The Innswich Horror

It’s a dangerous proposition when a writer decides to pay homage to one of his influences by writing a story in the style of the other writer. Too often, personal style is lost in the mimicry, and the result is a bad imitation of the original.

Fortunately, Edward Lee handles this well in his new novel The Innswich Horror, and homage to H. P. Lovecraft. Lee manages to capture the Lovecraft atmosphere without abandoning what makes Lee one of the more original authors working today. The book is a tribute/semi-sequel to the Lovecraft classic “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.”

Two years after the death of Lovecraft, Foster Morley is his biggest fan. Living in Lovecraft’s hometown of Providence, Morley has collected Lovecraft’s published work, and devotes himself to exploring the venues that influenced the stories. Morley is something of a Lovecraft protagonist, a refined gentleman of independent means, somewhat prim and prudish. On a bus trip, Morley stops at the hitherto unknown town of Olmstead (according to Lovecraft’s notes, the unnamed central character of “Shadow” was named Olmstead). He stops for a visit, and becomes intrigued by the parallels between the town, originally called Innswich, and the Innsmouth of the story. He also notices there are few young men in the village and that almost all of the women are pregnant. His investigations lead him to the realization that Lovecraft may not have had such an active imagination after all.

As I said before, Lee does a good job of balancing his own style with that of Lovecraft. The tone reads like the Master, but with a fair amount of the sex and violence found in Lee’s own work, certainly more sex and violence than is found in all of Lovecraft’s work combined. Meanwhile, some of the excesses of Lee’s work have been blunted, the need to conform to the Lovecraft model tempering the need to top previous work in order to please fans. This is the best Edward Lee book I’ve read in some time, although his recent work is quite good. While Morley has the background of a Lovecraft character, he is bolder and more resourceful, carrying a gun and willing to fight the monstrosities he encounters (Lovecraft’s heroes were noted for fainting when confronted with horror).

All in all, if you like Edward Lee or H. P. Lovecraft, you will enjoy The Innswich Horror. There is a catch, however. Other than a small run of lettered editions, the only copies went to the 652 subscribers to the 2008 Cemetery Dance book club, so it will be hard to find. I think it is worth the effort, if the price isn’t too exorbitant.

A word on that book club. I paid $199 (which included shipping and handling) to receive 13 books from Cemetery Dance. While some of them took a little longer than originally hoped, this was a very good deal. I received books from Ray Bradbury, Simon Clark, Ronald Kelly, Al Sarrantonio and others, discovered Norman Prentiss who has become a favorite new author, and received exclusive books from Edward Lee and Douglas Clegg. This was money very well spent.

Edit: A tip of the fedora to my friend Kent Gowran: A more affordable trade paperback will be available from Deadite Books sometime in the near future, which is good news.
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Coven

Edward Lee (Creekers, City Infernal, Triage) has obtained quite a bit of fame as an outstanding horror author whose specialty is pushing the envelope of what is acceptable in terms of sex and violence in a story. The first great manifestation of this was in the 1991 novel Coven, reviewed here in its incarnation in 2005 as reprinted by Necro Publications.

Exham College is one of those schools everyone hates. It is the destination college for rich guys who are too lazy, stupid, or delinquent to go anywhere else. The book’s “hero” (more or less) is Wade, a rich kid who has managed to avoid acquiring credits during his six years of college, and whose father has given the ultimate punishment: Not only will he have to attend summer school instead of partying with his friends, he will have to work in the school’s science lab – cleaning toilets. Wade doesn’t know it, but worse is in store for him.

It seems the school is about to be the site of a Harvest – where extraterrestials (it’s much more horror than sci-fi, though) are grabbing victims for breeding experiments. Wade and his shallow friends are in the crosshairs of this out-of-this-world plot, and if they don’t find a way to stop the aliens, they will face a lifetime of sex with ugly space creatures.

All of the elements that mark Lee’s writing are here – gore, violence, queasy sex, and a sense of humor that has been too absent in some of his recent work. For example, before females can mate with the various Bug-Eyed Monsters, their physiology must be altered to accommodate them, which means their bones must be dissolved, leaving them living sacks of gooey flesh. The character of Wade and some of his friends may be initially off-putting to some, as he is not a very sympathetic character, but to my surprise, he grows on you. Some of the antics may be too strong for those of refined tastes, but this is a great book. A lot of people I respect have told me it’s their favorite of Lee’s work, and now it’s mine, too.

