Let's go hunting again!

 Well, my goal of reading sppoky stuff for Octber got cancelled by trying to read Horror House by J. N Williamson (made complicated by finding out the "true life" presented as non-fiction is a load of hooey, and the property itself was a highway interchange even when the book got written.) Anyway, as it turned out, A Divided Duty by Seanan McGuire (book 20 of October Daye) showed up at the library not long after I threw a paperback at the wall. Given it's new and has a long line waiting on it when I return it, it took priority. The paperback can wait until January when I'm desperate.

So, October gave birth to Miranda, and we open with things fairly tranquil at the house as she and her collection of various and sundry housemates are actually having a peaceful go of time. However, Rayselline Torquill (who was an odd child, became a villain, got redeemed, and is now essentially getting therapy while working off a term of service under October) is about to be released back to her parent's care, unless Dianda and October can convince Queen Arden to extend the term of service 4 months to make up for the 4 months under Titania's illusion. 

Problem being, Ray's mother, Luna isn't having it. Indeed, when Arden agrees to the 4 month extension, Luna kidnaps Ray and drags her to Blind Michael's Skerry. Where Ray promptly gets kidnapped again. Which means October and Tybalt get to chase around the skerry and the knowes of San Francisco to figure out what happened. 

They do, eventually, and while the final twist is kind of a surprise, it also makes next to no sense. Which I won't hold against the author, because the whole chase is well crafted and fun to read. The only other problem I had was several hints were dropped about fox fae, and none showed up. Dammit, I want my Kitsune and Reynards! 

Honestly, this was one of the better entries in the series of late, and it was good to feel less rushed than opme of the teen volumes. (This is book 20 in the series.)  

Got a splinter from the pulp on this one.

 Once again, it's October, and I'm trying to read spooky stuff for the season, particularly spooky stuff I have in my library I never got around to reading. Which brings us to The Unforgiven, by Patricia J. MacDonald, who it looks has had a decent career in spite of this pulpy mass market rack book. 

This doesn't do full justice for the cut out face behind the cover.

We open on one Maggie Fraser, who is currently serving 12 years in a women's pen for allegedly murdering her married lover. While Maggie claims innocence, her mom's nun buddy Sister Dolerita insists that Maggie needs to confess her sin unless she wants to burn in eternal damnation. Maggie is also being harassed by the other women in the prison, which might explain why our introduction to her ends with Maggie drinking a bottle of disinfectant to try to kill herself. 

Sadly, she survives, and we join her on a ferry to Heron's Neck, a city and island in the Massachusetts Bay. Seems she's been corresponding with the owner of the local paper, who wants her to come work for him after she gets released. We get more of an impression of her wilting violet impersonation as she sees two kids torment a tortoise as she disembarks. She gets to the paper office the next day to find out the man she's been talking to is out of town on business, but Jess, who runs the paper, keeps her on and puts her to work over the objections of Grace and to a lesser degree, Evy. 

Most of the first half is Maggie finding a place to stay, lying to everyone about her background, and getting serious about Jess, who wants to date her. We do know someone is stalking her, but for the most part, there's very little interaction there. A moved perfume bottle, someone staring at Maggie trying on dresses, a missing pocket book... Enough that you expect this is a gaslighting tale from 1981. Not so. About halfway through, we find out who the stalker is, although it takes a bit longer to find out the motives. (It should be fairly obvious, since there's really like only one other character who could have conceivably put razor sharp glass in the apple pie.) This does mean we spend the first half of the last half waiting for everyone to catch up with the narrative. 

Eventually, everything gets resolved, although the resolution after the climax felt a bit hurried and abrupt. Like there are some major plot threads that got resolved by a sentence in a telephone call, and frankly, the killer's motives wind up making even less sense when a left field reveal happens during the climax.

While this does fall more under thriller than horror, it was a fun distraction. Not great, but amusing.

When ideals collide

 So I recently found out Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman released another new DragonLance novel, and while it's not listed as part of a planned trilogy, it could be. 

