Shambleau by C.L. Moore

This story first appeared in the November 1933 issue of Weird Tales and was Catherine Lucille Moore’s first paying story. She went by the moniker C.L. Moore to hide her author side hustle from her day-time banker job. It also might have had to with the fact that she wrote the story there. In order to stay busy during a lull she was practicing her typing speed. From memory she started typing the poem, The Haystack in the Flood. After a typo stating that there was a red running figure, she was so amused by the visual that she asked herself, why was the woman running and who was she running from. And with that she dove right in to the opening line of Shambleau.

Written review below. Video review here:

Weird Tales editor, Farnsworth Wright kept a tally on which stories were most popular. Shambleau was the second most popular story to ever be published in Weird Tales. The first being A Merritt’s “The Woman of the Wood.” – note to self. Find that story. Third was The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft.

Here is what our man H.P. had to say about Shambleau:

Shambleau is great stuff, too. It begins magnificently, on just the right note of terror, and with black intimations of the unknown. The subtle evil of the Entity, as suggested by the unexplained horror of the people, is extremely powerful—and the description of the Thing itself when unmasked is no letdown. Like “The House of the Worm”, it has real atmosphere and tension—rare thing amidst the pulp traditions of brisk, cheerful, staccato prose and lifeless stock characters and images. The one major fault is the conventional interplanetary setting. That weakens and dilutes the effect of both by introducing a parallel or rival wonder and by removing it from reality. Of course, a very remote setting had to be chosen for so unknown marvel—but some place like India, Africa, or the Amazon jungle might have been used…with the horror made more local. I trust your revisions may make Mrs. Moore’s second story as striking and interesting as this one.

—H. P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 21 Nov 1933, Lovecraft Annual 8.38-39

And now that you’ve had a master’s review, here is a novice review:

The basic premise: Interplanetary smuggler bandit Northwest Smith is kicking around a small Earth colony on Mars waiting for his connection to arrive. The cries of an angry mob yelling Shambleau pursue a young woman running for her life. Though he is no crusader, he feels for the girl and decides to step in. The mob, angry and confused as to why he would want to protect a Shambleau, eventually dispersed. The girl is shapely and attractive with brown skin, cat eyes, small sharp teeth and what appears to be red hair under her turban. She doesn’t really speak any languages, Smith knows so when he asks her why the mob was after her there is no reply. Northwest decides it’s too dangerous for her on the streets and takes her back to his hotel room. He leaves her there while he goes out to conduct business.

He comes back drunk and surprised to still see her. In his drunken state he revaluates the situation and her banging body in spite of those weird cat eyes. She is flirty. He goes in for the kiss and is simultaneously turned and completely repulsed. He shoves her away, throws some blankets on the floor and tells her, that’s where she’ll be sleeping.

Something is odd about the girl. Why were those town people chasing her? He is starting to doubt his decision in inviting this girl back to his room. She sits in the darkness. Never eats. Eye’s him strangely. Yet, he doesn’t kick her out. Who or what is this strange woman?

And that’s the set-up.

H.P. wasn’t kidding when he commented on the atmosphere and tension. First off it doesn’t feel like a science fiction story. This is horror story straight to the bone. I read that when she first envisioned the character Northwest Smith he was more of a Western character, and that is what this story feels like in atmosphere. Yes, there are Venusians, and we’re on Mars but it has a western flavor to it. Northwest, an infamous smuggler with questionable morality, all dressed in leather, carries his blaster…eh hem, I mean his heat beam gun, sorry I didn’t mean to insinuate that this is Han Solo because… it is. The more pulp I read the more I see the “inspirations.” But there the Stars Wars ends, and the story becomes an ancient mythic horror story.

The woman is mesmerizing. She’s odd but not creepy at first. She was a victim and Northwest saved her life. What is there to worry about? Moore slowly builds that tension though. This isn’t some monster on the edge of the darkness hunting you. This is something that shouldn’t even be a threat, five feet from your bed. Staring at you when your eyes open in the middle of the night. This story will make you uncomfortable. The ending reminds me of how Karl Kolchak would reflect on the story at the end of every one of his episodes. It is an exposition reflection that hints at the nature of addiction. Having something almost kill you, bring you pleasure and the fortitude to walk away.

