An arm and a leg

 As we wind down spooky season, I finished John Russo's Limb to Limb from 1981 this morning. 

Again, the 80's provide awesome covers.

Problem being, the plot as was outlined on the back had next to nothing to do with what actually happened in the book. The back cover makes it sound like a ballerina loses her leg, and suddenly some madman starts cutting off legs of other ballerinas. No, not what's happening. 

See, Tiffany Blake is the star of a Pittsburgh ballet company, who's been recruited to dance in New York City. Her dad, who is rich and owns a hot dog company, doesn't want her to go. They get in a fight, she gets run over by a train, losing a leg. A doctor manages to reattach the leg, but it's several inches shorter, and Tiffany will never dance again. 

Enter the two nice Jewish doctor brothers, freshly released from prison for running a third trimester abortion clinic, who's father was forced to work with a Nazi doctor in the camps on overcoming organ rejection. They're willing to give Tiffany a new leg, they just need one. Which leads to the kidnapping of Tiffany's two major competitors for Prima Ballerina, in hopes of grafting on of theirs on Tiffany. 

In the meantime, the two kidnapped girls have boyfriends who were filming a documentary about Tiffany. One gets involved in the kidnapping plot, the other doesn't. He indeed is the one who gets the third reel horror reveal of what's been going on. 

Honestly, while I enjoyed this, it again had nothing to do with what was promised. 

Also, John Russo wrote Night of the Living Dead, and wrote and produced alongside Romero quite frequently. Given two of our protagonists work in the film industry, we get more than a few self inserts at various points in time.  

My biggest issue in here is that we keep switching focus on characters with no real warning, and the transitions can be like grinding a gear trying to shift. But once you get used to it, it's a good read.  

He seems a little stiff

 Spooky October reading continues, as we hit 1981's PIN, written by Andrew Neiderman. It bears mentioning here that Mr. Neiderman may be better known by his pen name, V. C. Andrews. (So, technically, he ghost writes all of her stuff, or did, since she died in 1988. There's no real authoritative list of when he actually took over.) And frankly, reading this, you can tell. 

 The 80's trick of the hidden picture behind the cover.

 

 We open on older brother Leon and younger sister Ursula, and PIN, an anatomical teaching doll who The Doctor (their father) used to use ventriloquism to make talk to the kids, patients, etc. Well, somewhere along the line, Leon kept talking to PIN (short for Pinocchio) long after the Doctor stopped making him talk. This makes reading the story interesting, since Leon narrates all but the epilogue, and therefore PIN is treated as a living breathing character. 

When Leon is 18 and Ursula is 16, The Doctor and Mother die in a car crash. There's a bit of drama about whether or not they should live with relatives, and who should handle the sizable estate (it's suggested the one uncle would likely take the money from the kids, although Leon is not exactly a reliable narrator). Leon ends up taking control of the estate, and keeps Ursula at home with him, eventually moving PIN in with them in a separate downstairs bedroom. 

This is the basic set up. We get some rather....disturbing details of their adolescence, like Ursula's lesbian experience that Leon joins in with, Ursula's abortion at 14, Leon's few sexual encounters, but the plot really gets going when Ursula meets Stanley at her job at the library. Stanley is in town with his dying mother, he has a wooden leg after losing the original in Vietnam. He does his best to treat PIN like an actual human, although Leon hears him telling Ursula that she'd be better off moving out, since something's off with Leon. (DUH.)

We get more goddamn creepy not quite incest, as when Stanley's mother dies, Leon gets Ursula to sleep with PIN, and strongly implies she did this quite often after they brought him home following the parental deaths. Anyway, Stanley does propose to Ursula, leading Leon and PIN to plot how to murder Stanley to keep Ursula at home. 

The book is unsettling, not particularly scary. (Kind of how I feel about The Exorcist, really.) I realize in 1981, we would have thought Leon was schizophrenic, even if we really meant he had Multiple Personality Disorder, now Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I'm under the impression that usually involves internal monologues, not a separate personality projected onto an admittedly creep inanimate object. 

If you like VC Andrews and also like a bit more psycho spice, this book will be among your favorites. Past that, depending on your tastes in creepy young adults, you'll probably be entertained.  

Come, Ye Thankful People Come!

 Before we get into this, I want to point out once again that the cover art on this novel from 1973 looks like an advertisement for Three's Company that didn't debut until 1978

 

 With a longer haired Joyce DeWitt and a dowdy Mrs. Roper.

 So, yeah. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. I read his Night of the Moonbow back in maybe '89-'90 somewhere, but hadn't really read any of his other books. As I was cleaning out a box of books looking for October horror offerings, I found this one and decided to give it a go. 