War Wizard is focused on Huma (Hero of the 3rd Dragon War) and his adopted brother Devon Aynshire, who about a quarter of the way through changes his name to Magius after an ancestor who worked with the Legendary Vinas Solamnus ti defeat the Ergothian horde. (Yeah, we're actually in fairly early Krynnish history here. Plus somewhere, I missed a dragon war, since I thought Huma won the Second War.) Anyway, we see Magius grow up with his adoptive brother and get trained in magic by the Neutral Goddess of Magic, Lunitari (which appears to be a change. Most published history starts him off in Black robes, moves him to red, turns him renegade, then dying in white.) 

Any rate, Solamnics are bred to fear and distrust  Arcane Magic (they take no issue with divine magic in this era), so Magius is fighting an uphill battle to get traction with the Knights of Solamnia (basically freakin' paladins). 

Quite a bit happens, from supportive adoptive parents fighting for him, his close friendship with Huma, and his betrothal to his adoptive sister. Magius takes his test at the Tower of High Sorcery (named back in AD&D before sorcery became it's own thing) the same time that Huma takes his spurs and becomes a knight. So, Fiancee ends up dying thanks to Huma's at this time arch nemesis (he eventually pissess of the Queen of Darkness), and Magius tries getting the Device of Time Traveling to go back and save her. Thankfully, he changes his mind, because frankly, given how many canonical time edits characters have made in this setting over time would end a game of Chrononauts with the universe exploding. 

We end with Magius creating his famous staff a later wizard uses quite famously.  

Anyway. 

The interplay between Huma and Magius is really similar to that between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, giving them a really queer subtext.  On the other hand, when Greta and Magius are betrothed and sharing a camp bed, nothing happens because they're waiting for marriage. (Guessing that was a Tracy thing, given he discusses his opinions on saving it for marriage in the Annotated Chronicles when it comes up with Goldmoon and Riverwind). 

Will they write another one? Probably, the books sell well and Hasbro near as I can tell hasn't yet squeezed  all the possible profit out of the franchise as of yet. (Forgive me, but they currently own WotC, and keep releasing unrelated to the main storyline Magic the Gathering sets based on Hasbro properties.) But, honestly, I kind of feel like they're now paying Hickman and Weis to go back and retell stories already told by others rather than tell an original story. (The last trilogy had an original story, but kept screwing with a timeline they created in the first place. Should they continue this out, one is left to wander if they plan to redact those changes.) 

SMUT alert

 So, I picked up Salt Kiss by Sierra Simone because somewhere along the line, someone made a show out of it that I kept getting ads for in Facebook Reels. (Based on what's in the reels, the show deviates from the book a few places. I'm also not paying for the app to watch the show.)

We start meeting Mark Trevena and his twin sister at their younger sister's wedding to a military man. We get the impression the siblings are hip deep in shady practices, and then we switch to our narrating character, Tristan Thomas. Tristan is a 30 year old virgin, recently discharged from the Army, following some hinted around at events playing bodyguard for an unpopular foreign leader. Mark hires him to be his bodyguard at Lyonesse, an exclusive high end kinky sex club on the Potomac in DC. We learn Mark is former CIA and the memberships at Lyonesse are paid for with information, more than money. 

We get to go through Tristan's shock at seeing kinky sex on the reg,  and eventually, he admits that he wants to be Mark's submissive, which in turn leads into smut. 

Eventually, during an "open house", Lyonesse gets invaded, Mark gets stabbed. Which means Mark has Tristan go to Ireland to pick up Mark's heretofore unknown female fiance and ride a yacht with her from Ireland to Manhattan. After a few chapters of Tristan whining about not feeling right submitting to Mark when he's engaged, Isolde and Tristan board the boat, and Tristan learns all about kinky hetero sex. 

In the end, they arrive in Manhattan and it's suggested there were cameras on the boat, so Mark is aware of what his sub and his fiancee were doing once they passed the Azores, leaving us a cliffhanger for the next book. 