Caedmon Records released a spoken word version of Shambleau read by C.L. Moore herself in 1980. They knew what they were doing because they even got paperback cover artist Kelly Freas to paint the cover. It goes for around $25-$35 but there is someone selling a Near Mint for $90.

Hear the record here:

Read Shambleau on the internet archive: Shambleau

Castle Garac by Nicholas Monsarrat

Originally published in 1955

This is the 3rd Pyramid Printing from 1968

Nicholas Monsarrat was a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy. He served in World War 2 and afterward used his seafaring wartime experience to write many books on the subject. In 1955, in the midst of all the high action war thrillers he knocked out this spooky gothic.

Written review below. Video review here:

The basic premise: Thomas Welles is a penniless American writer living abroad in Nice France. He has just finished his first book and sent it off to the publisher, awaiting his paycheck. At the moment though, he doesn’t even have money to eat. While sitting in a café drinking his last dime’s worth of coffee he spots a well-to-do man at another table. The man, whose name is Paul Erhardt, invites him over and buys him a petit pain. He learns of Thomas’ plight and offers him a job to be his personal secretary.

Thomas is then introduced to the man’s wife Anna. Anna is flirty. Tom doesn’t want to blow this new job, so he denies her advances. Later Anna tells her husband Paul that she wants to bang Tom. Paul is like, as you wish, my love.

Here we have our first hint that there is more than meets the eye with this rich power couple. They also have a local driver henchman named Hugo. What could they possibly want with Paul that Hugo couldn’t do? The couple will never admit where in the world they are originally from, and Tom can’t place the accent. He thinks they are just an eccentric wealthy couple and doesn’t think much about it especially because they are throwing money at him.

They want Tom to travel to the country near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes and find them a castle to rent. They have extremely specific qualifications for this castle like it has to have a wall around it and a chapel and a tower. They want the atmosphere of the 18th 19th century to escape all the modern noise. Tom heads out with his camera.

After his first quest he is given another. He must find a blonde nineteen-year-old girl that looks and acts her age, who is a native French speaker and has zero family ties. He obviously finds this request ludicrous. What would they even want with this girl? Paul assures him that he can’t tell him, but no harm will come to the young girl and in fact she will be paid well enough to change her life. Tom knows he’s deep into something shady now. He’s obviously being set up for something but it’s hard to turn down the money and he continues on.

Does he find the girl? What do they want with her? What’s up with this castle? Who are these people?

And here we have the gothic mystery. It’s a conspiracy against Tom but one that is in his face. He’s not being gaslit like in other gothics. He knows it’s bullshit but keeps on with the charade. Does this have to do with the fact that he’s a man? An interesting sociological example of the way men and women were viewed back then. This is the first gothic mystery I have read where the protagonist is male. Maybe because it was before the 60s explosion of the paperback gothics specifically marketed to women? Other than the lack of gaslighting this is tit for tat a gothic. A sole character plucked from their normal life and placed alone in an isolated location filled with strangers who seem friendly at face value. The story is saturated in gothic atmosphere. Hell, we even got a bona fide crumbling castle, isolated in the French mountains. Anna, the wife of Paul exudes pure sexuality but there is also a more wholesome love affair.

The pacing of this book was like being behind someone on the road who keeps checking their phone. You’re driving along at a normal pace and then inexplicably slow down to five miles under the speed limit for a block, all of a sudden they pick up speed a little and you’re doing five over. On and on. Go. Lull. Go. Lull. At one point some of the characters do something that would warrant action on the part of Tom but instead of figuring out what happened our main character is hanging around the café, eating petit pains and drinking orange juice. Other times he's scaling walls and fist fighting unknown attackers.

Either way, it’s a decent read.

The Dark Mill by Claudette Nicole

Claudette Nicole is actually Trailsman creator, Jon Messman. Jon Messman was responsible for many action and Men’s Adventure series like the Revenger, inspired by the Executioner boom, and several entries in the Nick Carter Killmaster series. He had a two-part series inspired by the Travis McGee series called Logan. Many standalones in the crime, espionage and action-adventure genres, plus he wrote most of the first 200 books in the adult western Trailsman series. He wrote nine gothic mysteries under the name Claudette Nicole. Dark Mill was his fifth and was first published as a paperback original in 1972 by Fawcett Gold Medal.