So, we open with Ned and Beth Constantine and their daughter Kate waking up for the Agnes Fair, roughly Midsummer, in Cornwall Coombe, somewhere in New England, (Tryon doesn't really specify a state, just mentions it's within a day's drive of New York City. I personally would put it maybe Western Massachusetts/Connecticut  border.) Recent transplants, they're city folks looking to go back to the land. Kate has psychosomatic asthma, Ned thinks he's sterile from a case of mumps he got from the chili proprietor, and Beth suffers from depression. We start off fairly innocent, although there are hints things are amiss in Cornwall Coombe. We meet Justin Hooke, the local Harvest King, who's entering his 7th year in the role. His wife Sarah is currently serving as the Corn Maiden. The young fellow chosen to take over for Justin as his term ends, Worthy Pettinger, is unhappy to be tapped, feeling trapped by The Old Ways that predominate attitudes in the village. (Indeed, he takes flack for using a tractor to plow instead of a horse and plow.) We also have the village tramp/post mistress, Tamar Penrose, and her 13 year old daughter/town seer Missy, who's freckles are constellations. And of course, the Widow Fortune, who's very much involved in everyone's life in the Coombe. 

 Without going into major spoiler territory, let's just say the Old Ways go back a bit further than Ned thought they did, and really, by the end of this, there isn't a single character who is anything resembling a good person. This includes, Ned, our narrator, who does something rather unforgivable not long before the Kindling Night and Harvest Home festivities. (Admittedly, I think most of us would rank murder above rape on a hierarchy of sins, but it's still a goddamn sin and really kind of knocks him off the moral high ground.) 

Anyway, when I started reading this, I was getting The Lottery by Shirley Jackson vibes, along with touches of HP Lovecraft in the whole insular town hiding things behind closed doors. I also read that this was part of the inspiration for King's "Children of the Corn", which I can also see bits of, and Gaimen's Hinzelmann from American Gods is very much spiritual kin to Widow Fortune. We could also add in bits of Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man, except the victims here are generally aware of what's happening and why, unlike the constable there. I'm also debating if having the women being the bad guys to an unsuspecting man is better or worse than Rosemary's Baby or The Stepford Wives where the menfolk were conspiring behind the women's back. 

Honestly, there's enough horror fiction in a similar vein as well as a bunch of neopagan information that some of the more SHOCKING events in here will likely not surprise a modern reader, there are enough other surprises within to keep you entertained until the Harvest Lord and the Corn Maiden make the corn at the end. 

The Jiffy Pop Book

 There's some non book review stuff that I'll tack on to the end of this, so be prepared. But in the meantime I'll tell you the review title on this one is from Amazon sending me a shipping confirmation that this had shipped, but listing Jiffy Pop as the item that had shipped. 

 So, sometime in my teen year, likely 14 or 15, Mom played a concert in Grove City. Given it was the OSU Alumni Band, I'd heard the show on innumerable occasions, and had no real desire to sit through it again, so I wandered next door to the theater, where a small used bookstore awaited. While I was looking, I found Out Are the Lights by Richard Laymon, which had a Stephen King blurb on the cover. I recalled Fangoria saying something about Laymon being generally interesting if mediocre, and it was like $0.50, so why not. Teenage me wasn't particularly impressed. 

Adult me, on the other hand, was thinking about some of the novels I read as a teen, some of which I found in mom's attic, more than a few of which vanished in the decades between me moving out and my cleaning out the house, and it came up again. And again, I found myself disappointed, but given the plot was memorable enough I remembered it 35ish years later....

So, there are really about 3 related plots floating around in the title novella. The fiorst one involves the local theater, The Haunted Palace, is showing double features of 70's horror films, with a 10-15 minute Schreck short in between. The Schreck short is generally a disfigued guy killing people in various scenarios, like a vampire, inquisitor, chef, lake side maniac, etc. 

Then we have Connie and Dal. Dal tells Connie he's going to the Palace, but he instead hooks up with some lady who picked him up at work. Said lady has a paralyzed husband she makes watch her have sex with Dal. Elizabeth encourages Dal to marry Connie and kill her for the money to support her. Connie, in the meantime, ends up hooking up with Detective Pete, who's last date called him twice without leaving a message. (The date, Brit, ends up being part of Savage Schreck, which we'll return to.) 

So, Brit finds Freya, who was her friend Tina's roommate. Brit thought she recognized Tina in Shreck the Vampire. Which she did. Which is how Freya winds up kidnapping Brit and putting her in Savage Schreck. But there are several other Schrecks in here, so this takes a while. 

About a third of the way through, we find out Connie has severe hearing loss and gets by mostly reading lips. Which, at 49, feels like it gets badly folded in, since it seems to be selective hearing loss at various points, and only really becomes important toward the climax, when Connie finally sees a Schreck movie (after Dal and Elizabeth run over Pete with a car and Freya dies when the twin sister of one of her procurement targets shows up) and manages to read Brit's lips during the bonfire scene. 