Based on the information I could find, the trilogy is a modern take on the 13th century Tristan and Isolde, which, after digging through several folklore sites, has several different versions, from chaste forbidden love to King Mark killing Tristan for sleeping with Isolde after accidentally taking a love potion. So, I can't really complain about taking the basic story and making a modern version, even though the medieval versions skipped King Mark tying Knight Tristan to a table and dripping hot wax on his privates. Further investigation shows where the legend got wrapped into Arthurian Legend, which is where Lyonesse comes from, basically an English version of Atlantis. 

I mean, it's readable, and honestly tame compared to some Erotica I've read on occasion.  If you like MMF erotic lit, give it a go. Just understand most men aren't blessed with the refraction time men in erotic seem to have. 

WASSUP!

 I needed a severe break from Dune, so I dug out The Wrong Number, a Fear Street novel by R.L. Stine. (I swear, between him and Christopher Pike, they kept my childhood LIT!)

 Urgh, so anyway, we have Jade and Deena, making deep, breathy phone calls to boys at their high school, as kind of a prank. Problem being Deena's half brother Chuck arrives from California, where he's been kicked out of his high school for reasons unknown. He finds Deena and JAde making phone whoopie, and joins in the game. Problem is, his call goes to a house of Fear Street *DUNdunDUN*, where the woman who answers is screaming for help. The three teens drive out, break in the back door, and find a dead woman with a phone in her hand, and get attacked by a guy with a mask on. 

Anyway, the husband accuses  Chuck of killing his wife, everyone winds up in trouble, Chuck goes to jail, and Deena and Jade, being utter dumbasses that they are, decide to clear Chuck's name. Given this is YA fiction, they succeed, only after putting themselves in moderate danger. 

OK, this was quite a bit more fun tan some of the other reprints I have on hand. While it's not undying prose by any means, I remained amused throughout the narrative, which is all I really wanted.  

Kicking the Wasp's Nest

 So I forget how I wound up preordering Butterfly Effects, the newest installment in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series, but I did, and I wound up mostly devouring it during my free time. 

So, basically we're centered around Sarah the Cuckoo Queen, and Antimony, the fire sorcerer dating a monkey hybrid. We start with Sarah getting kidnapped (arrested) by the Jhorlac, the species of sentient wasp that her race, the Cuckoos split from. Seems the Instar Sarah went through a ways back violates their laws, and she's in deep doo doo. They kidnap Arthur, the half incubus Sarah mindwiped a while back as evidence. 

This sends Antimony, Sam, and Grandma Alice, and Grandpa Thomas dimension hopping to free her.

 Let's just say it takes two trips, gets into Matrix Reloaded territory, and winds up with a whole new love triangle that promises to be really ugly in future volumes. 

Fun read. I enjoy that the characters in this series are a lot more flexible than some of the others.  

Ah alchemy

 OK, so I somehow missed Seanan McGuire's next October Daye book dropped a while back (indeed a newer one is coming soon), but hey, Silver and Lead showed up at the end of my Incarnations of Immortality reread, so yay!

OK, so we're joining Toby and 8.5 months pregnant and confined to quarters while she's getting ready to give birth. Well, at least until the Queen manages to rouse Toby into action to investigate who the hell stole all the kingdom's treasures during Titania's illusion. 

Which, as seems to happen in these books, has Toby running around investigating, getting kidnapped, getting put in mortal danger, and even getting a Caesarian in the middle of a boss fight. (And at 8.5 months pregnant, I started hearing every character talking like they were from Fargo. 

By the end, everything is back to semi normal, and we spend the novella after witnessing Dianda give birth Undersea. 

While these pretty much have a formula of sorts the longer this goes on, it remains engaging and fun reading. 

Sometimes, they come back again

 I was kind of shocked to find out David R. Slayton's Redneck Revenant existed, since I though book 3 was a series ender. But no, Book 4 came out, the library didn't have a copy, so I managed to get an InterLibrary Loan to get a copy, mainly because I don't own any of the first 3 books, and I try to avoid buying hardcovers if I don't own any of the other books. 