My only two complaints have nothing to do with the content of the book. First of all the title, Coven, has little to do with the actual story. You think it does for a little while, but no. (Lee’s working title for the book was The Women In Black, which would have been better) Also the cover (seen here) is pretty bland. I had someone ask me if I was reading a supernatural romance when they saw me with it,

Lee has expressed an occasional interest in writing a sequel to Coven, and I hope he does so.
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Triage

Triage is three novellas built around a single premise: A woman receives a phone call at her place of work “I’m coming to get you” and then a man comes in and starts shooting everyone. Each story has a different, top-of-the-line author, the late Richard Laymon, Edward Lee, and Jack Ketchum. Any one of those names is good enough to persuade me to buy a book, so all three together had me very eager to read it, even though the reviews I had read were mostly negative.

The first story, Laymon’s, was the most straight-forward in its execution. I would call it good, solid Laymon, nothing spectacular by his standards, but certainly well worth reading, with a typical Laymon twist in the middle.

The longest story was Edward Lee’s, which surprisingly used a science fiction setting, which also made it the widest deviation of the three from what is expected. I started out irritated at this. I was looking to read a horror story, not science fiction, but I was won over by the end. Edward Lee is an inventive writer, and uses the science fiction milieu for a bit of social commentary, well in keeping with science fiction traditions. The reveal at the end will probably delight some readers and annoy others, but I liked it.

Jack Ketchum’s story is the last and shortest, and he, too plays around with the format somewhat. This is one of his Stroup stories, and adventure of his hard-to-like recurring character. I thought the story was more of a character vignette than a full-fledged story, but Ketchum’s gift is characterization, and this is a good example of his talents.

So my verdict is to ignore any harsh reviews, and if you like Ketchum, Lee or Laymon (and who doesn’t?) pick up Triage.
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City Infernal

City Infernal, the first book in a trilogy by horror writer Edward Lee, is something of a mashup of horror and fantasy. The setting and description of places and things place it as horror, but the journey the characters follow is straight out of classic fantasy.
Cassie is a young woman immersed in the Goth culture. After the suicide of her twin sister (for which she blames herself), she and her father move to a quiet Southern town to put things behind them. It isn’t too quiet however, as Cassie discovers the house in which she lives was used by a previous occupant for Satanic sacrifices, and the locals believe the house is haunted. This seems plausible when Cassie meets Via, Hush and Xeke, three teens who are quite dead, but the reality is even stranger. It seems the house exists on a Deadpass, where the inhabitants of Hell can occasionally escape, for a brief time. Most people can’t see them, but Cassie is an Etheress, who possesses power both on Earth and in Hell.
Since suicides go to hell, Cassie’s sister was surely condemned, so with her dead friends, Cassie passes through to Hell to find and rescue her. There, she faces creatures that eat your feet while you’re sleeping, demonic rats and insects, torture unimaginable, and a major problem: If Lucifer ever got hold of an Etheress, he could incorporate into the living world. So, while Cassie searches for her sister, Satan launches an all-out campaign to capture her.
A lot of people have described City Infernal as being somewhat extreme, but I found it less so than most of Lee’s work. It is somewhat inconclusive, but that’s understandable since there are two books to follow. Recommended.

Creekers

Edward Lee is one of the most popular of the “extreme” horror writers, those whose stories push the boundaries of acceptable limits of sex and violence. This has made him a somewhat controversial author. Creekers, originally published in 1994, was something of a breakthrough novel for him.

Phil Straker is an ambitious big city cop, who originally hailed from the small Southern town of Crick City (for non-Southerners, “Crick” is a colloquial way of saying “creek”). He is on his way up the ladder when he is framed for shooting a child, and his career is destroyed. The only job in law enforcement he can find is in his old hometown, so he joins the small Crick City police force, and is detailed by the police chief to begin an undercover investigation of a local meth ring.

The meth operation is run by a member of the titular “Creekers”, backwoods residents who have intermarried for generations, resulting in a variety of aberrations and birth defects. Creekers have red eyes and black hair, and many have misshapen heads and missing or extra limbs and other features. Phil is drawn into a macabre world of stripclubs/whorehouses employing hideously deformed Creeker girls, and an underclass that has it’s own strange agenda.

Creekers is not for the squeamish. It has scenes of deviant sex, and gonzo violence. But for those of us who can handle such topics, we are rewarded with a fast-moving tale with unpredictable turns and surprises.