Video review here. Written review below.

The basic premise: Valery Curtis is a compassionate nurse who cares for an rich old lady, named Carlotta Van Dyne, in the hospital. Carlotta is enamored with the thoughtful nature of Valery and offers her a job watching her granddaughter for two months in her remote Maine chateau. The pay is $3000 plus all expenses paid. Valery is in a mental slump and this seems like the perfect way to change her environment and revitalize her life.

When she arrives at the estate with the mysterious name of Verdelet no one is there but the gaunt Lurch-like caretaker/servant Labat. She waits for a month and just when she is about ready to leave the little girl Tansy appears. Tansy immediately asks to go down to the old mill. While walking around the dilapidated structure Valery falls through a rotten board and slips underneath to the now spinning water mill. After narrowly being crushed to death she eventually shimmies her way out, getting knocked out in the process.

She awakes in her bed to a handsome man standing over her. He is the little girl’s uncle, Bob Van Dyne. He’s charming, boisterous, outgoing, confident and he wants a piece of Valery’s sugar pie. Valery is not against the prospect.

Also, there is his friend and coworker Glen Perry. He is quiet and sheepish. Submissive to Bob’s every command. The lack of back-bone bothers Valery. What a waste of a handsome man, she thinks.

The little girl, Tansy isn’t bothered in the slightest by this near-death accident of her new babysitter. She almost seems bored by it. She is a smart mouthed little brat whose soul purpose is to belittle Valery psychologically. She is described as looking like Shirley Temple with bouncing blonde curls and little kewpie dresses. You’re going to hate this girl.

As Valery gets to know these new people she is also informed another uncle will be showing up. A Brother Martin Van Dyne, a monk who left the official church but not the cloth. This guy sits around smiling while constantly spewing nihilistic philosophies on the inherent desire to kill inside humans and how there is nothing wrong with it. He strangely seems to not believe in good or evil so therefore any travesty a person commits is in the laws of nature. Valery is not a fan of his philosophies or his company.

Like most gothic mysteries the mystery is often whether the odd things that are happening are real or all in the main character’s head. Is there a conspiracy against her? Who can she trust?

The mystery in the Dark Mill is who is this strange aristocratic family and what are their dark secrets? Was Valery really hired to care for this little girl is there something more sinister at work?

Gaslighting is a huge part of most of the gothics I have read and this one is no different. The little girl is a sadist whose torment of Valery escalates as the plot progresses. By the end Valery is in a tight spot and has to make some serious decisions that go against her own moral character. It makes me wonder what exactly Messman was trying to say here about the murderous nature hiding in every one of us and what it takes for it to come out. And when it does, is it even necessarily a bad thing?

Maybe I’m reading too much into it but the book is filled with such philosophies emitting from the mouth of the questionable monk.

Either way, this was a wonderful conspiracy mystery peppered with all the gothic flavor. Here’s a little taste. All from the first paragraph:

Cavernous old house. Afternoon turned grey. Chill wind. Her tall willowy body. An echo of the cattails. Violet eyes. Jet black hair. The wind stabbed at her again. Strange place. Hollow of land. Beauty here was an ominous thing, at once frightening and compelling.

Men's Adventure Q&A with the Men's Adventure Library

I have a livestream Q&A with the men, Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle from the Men's Adventure Library on my youtube channel this Sunday, May 25th at 6pm EST. There is a live chat feature so we will be taking questions from the audience. Tune in, it's going to be a lot of fun!

Bad Ronald by John Holbrook Vance (AKA Jack Vance)

Originally released by Ballantine 1973 as a paperback original.

This review is for the upcoming reissue from Fathom Press on their horror imprint Savage Harvest. It is available for pre-order right now and will be shipping this summer.

