The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2004)
Victor Pelevin
Linger Awhile (2006)
Russell Hoban
The Poe Shadow (2006)
Matthew Pearl
The Mephisto Club (2006)
Tess Gerritsen
Black Magic Woman (Morris & Chastain #1, 2008)
Justin Gustainis
Two cautions about Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Waterstones put this on their
horror shelf but it is not a horror novel and it adds nothing consequential
to the werewolf genre. It might just slip into the dark fantasy
category but only at a stretch. It should sit nowhere else but under
general fiction.
The second is the claim on the dust jacket that
it is 'very funny' or 'outrageously funny'. It is not - in English. It
can be mildly amusing at times but I think you have to be a post-Soviet
Russian to get this book. I would bet that it probably is 'funny' in
Russian to Russians, though perhaps not 'very' or 'outrageously'. It is
like that type of joke where the teller looks at you as you respond
stony-faced and says, "ah, but you had to be there". The book was
certainly long-winded rather than 'funny',
The big
picture is that this is a book by a certain type of European
intellectual for other European intellectuals - sardonic, a bit sly, too
clever for its own boots or, rather, filled with cultural references
that are really not quite as clever or as well thought out as either a
naive reader or the author might think. I am not sure that I want
to say more out of courtesy. The vaguely
occultist ending (no spoiler in that), did not convince I finished it but, truth to tell, I was a
bit bored from beginning to end.
Shame. The heroine - a several
thousand year old sexy little werefox - and the hero - a werewolf in the
Russian security services - are interesting and well-drawn. So much more
could have been done with them than have them act as half-baked agents
for a bit of half-hearted sex, cod occultism and dull satire leading up
to a somewhat conventional moral end. I suggest foxy gets another author to tell her tale ...
Russell Hoban's Linger Awhile reads like a novelisation of a screenplay. It can be 'done' in a few hours. It is a 'spin' on the classic
vampire tale, a 'hommage' to Hammer horror, based in the Soho of old men
and women who worked once in the media. It may be no work of genius but
it is witty, fast-paced, knowing and good-humoured - showing that sex
and violence can be quite funny and that the former can still be a live
issue when you are well over 60 (which has to be good news). Very very
British although the author is American (Hoban settled in London in 1969). Think 'Carry On Screaming'.
Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow is a good entertaining read for literary types (it is a literary detective novel) but
the hero is a bit of a wally and there are a few too many 'neat
coincidences' to move the plot along and still keep faith with the
literary facts. On balance, good train reading for people with some
basic literary education.
The Mephisto Club is a brutal, easy-to-read crime thriller with a nice
conceit about predators amongst us. It may not be 'great literature' but
it is hard to dislike such clean writing and plotting that is without
pretension and ready to entertain and thrill. It is like watching a movie in
your head. Recommended for what it is but no more than that.
Black Magic Woman is an entertaining enough and fast-paced holiday
read. Not particularly sophisticated and not a masterpiece but the
author has you reading until the end and his obvious sincerity about the
craft of writing makes you warm to the tale.
One thing to his
credit - he is up to the mark on current occult lore: the story revolves
in part around the very real problem of African black withcraft, the
Wiccan heroine (in a team of two) is a very positive role model amongst
all the black magic, 'voudon' is adequately if rather negatively drawn
and the 'Satanists', when they appear, are seen as charlatans, naughty
rather than evil. He gets in vampires, succubi, demons and serial
killing and the story moves from city to city without you noticing the
joins.
There are more stories on the way about supernatural
investigator Quincey Morris and white witch Libby Chastain. Would I read
them? Yes but only if I really had nothing else to do and I needed to
forget the seriousness of real life in dark fantasy.