I will say the epilogue amused me a bit, as Connie, having killed Schreck when he tried to make her a star, ends up taking his place and killing Dal and Elizabeth by nailing them in a casket together after getting them to confess to running over Pete. 

 But Gawd almighty. None of this works the way its presented. 

And then comes the 5 short stories, all of which are as bad or worse. We start with "Mess Hall", where girl has sex with her boyfriend ion the park, serial killer kills boyfriend and takes her to go kill her in his private torture ground. His previous victims come back from the dead and return the favor. "Dinker's Pond" revolves around a tale told by a miner, about how his partner's woman got eaten by a disembodied head. "Madman Stan" involves a Babysitter's take that she becomes a victim of; "Bad Day" involves monsters killing suburbians. The final tale, "The Tub", involves a wife inviting her lover over while her husband is away, only for him to die on top of her in the bat tub, leaving her trapped until her husband gets home. Frankly, they all read like trailers for a bad movie where they show you the good parts just to get you in the theater. 

Honestly, it was fun to reread, but I found my suspension of disbelief pretty much snapping every few chapters. 

Now, as I mentioned above, there are more than a few books I remember reading as a teen I can't find now, that would probably disappoint me as much now as they did then, but still stick with me. (One I found in a box last night, and found out the author wrote for White Wolf later on.) Some of those cheese fests included Canadian prison inmates facing down a Wendigo, an alien haunting an abandoned school (the skeletal school marm on the cover looked like my 8th grade math teacher), kids campfire stories becoming real, a vampire forced to sleep in trash bags down by the river (which I found last night!), and one about some Native American god keeping Florida safe from hurricanes until they piss him off. 

Drag Baseball

 Bit behind on updating, been a very long couple of weeks. But I did finish Baton Rouge Bingo, the next Scott Bradley mystery by Greg Herren. With Colin out of town, it's Frank's turn to get sucked into Scott's oddball personal life, as one of Scott's mother's friends is implicated in helping to steal Mike, LSU's tiger mascot. Of course, when Mom suggests checking out the swamp hideout her friend might be hiding out at, the find the friend shot in the back. Mind you, this leads to Scott's Dad being kidnapped, and a plot involving Huey Long's long lost box of cash/state bonds that everyone seems to think Mom knows the whereabouts of. 

Ultimately, it's a fun novel, wrapped up in Louisiana history.  

When the Saints beat the Colts

 Greg Herren's Who Dat Whodunnit takes place during the period between the Saints beating the Vikings for the Conference Championship and the Super Bowl where they kicked the crap out of the Colts. surprising everyone. In order to get us into this mindset of all of Louisiana running around yelling "Who Dat!" and "Geaux Saints!" like Cajun Cincinnati-ans... (As someone who grew up listening to crazy Southern Ohioans scream "Who Dey!" for the inferior Ohio team...)

Anyway, to tie us into the absolute insanity that happens when a city's much maligned team suddenly does well, we meet Scotty's cousin Jared, who warms the bench for the Saints, and is therefor the apple of Papa Bradley's eye. Jared just happens to be sort of dating Tara Bourgeoisie, who happens to be a more modern and plastic surgeried Anita Bryant, rallying Louisiana to kill the gays.  

Well, Tara winds up dead, shot with Scotty's mom's gun. (It seems pacifism ends when the levees break and one has to defend what's left of one's property.) And the Marina Werner, daughter of the pastor hosting the anti gay rally Tara was supposed to speak at ends up dead, also killed with Mom's gun. Jared ends up hiring Scotty and Colin (Frank is wrestling for a World Title in the  regional even team he's part of) to clear everyone in the family, since he found Tara's body and really doesn't have much of an alibi.

 Which of course leads into turning over several rocks from everyone's past, including the Bradley family, as a bunch of stinky laundry gets aired out. 

While it's a good yarn, and very engaging, I can't help but notice most of the series is set up like Murder, She Wrote, where we get introduced to a family member or family friend who either gets murdered or becomes the prime suspect.  

Sadly, the goddess in here isn't Oshun or Erzulie

 Again, running behind with updates, but I did get my hands on book 4 of Greg Herren's Scott Bradly series, Vieux Carré Voodoo. 

Now, as I mentioned previously, I started this series with book 3, then ran back and reread the first two. Given it looks like Mr Herren switched publishers between books, this one picks up a few years after the event in Mardi Gras Mambo, and deals with life maybe a year after Katrina. While Franks is now retired, he's off in SW Ohiop attending Pro-wresting school, leaving Scotty alone in the Big Easy. Sory of. We're around Easter here, as Scotty is headed to the Gay Easter Parade. We meet an old family friend, who gives Scotty back a stuffed bunny he barely remembers. Said friend takes a header off the balcony a chapter later, and we find out Colin, who we last saw as a wanted fugitive, is back in town. 