Jack Vance was born in 1916 and died in 2013 at the age of 96. He attended UC Berkely. Was an electrician at Pearl Harbor but quit one month before the bombing took place. Crazy how life goes, eh? One small decision and he could have ended up dead and unknown instead of being a successful author still celebrated to this day. Later, he joined up with the Merchant Marine. He wrote jazz reviews for his college paper. He was a Bay Area Bohemian. Built his own house with a hand carved wooden ceiling from Kashmir. Was best friends with Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson. Moved to Chapala Mexico with the Herberts for a while. Lived in a houseboat he built with friends Herbert and Anderson. He was most well-known for his fantasy and science fiction books including the incredibly popular Dying Earth series. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerer’s Guild of America whose purpose was to promote the sword and sorcery genre. He is a multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning author. He also wrote 3 mystery novels under the house name of Ellery Queen. As far as I can tell Bad Ronald is only foray into the thriller/horror genre.

Video review here. Written review below:

The basic premise: Pampered incel mamma’s boy Ronald Wilby gets socially rejected and takes out frustration by killing a neighbor girl. Mom builds false wall in their house to hide Ronald. She eventually dies. House is sold, with Ronald still in the walls, to a young family with three daughters. Ronald is bad.

I have a friend who went out with his girlfriend one night. They come home, hang out, watch a movie and then go to bed. In the middle of the night a stranger crawls into bed with them. She screams. The cops are called. They catch the guy. He is a mentally unstable individual. Apparently, he climbed in an open window and was hiding in the shower the entire night. So, every time they went to the bathroom this stranger was in there with them. Hiding behind the shower curtain. Two feet away.

There is something about a stranger in your home that is so much creepier than being accosted on the street. In your home you feel safe. Your guard is down. You are at your most vulnerable. You wouldn’t think that a story told from the perspective of a guy trapped in a walled-up bathroom for pretty much an entire book would be exciting, but you’d be wrong. Vance plays on the vulnerability of the victims. Like watching a mouse dropped into a snake’s cage. You feel the peril the mouse is in though they don’t seem to notice. It doesn’t even realize it’s in danger. It’s stress through empathy. You see through Ronald’s eyes, but you feel through the family’s inescapable danger.

The character of Ronald Wilby is a psychological study into a detached mind. He knows what he wants but lacks the ability or caring to think from someone else’s perspective. The story starts with Ronald and his mother celebrating his 17th birthday. It’s just the two of them in their giant Victorian home. No friends attend. No one mentions that no friends attend. I was reminded of the relationship between Ignatius Riley and his mother in Confederacy of Dunces. Ronald is even described in a similar way; big, overweight and somewhat lazy oaf, who considers himself an intellectual. Though, unlike Ignatius he doesn’t have the mental chops. He works hard on his fantasy book, Atranta though, and his mom has dreams of him being a doctor. There is a lot of delusion going on in the Wilby household.

Ronald is infatuated with his blond classmate, Laurel, who lives down the street. After his birthday party he strolls down to her house in his new safari jacket. She’s out back in the pool with her friends. He creeps around the house and then goes out back. Everyone is polite but pretty much ignores him. He is disgusted by how she acts flirty with the boys he views as beneath him. How dare she stroll around in a tiny bikini. In his head he owns her. The group gets out of the pool and heads out leaving Ronald sitting alone poolside. He broods and simmers in his hate. On the walk home an eleven-year-old girl runs into him on her bike. She has blond hair just like Laurel. He decides to take his lust and hate out on her, drags her out to the woods and rapes her. It’s all natural to him. He tells her maybe they can do it again sometime. She tells him she’s going to the police. He strangles her to death without a second thought. He doesn’t want to go to jail though so he buries the body. Her parents start yelling her name and he panics, leaving his jacket behind.

Back home he tells his mother the girl seduced him and threatened him. Her death was an accident. The mom’s reaction is only worry for her son and his future of being a doctor. The two quickly build a wall that covers up the bathroom downstairs. Ronald will live in there until she can save the money to move them elsewhere.

The cops search for Ronald. His mother tells them he ran off. Ronald lives behind the wall diving further into his psychosis.

Mom dies not too long after. His estranged father, who still owns the house, puts it up for sale. It is bought by a family with three teenage daughters. It couldn’t be more perfect for Ronald.