Anyway, Adam (the Redneck Warlock) and his boyfriend Vic (the Latino Reaper) are still dating, but not quite moving forward. Adam's brother, Bobby, whom Adam is still living with, get a shock when his dead wife shows up on the doorstep, alive and fully healed. Yes, Annie, who died while possessed by something older than Death, is alive and well with no memory of of pretty much anything that happened in the last few days she was alive. 

What follows is finding out why her Mom and Dad brought her back to life, who the mysterious spirit wearing a wolf mask is, and sorting out Elven Court drama. 

Which is all exquisitely readable and absorbing, even as we get hit with themes of forgiveness and acceptance, none of which is easy for the traumatized. 

I'm happy to see that this series is continuing, I just wish I had known sooner.  

The Eyes of Mediocrity

I may have mentioned a time or two ago that I devoured Dean R. Koontz in the late 80's early 90's, along with just about every other fiction reader in the era. What I found out later was that he also wrote several novels under pen names, although as time went on, he republished many of them under the Koontz name. (Mind you, there's a whole bunch with a nkui inc copywrite, so I've never been entirely convinced just one person wrote all the novels.)

 Any rate, I mention this because I discovered one of the pen named books in the stuff I recovered from mom's attic, and decided to see how it holds up. 

 As you can see, this is also one of those fun design covers, with a picture hidden behind the cutout on the cover. 

Problem being, the Copywrite is 1981, and even if I didn't know Dean R. Koontz was the author, I would have known after a few chapters. 

Scrappy female heroine? Good guy who knows military protocol? Evil secret government organization doing something bad? Why yes, all the hallmarks of Koontz at his most technophobic and trying to defend government conspiracy are in here.

We open on Tina, who is producing a Vegas show centered on Magic that opens December 30th. Her son died not quite a year ago, but she keeps finding messages in his bedroom about not being dead, and dreams of a horror comic character from her son's EC style comics. Elliot Stryker, a former intelligence officer, takes her on a date on New Year's Eve. She asks him to help get her son's body exhumed, which is how we learn Danny died somewhere in the mountains around Reno with his Scout troop. However, the exhumation request sets off a bunch of warning bells at a secret agency that starts a chase from Vegas to Reno, then to the mountains, as we find out whatever nonsense is going on involves a totally unrelated development wherein Danny now has a host of psychic powers. 

Seriously. it echoes so many of his early 80's plot lines, I couldn't get excited in the action.  Particularly when they find Danny and a convenient good guy scientist lays out the entire foundation of what happened, after dealing with psychic Danny Deus ex Machina-ing Elliot and Tina into the facility. 

 It's silly, but in its time period it was wonderful. in 2025, not so much.  

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.  

Down South

 Mules and Men was the actual Zora Neale Hurston recommendation I got from a friend of mine, I just started with Every Tongue Got to Confess for reasons. And frankly, the first half of this volume is pretty much like the stories in the latter, the difference being instead of just reading the story, we're instead sitting with Ms, Hurston as she collects the stories from old men drinking beer, men on their way to the swamps to cut lumber, people going to a different neighborhood around Orlando for a toe dance...

Which adds a new layer on to the stories, since it's a but easy to slip into a head space where you're sitting next to the teller, listening to them tell their tales. 

The second half involves Ms. Hurston's time in New Orleans, collecting and writing down the knowledge of the two headed doctors, the conjure men, the root workers, the Hoodoo priests. Much like what I've read about Haitian Voudon, it looks like most of this was syncretic with either Catholic or Baptist/Methodist theology, to the point where the Bible is the biggest tome of Conjure, and Moses was the GOAT conjureman. Most of this is fascinating, filled with lots of coring vegetables and stuffing people's names in them to curse them, finding out goofer dust is basically cemetery dirt, and one or two rituals that may have been practiced in era, but these days would likely be written off as either sensationalism or satanic. (At least two cats get killed during her various apprenticeships.) 

It is all fascinating reading, and a picture of an era that has passed, even if the legacy of that era and the preceding ones still linger on in contemporary society. Really happy I found these.