So, we essentially get treated to the redemption arc of Colin/Abram, who now didn't murder Scotty's uncles. We also get a mystery involving an artifact from a small theocracy on the India/Bangladesh border where Kali the destroyer is worshiped. (Despite the book title, when the goddess appears in Scotty's vision, she first appears with several arms holding skulls and a bunch of blood. Given the missing artifact is Her Eye...)

Any rate, most of the book becomes a race between Colin and Scotty trying to solve riddles left by the dead guy leading them to the eye while dodging a few other factions trying to recover the eye for their own reasons.  

While I enjoyed this one, I was expecting something closer to Louisiana Voodoo/Conjure than Indian dual goddess lore. Also trying very hard to figure oiut why the hell Colin is such a yo-yo character, coming in and out of the larger narrative. 

Last train to Clarksville

 Once again, summer has arrived and the pseudonymous Riley Sager has released another thriller. 

With a Vengeance has a simple enough set up. Anna Matheson and her compatriot Seamus have invited 6 people she has evidence caused the downfall of her father and the deaths of her family. The trian leaves Philadelphia at 7PM and arrives in Chicago at 7AM, giving Anna 13 hours to confront those who did her wrong until they can be arrested by the FBI when the train arrives. 

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. First up, the son of one of the invitees shows up instead of his dad, who was behind the conspiracy in the first place. That Anna and Dante dated before the fall only complicates things further. Then, during Anna's initial confrontation with the 6 conspirators, one dies of poisoning. And it turns out that, despite the train being otherwise empty, there is one other guest on board with a story of his own. Plus an engineer locked in the locomotive. 

So, we essentially have two Agatha Christie novels going on here as conspirators start dropping like flies. And the There Were None and of course, Murder of the Orient Express are both obvious inspirations in here. On the positive side, Sager's pacing continues to improve, and the twists and surprises are so much better spaced than they have been in previous volumes. On the other hand, I called one of the major twists fairly early, but at least this time ALL the twists make much more logical sense than they have in previous volumes. 

While once again not exactly undying literature, it remains good popcorn fodder, sucking you in for a while.  

MAsquerades, plagues, and kidnapped by pirates!

 I bought Penric's Labors by Lois McMaster Bujold a while back, but it's taken me a while to get to that section of my TBR pile. (Honestly, the last book left on that part of the Pile is Frank Herbert's Dune, and I'm kind of saving that for winter when my annual reading challenge is done, since I know that it's going to be a slog.)

 Anyway, we have three collected Penric novellas here, which, while in series timeline chronological order, kind of fit between other novellas in the series. Indeed, her note at the end discusses how she tends to write out of order, and then kind of affix it to the story timeline later. Which is why our initial offering, Masquerade in Lodi, has Penric unmarried. By the time we hit the last story, The Physicians of Vilnoc, he's married with a daughter. (The middle story, The Orphans of Raspay, he's married with no kids yet.) 

 So, the initial story is set in an analogue of Medievalish Venice. (Maybe a bit closer to the Renaissance?) Penric and Desdemona (his demon) get called out to a hospice to check a rescued drowning man for signs of possession. Turns out, the man is possessed, but how he got there winds up being a whole other mystery, one which Penric and the local Saint of the Bastard have to solve while running around canals at night during a festival not unlike Carnivale.

In the middle story, Penric is sailing back to his home with  an obscure manuscript, gets purloined by pirates and winds up getting held captive with two Quadrene orphans. Which of course leads to nautical fun times.

 And finally, we wind up with a bloodborne plague infecting the local fort, and it falls on Pen and Des to figure out the pathogen and how to stop it.

 As usual, these are entertaining and well written.  

Oops

 So, in Installment Immortality, Mary Dunleavy, formerly a Crossroads ghost, now a Caretaker ghost,. and always the babysitter to the entire Price-Healy clan and also now in service to the Anima Mundi...

Well, let's just say the world soul is a bit annoyed at the Covenant of St. George, who are busy locking up ghosts in bottles with things that hurt spirits, thereby effectively making ghost grenades. MAry gets suckered in to going East to stop them. Mary winds up taking Elsie and Arthur with her (the latter, who is falling apart after being reconstructed mentally from other people's memories, the former just pissed off at losing her mom and her brother). 

This leads the to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they find the Covenant, and a large society of ghosts who's roles are out of whack. 

Thankfully, none of our mains die by the end, but we do get some rather hard looks at ghost society and what's happened to the Covenant since the family blew up the training hall. 

And as a personal TW, there's an entire section on ghost dogs that really broke my heart. 

 I love this series very much.