And there is the set up for Bad Ronald. We spend a lot of time in Ronald’s head as he decides which of the teenager daughters is his favorite and why. Which mouse the snake is going to eat first.

He makes peeps holes to watch better. Associates the girls with the characters in his fantasy world of Atranta. Sneaks out at night to steal food from the fridge or in the daytime to read a diary. Members of the family notice that food has been eaten and items aren’t as they should be but they joke about a ghost or blame it on each other.

Vance nails the narcissistic sociopathic entitlement of the killer. Every other human being is beneath him and only here for his pleasure. He delights in watching them struggle. He gets off when they suffer at his hands. At the same time, he has a twisted reality where he assumes they are in a relationship, and they will eventually go off and live together someday. This isn’t someone who broke into your house to steal some money, he wants you and will kill without guilt or hesitation. He is terrifying.

This is suspense. You’re on the edge of your seat wondering how it’s going to play out. And the best part is that it’s not obvious. This is a dark story and as much as you want to see Ronald taken down, I could see him surviving and it being left open so that he could be in your next house.

Absolutely one of the best reads of the year.

It was made in to a TV movie in 1974. I was hoping it was on youtube for free like most made for TV movies but unfortunately it isn’t. I watched some clips of it and was surprised to see that Ronald was this little twerp. He looks like he’s 5’7 120 pounds. No. That’s not intimidating. The Ronald the book describes and what was in my head the whole time was Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and seeing that guy in your house. Movie Ronald I could pick up and just chuck through a window. If I walked into the kitchen at night and saw private Pyle going through the fridge I would crap my pants.

Something else that I noticed they changed in the movie, when Ronald kills the girl at the beginning it was on purpose. He knew what he was doing, and it increased the tension for the rest of the book. In the movie he argues with the girl for running into him and then shoves her and she falls and hits her head on a rock. So, it was an accident that only created the scenario for why he was living in the walls. Which, once you take out the sociopathic killer aspect, you kind of just have some little dweeby guy with bad luck living in your walls. Not nearly as threatening.

It looks like it was also made into a movie in France in 1992 called Méchant garçon which translates to, bad boy. Once again, I can’t find it to watch but I did find these French book editions which are way better than their US counterparts. None of them will compare with Steven Andrede has come up with for this edition though. It's not finished but have seen preliminaries and finally this book will get a cover worthy of what's inside.

Six Gun Samurai no 1 by Patrick Lee

Pinnacle Books 1980

Cover art by Bruce Minney

Pseudonym of Mark K Roberts

I couldn’t find much about the author. He was born in 1936. He wrote The Liberty Corps series and several entries in The Penetrator series, Soldier for Hire series, and The Black Eagles series. Probably many more but this is all I could find.

The Six Gun Samurai series had 8 entries. The first six are under the title Six Gun Samurai and the last two are inexplicably changed to Six Gun Warrior. The series was adorably written under the, somewhat Asian-ambiguous, house name of Patrick Lee.

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Video review in case you don't feel like readin:

The basic premise: 12-year-old Tommy Fletcher is a midshipman in the United States Navy and is stationed in Japan. One night a group of ninjas attack and kill everyone at the base except Tommy who escapes into the streets of Japan. He remains there as a street urchin until a Samurai adopts him and teaches him the way of the Samurai. Years later he returns to the US to enact revenge upon the Union soldiers who killed his estranged Southern family.

The Civil War ended in 1865 and now a rogue Union Colonel and his criminal cavalry terrorize the West by violently stealing claims, money and even whole towns. Bad news for them though because Tanaka Tom is back in the US and out for blood.

We start in Washout, Nevada. Two white gunslingers are in town to rob the place. They're at the bar drinking when a strange man wearing Asian garb shows up. Dumb crackers are never a fan of foreigners, so they decide to have a little fun. They verbally berate him with racial slurs. He calmly states he is Tommy Fletcher, whips out his sword and starts chopping off body parts. Heads literally roll. It is explicitly described in wonderful bloody detail.

