to the stories her father told her about a girl who was part wolf. Clara always suspected that the stories had something to do with her own life, and she feels drawn to Lone Mountain because she is certain her mother died there. According to Clara's father, her mother died in a car accident, but he buried part of the truth and Clara is determined to unearth it.

All of these (pardon the expression) haunting questions give the reader an incentive to keep turning pages, as does Thomas Maltman's vibrant prose. The story borrows from legends and mythology while remaining grounded in the desperation of rural life. Little Wolves often straddles a line between supernatural and worldly horrors, creating unrelenting suspense from the uncertain perils Clara and the other characters must face. I wasn't entirely convinced by the penultimate scene and its blast of terror, but it is at least consistent with the story Maltman tells.

The portrait of Clara as the teacher who can make the kids appreciate Beowulf where others could not is a bit contrived, but the fullness of her character is convincing. She has an interesting way of analyzing word origins that informs her understanding of the world. She married a religious man but is filled with religious doubt, a conflict that serves the story well. Clara's search for her past leads to a truly creepy backstory that begins to unfold about midway through the novel.

Although Little Wolves includes a pastor in its cast of characters and explores a theme -- forgiveness -- that should resonate with religious readers, this isn't an overtly religious book. According to Grizz, the whole town craves forgiveness for the sins it visited upon Native Americans a hundred years earlier. While Seth and Grizz and the sheriff and Clara's father are of more immediate concern to the reader, perhaps the entire town should seek forgiveness for its judgmental treatment of residents it views as outsiders. Maltman asks the reader to decide which central characters deserve to be forgiven. Writing with penetrating insight, he makes it possible to forgive them all.

RECOMMENDED

The Uninvited by Liz Jensen

First published in the UK in 2012; published by Bloomsbury USA on January 8, 2013 

Around the world, reports are surfacing of children killing their relatives for no apparent reason.  When a seven-year-old girl makes the news by shooting family members with a nail gun, Hesketh Lock views the story through the lens of an anthropologist, as “a parable of dysfunctional times.”  Perhaps that is the best way to read The Uninvited.

Many dystopian novels begin with the world in a dystopian state.  They may or may not explain how the world’s condition came about, but when they do, the explanation tends to be cursory.  The Uninvited takes a different approach.  The story begins in a normal world.  The reader watches as that world collapses.  The cause of the crisis, when it is finally revealed, is more imaginative than the zombie plague that has become the hallmark of apocalyptic fiction.

Hesketh is an isolated man, a sufferer of Asperger’s Syndrome.  He is a compulsively honest, concrete thinker who lacks people skills.  He managed to live with a woman for awhile but Kaitlin had an affair so his isolation is again complete, despite his desire to maintain a relationship with Freddy, Kaitlin’s seven-year-old son.  Hesketh works as a corporate troubleshooter, targeting anomalies in behavioral patterns in the workplace.  He undertakes a series of assignments involving corporate saboteurs in Taiwan, Sweden, and Dubai who, after contending that they were controlled by spirits or trolls or djinns, kill themselves.  Hesketh believes there has been a global outbreak of hysteria fed by indigenous superstitions, although he has trouble explaining why all the dead guys had developed cravings for salt.  Nor can he explain why, just before he watched a man plummet from the top of a building, he saw a little girl urging the man to jump.

I expected The Uninvited to be a conventional horror story.  It isn’t.  The Uninvited is a hybrid of the science fiction, horror, and mystery genres, but it is also a commentary on how society addresses disaffected children.  What is the real horror:  kids who kill or the tendency to forget that they are kids, to treat them as inhuman creatures?  Particularly unsettling, because it’s so close to reality, is the public’s willingness (as the crisis intensifies) to label children as terrorists, to concentrate them in camps and drug them, because a desire for safety trumps compassion and understanding.  The public will always prefer to act in ignorance rather than wait for knowledge if action instills an artificial sense of security.

Still, it isn’t necessary to read The Uninvited as a parable.  Taken at face value, it is an absorbing, nightmarish story.  I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of Liz Jensen’s prose and by the depth of her characters.  Jensen exercises admirable restraint in her depiction of Hesketh.  Some writers would exaggerate his mental disorder to manufacture sympathy for the character.  Jensen is more subtle.  Hesketh is functional but a little off.  He’s keenly aware of numbers and time and colors and patterns.  He mentally constructs origami when he’s stressed.  Sometimes he rocks back and forth.  Jensen makes it clear that Hesketh is wired in an unusual way, but Hesketh likes the way he’s wired, enjoys the advantages that derive from his disorder (particularly his skill at pattern recognition), and scoffs when others pity him or assume he wants to be as “normal” as they are.  That’s an unusually insightful characterization of someone who would widely be pitied for his mental illness.

The Uninvited delivers a thought-provoking message but the message never overshadows the storytelling.  This is the way to write dystopian horror (and without a single vampire or zombie!). 

RECOMMENDED

Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Published in Sweden in 2008; published in translation by Thomas Dunne Books on October 11, 2011

The Earth and its creatures consist mostly of water. When water gets its evil on, it is a formidable and dangerous element. Even without a supernatural infestation, oceans (particularly at night) are frightening to behold. In Harbor, John Ajvide Lindqvist imagines the waters of the ocean as a diabolical force.

In 2004, a little girl named Maja disappears while visiting a lighthouse with her parents, Anders and Cecelia. Her disappearance on the small, isolated island of Domarö is impossible to explain. When Anders returns to the island a couple of years later, a series of eerie events suggest that Maja is trying to contact him. Anders later learns that Maja is not the first island resident to have disappeared, and that the island harbors secrets from generations past.

Anders is one primary character; another is Simon, an aging magician and escape artist who has lived on Domarö for years. In 1996, Simon pledges himself to a Spiritus, a dark little creature that resembles a centipede. When Simon drools on the Spiritus, he gains some of its life force; holding the Spiritus in his hand empowers Simon. Despite Simon's connection to the island, its life-long residents have kept a secret from him: the secret of the sea. It is the secret that animates the novel and that Anders must eventually understand if he is to make sense of Maja's disappearance.

As the plot develops, John Ajvide Lindqvist surrounds his characters with menacing images: a cardboard cutout of an ice cream man seems vaguely sinister; the wind-swept sea conveys a feeling of dread; the distant growl of a moped signals danger. Even swans are best avoided on Domarö. This is artful storytelling.

Unfortunately the images of horror are more interesting than the actual horror. The problem, I think, is that there are just too many different manifestations of evil: the dead return to life in ghost-like fashion, the living are possessed in zombie-like fashion, a malevolent force dwells in the deep ... the riot of horror themes becomes a bit much, particularly with the addition of the Spiritus. While the Spiritus is the most imaginative of the supernatural forces at play in Harbor, its existence (and the role it plays at the novel's end) is almost too convenient. Having voiced that small complaint, however, I must give Lindqvist credit for tying it all together at the novel's end.

Harbor works best as a novel of psychological horror -- the horror not just of losing a child, but of a parent's realization that he never really knew his child. As a tale of supernatural horror, the novel is creative but not particularly frightening. The lengthy story is nonetheless entertaining. There are stories within stories in this unusual novel: stories of smuggling and stagecraft and love and Nordic adventure. Often the stories provide background, explaining, for instance, why two kids who went missing came to be treated as island outcasts and how Anders' father died. The stories of individuals confronting fears and hardships in an isolated environment showcase Lindqvist at his best, and provide sufficient reason to read Harbor.

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