Re-Kindling Interest: Serpent Girl by Ray Garton (horror novella)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Newly retired from his well-paying job, Steven Benedetti decides to celebrate with a visit to the carnival. There he meets Elise, the Serpent Girl (she dances with snakes), herself newly unemployed due to a fight with her boss/lover. Elise (whose real name is Carmen Mattox) and Benedetti subsequently hit the road together, spending the night in a roadside motel where they share their bodies and their histories — but not their secrets. That comes later; pieces slowly reveal themselves as the couple have a lot of sex and begin to think they're perfect for each other.

Author Ray Garton is probably best known as a writer of horror fiction (The New Neighbor, Live Girls), but Serpent Girl, originally one of his long line of books from Cemetery Dance Publications, seems to display the influence of the hardboiled crime novels and films of the 1940s and '50s: to wit, the beautiful woman whom trouble seems to follow and the world-weary man who is so attracted to her that he doesn't realize what he's gotten into until very late in the game. Steven and Elise fit their roles well, but each has a little secret in store for the other.

This blend of sex, horror, and crime fiction (I like to call it "erotic noirror," but your mileage may vary) plays to Garton's strengths: creative plots and the rare ability to know when to paint with broad strokes and when to be more detailed. Serpent Girl certainly has its flaws (conversations that border on the tedious, two-dimensional characters, and an abrupt ending), but they don't keep this novella from pulling the reader through to the somewhat unexpected conclusion. Its menacing foreshadowing alone would guarantee that, even if Garton didn't have a couple of surprises up his sleeve.

Garton's longtime fans will definitely be satisfied by Serpent Girl, and those concerned that he might be devoting himself to crime fiction entirely can be assuaged by his recent werewolf novel Ravenous (and its sequel, Bestial). Those, however, wanting more of this direction of the author's work should seek out his two books originally published under the pseudonym Arthur Darknell and now out under his own: Loveless and Murder Was My Alibi.

This review is an updated and revised version of the one that originally appeared in The Green Man Review in 2008. Reprinted with permission.

Top Ten Best Books I Read in 2008

My first Best Books I Read in 2008 list consists of those books that were first published in 2008. I plan to do another list of books I read this year that were published elsewhen (if it's not a word, it should be), but who knows when that might happen?...

When compiling this list, I noticed (but was not particularly surprised by) two aspects:

1. This is the fourth year I've done a list, and at least one Hard Case Crime book has been on it every year. This year is no exception; two of their books made the list.

2. Many authors from this year are repeats from previous years' "best of" lists. Whether this means that I need to expand my reading horizons, or that I've simply made good choices in the authors I read regularly, I don't know. As always, comments are welcome.

So, here they are, alphabetically by author. The links go to the more detailed reviews I wrote when I first read them.

1. Charles Ardai, Fifty-to-One
   
2. Tom Bradley, Lemur
   
3. Edward Bunker, Stark
   
4. Max Allan Collins, The First Quarry
   
5. Patrick Culhane, Red Sky in Morning
   
6. Ray Garton, Ravenous
   
7. Harold Jaffe, Jesus Coyote
   
8. Joe R. Lansdale, Leather Maiden
   
9. David J. Schow, Gun Work
   
10. Matthew Warner, Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word
    

(In the interest of total disclosure, I received free review copies of all but one of these, and I got that one from the library. Hooray for free books! Also, I usually try to limit the list to one book per author. But since Patrick Culhane is actually Max Allan Collins, and it's technically another name, I've made an exception due to that technicality.)

Ravenous by Ray Garton (werewolf horror)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on Down in the Cellar. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission.

In 1987, author Ray Garton’s novel Live Girls revitalized the vampire novel with its groundbreaking mix of sex and violence, in the process practically creating the “erotic horror” subgenre on its own. Over twenty years later, Garton’s latest is poised to do the same for werewolves, another classic horror mainstay in dire need of a makeover.

Big Rock, CA — His search for The Pine County Rapist has been filling his time, but Sheriff Farrell Hurley’s problems are about to get much worse. His receptionist, Emily Crane, killed the shadowy figure (with silver eyes!) that raped her, but the corpse was subsequently seen escaping from the morgue, running naked through the hospital waiting area to the outside, where it attacked and killed a deputy who tried to catch it.

After the attacks in the opening pages, Garton holds off for almost one hundred pages before the next batch. In the interim, he develops his characters so that we get to know them as people before it’s their turn to be transformed into creatures with undeniable cravings for raw meat and rutting.

In Ravenous, lycanthropy is a virus that is transmitted sexually when an extant werewolf couples with an uninfected person. Garton plays with the suspense factor since a person does not have to know they’re infected to pass on the disease. That the infection makes the recipient randier than usual only means that it spreads more quickly in this small town.

(Though best known for his erotic horror, Garton’s approach is not exploitive. Only the consensual sex scenes in Ravenous are written to titillate; the various rape scenes are appropriately horrifying. This sets him apart from some horror writers who don’t seem to know the difference.)

And around the halfway point, all bets are off. Garton plays for keeps. There are no favored characters. Everybody is a possible target for sex or supper, even if they were only introduced pages before. But in a Ray Garton novel, the walk-ons get a full characterization, too. Garton doesn’t shirk in his writing, which makes him one of the top horror writers working today.

(Update: a sequel, Bestial, is forthcoming in April 2009.)