Instead of just stating what Tommy looks like, it’s clever the way the author used the outlaws insults to describe his appearance. Tommy is half Native American and half white, so everyone thinks he's...Japanese?? “Especially when he has a tan.”

At the end of the fight the bartender clunks Tommy over the head and he wakes up in jail. We get a reminiscing flashback to his time In Japan and what happened after the night of the ninja. With no way to get home and in a foreign land he survives on the streets doing what he has to to survive. He gets in a fight with some other street kids and runs into a samurai while chasing them. The Samurai learns he is an American and he was a survivor of the infamous massacre of the naval base. The Samurai wants him to testify at a hearing that will help the Shogun because people say it was the Samurai’s fault the US navy people were killed. Long story short Tommy goes to live with the childless Samurai and his wife and Tommy is adopted as their son.

It's a very convoluted back story but I appreciate that it was so complex and in depth. You usually don’t see such effort in foreigner-learns-a-form-of-martial-arts stories.

At the end of the flashback Tommy is released from jail as he was defending himself.

From here on out we get snippets of the bad guys being bad and holy shit, the author really goes all in. In one scene there is a group of families mining a claim. They strike gold. Two of the men go to town to get supplies and instantly the claim jumpers attack the family remaining at the claim. They beat the men to get them to sign over the claim. Still, they refuse. Among the gang of outlaws is a pedophile who takes the man’s son into the bushes and rapes him. The sounds of the boy screaming torment the father into signing. What?! Good Lord. I’ve seen some fucked up shit in these old books, but this was hands down the worst and it blindsided me. I did not see that coming. And after the men sign the papers, they execute them, and the leader tells his men to do whatever they want with the wives and children.

We jump right back to our hero Tanaka Tom and that's good because I’m ready for some more bloodshed. But unfortunately, we go into our first adult western style sex scene. Bad timing. Tom is now in Globe Arizona trying to get a clue about the Colonel’s whereabouts. At a bar he is approached by a prostitute. He is immediately all in and humps the ever-living shit out of her. And in case you were wondering, yes, he has a giant dong, yes, he can bang it out for over an hour and is ready to go again in a few minutes and yes, this is the best sex this hooker has ever had.

Bad guys do more bad things. Tommy catches up with a few of them and hacks them to pieces. He bangs another hooker. Another child is violated. Damn it. We get lots of Samurai moral code of ethics and the loophole that is vengeance. Tommy meets good local working men and families along the way who are sick of these outlaws and willing to help him in his journey.

One aspect I really liked is that Tommy pretty much sticks to his Samurai fighting style and weapons throughout most of the book. Unfortunately, he caves into the Western fighting style and even though he's been taught guns are without honor he all of a sudden realizes that they are actually really great and teaches himself to use them. Ha! First off, his rationalization about how guns are actually wonderful was corny and total propaganda. Second and to add to the first point, this author loves guns because we get four pages of the most descriptive gun shooting ever written. Don’t get me wrong, I love shootouts in Westerns, in fact, usually the more the merrier, but the fact he doesn’t use guns is what makes this stand out. He's a samurai fighting with a sword and throwing stars and other Asian stuff in a western world. If he uses guns, it's just another western.

Epic showdown. I was kind of disappointed to see the book’s main conflict wasn't going to be concluded in this one. I would rather have had each book be its own complete story than a huge series.

Take out the unnecessary brutal attitude towards children in this book and I found it to be a fun first entry. Very pulpy. Very men’s adventure. I especially loved the stranger in a strange land, East meets West, genre fiction mash up.

Shadow Stalker by Jorge Saralegui

Charter Books 1987

Jorge Saralegui was born in 1953 and is still alive, which we’re always happy to hear. He was born in Cuba and grew up in New York. He spent a little time in my neck of the woods, graduating from Antioch College along with Lawrence Block, Rod Serling and Leanord Nimoy. Though he wrote three novels, Last Rites in 85, Shadow Stalker in 87 and Looker in 1990, he is most well known as a film producer having a hand in such movies as Speed, Independence Day, Broken Arrow and Die Hard with a Vengeance. In 2005 he teamed up with Clive Barker to form the production company The Midnight Picture Show.

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(Video review if you don't feel like reading:)

The basic premise: Prison psychologist Jack Sanderson vouches for the early release of a convicted murderer named Daniel Doppler. Doppler’s wife is in the hospital due to an insulin mix-up that put her in a coma, and he wants her released back into his care. After a couple of conversations with the locals Jack gets doubts about Doppler’s rehabilitation. Jack stops the process. Turns out Doppler is a psychopath and vows vengeance. Stalking terror ensues.

What we have here is an 80s erotic thriller noir wherein a young middleclass couple have their lives turned upside down by a sadistic sociopath who uses and intimidates anyone who is unlucky enough to cross his path.

The setting is 1980s San Francisco tenderloin district. A wretched hive of scum and villainy. The story is peppered with a plethora of absolutely enjoyable unsavory characters. And it’s 80s as fuck so when someone is wearing a band shirt it’s something like Pere Ube. Punks are mentioned hanging outside the Mubuhay Gardens. This thing screams peep shows, neon lights, street drugs, hookers and the like. Hell, one of the main characters is a teenage runaway who works in a peep show, endlessly pops lipstick red Seconals, and daydreams of being in an all-female punk band.

The story is told in third person narration with the focus jumping from the point of view of all the main characters. I would say the main protagonist is Jack the psychologist though. He is a well-meaning liberal guy with a bumper sticker on his Volvo that says, “US out of Central America.” He wants to see the good in people and after many sessions with Daniel Doppler he believes he is someone worthy of that understanding so he vouches for him at his parole hearing. Also, he deeply loves his wife, Wendy.

Doppler was in prison because he accidently killed a man in a bar fight. The man insinuated Doppler was molesting his comatose wife. At first Doppler seems the way that Jack sees him. We are then let in on some shady background when Jack talks to the local doctor and realizes that Doppler might not have been truthful about everything. Red flags are popping up and Jack steps in and puts a halt to Doppler’s wife returning to his care. Doppler flips and sends Jack a letter telling him that in two months’ time Jack’s wife Wendy will be just like his and Jack will be dead.

And from there on we get Doppler toying with the couple. Sending letters, making phone calls. One night he sends some morticians to Jack’s house to “pick up the bodies.” Which I thought was pretty funny.

This book’s strength is its strong suspense element. You know it’s coming but you don’t know when. Doppler is a complete sociopath and every scene with him in it is completely off putting. He’s not a madman flying off the rails, he’s cool and calm with flat dead eyes. He’s always within arm’s reach of Jack, making his presence known. It really reminded me of Cape Fear. All the parts with Doppler tormenting Jack are great. They are subtly psychological and believable. I mean what would you do if someone was after you but never came directly for you? It would be a nightmare. Which I guess yeah, it’s what a stalker is and it happens every day. Mostly to women. I’m ashamed to say that it took a book with the perspective being a male for me to truly grasp the terror.

Other interesting characters are:

Wendy’s dad. A creepster himself. A sociopath on the right side of the law. He’s a reactionary right wing retired cop with a bleak and violent view on humanity. He was also a wife beater and mental abuser. And other stuff that we’re not going to spoil here but I loved all of his parts in the book. He’s a piece of shit but in this kind of story you need it to increase the sleazy atmosphere.

Natasha, the teenage runaway. She’s a punk rock girl. Druggy. Stripper. Her life becomes intertwined with Doppler and man you are rooting for her but she’s a fly unknowingly caught in the spider’s web and it’s not looking good.

There is a schizophrenic repressed transgender hotel manager where Doppler and Natasha live.

A tough but sympathetic detective who pops in every now and again.

And Wendy the wife who in one way is just kind of there for you to worry about but then in another she’s tough. She makes some hard points and insights of how men can abuse their partners in the veil of love.

The build and the climax were perfectly plotted and fucked up. The villain is diabolical but believable. This should have been an 80s thriller b-movie.

Bonus: some interesting tidbits,

The couple’s names are Wendy and Jack.

There is a character named Dr. Loomis and he has a pumpkin drawing on his wall.

In one part he mentions a Talking Heads song about trying to sleep while their beds are burning. But that’s a Midnight Oil song. This author knows music so it had to be on purpose. Why?