Modern Halloween Classic: Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (horror novella)

This is an expanded version of the review that was originally published in the now-sadly-defunct Down in the Cellar magazine. Copyright 2006. Reprinted with permission.

"He's the October Boy ... the reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with the hacksaw face ... and he's gonna getcha! That's what they always told you ... he's gonna getcha so you know you've been got!!!!!" — from Dark Harvest

Every year around Halloween, I choose an old favorite set around the holiday to reread and get into the literary mood. Sometimes it's an entry in the Orangefield series by Al Sarrantonio, sometimes the anthology October Dreams, but this year it was Norman Partridge's high-octane horror novella Dark Harvest.

From the jack-o'-lantern on the cover, it's easy to tell that this novella is Halloween-related. But where most pumpkin-heads are fairly innocuous-looking, this one is positively threatening, which gives you some idea of the book's contents: intense effects in a short amount of time.

In fact, Dark Harvest is so much better than the early fiction that came out in the rerelease of his short-story collection Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales that it is hard to believe they were written by the same person.

You know this kind of story: it's the legend every small midwestern town has, and Partridge has managed to keep things familiar and yet fill this novella with surprises. It's got the nostalgia of Ray Bradbury's classic Something Wicked This Way Comes with a touch of The Twilight Zone and the kind of dark suspense that Partridge specializes in, but the author has also included a melancholy thread that adds depth.

It's that time again: Halloween night, the night when all teenage boys are released, after being locked in their rooms for five days, and set off to find "The October Boy," a midwestern nightmare with a jack-o'-lantern for a head and one thing on its mind: getting to the church on time (no, really). The boy who kills this awful creature (also known as "Sawtooth Jack") gets to leave town, or "jump the Line," something that has become increasingly more difficult, especially with Officer Jerry Ricks enforcing the border. But Pete McCormick thinks this is his year. He has stolen Officer Ricks's .45 and he is determined to get out of the town that has been holding him and his family, and everyone else in it, down for generations.

Dark Harvest is by turns frightening and sad, scary and tragic. It is a pure Halloween horror story, but one whose ripples extend past the time it takes to read it (only a few hours). The characters are people you know, only in a situation you couldn't have imagined that nevertheless feels entirely plausible given the right set of circumstances. I believe that Partridge has crafted a new Halloween classic, one that should find a permanent place on the shelf of every fan of the holiday who appreciates solid writing with no spare parts.

Psycho by Robert Bloch (unabridged audio book read by Paul Michael Garcia)

Nearly everyone knows the story of Psycho, of how a woman named Crane steals $40,000 from her employer and takes off to marry her boyfriend. A rainstorm causes her to make a wrong turn off the main highway, and she stops for the night at the one beacon of light on that deserted stretch, the Bates Motel, run by the unassuming mama's boy Norman Bates.

Bates himself has become an iconic figure, synonymous with the psychotic murderer and more often the source of parody than fear. So, how does one approach the original novel by author Robert Bloch with a fresh eye?

Surprisingly, it is fairly simple: one cannot. If you have seen the classic film as directed by Alfred Hitchcock, you've experienced the story in its tightest form.

Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano delivered a very faithful adaptation, and if that is enough for you, so be it. But if you long for more depth of character, more insight into motive and history, and especially more internal monologue, then Psycho the novel is just the thing for you.

Audiobook reader Paul Michael Garcia delivers a better performance than I thought possible, inhabiting all the characters fully. This allowed me to forget that I was listening to "Psycho" and just immerse myself in Bloch's world one more time — almost, if I tried really hard, as if for the first time.

Memory by Donald E. Westlake (Hard Case Crime)

When author Donald E. Westlake died at the end of 2008, he left only one unpublished novel, Memory, which he had written early in his career (sometime in the '60s), but which was rejected by his agent for being "too literary" (i.e., unsellable). So, it was put in his files and never saw the light of day.

With the assistance of Lawrence Block and Abby Adams (Mrs. Westlake), Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime has made Memory available now for all the Westlake fans who've been clamoring for one more book from the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster.

Paul Cole, a road company actor in a touring Broadway hit, stops off for some midnight fun after that night's show. While in flagrante delicto, her husband storms in and brains Paul with a chair, putting him in the hospital and knocking the sense right out of his head. He can't remember much for any significant length of time.

Cole struggles every day just to survive: to work and make money so he can get back to New York and try to find his old life again. But things like room and board, food, and a general inability because of regular expenses keep him stuck. He tries to make notes when he remember bits and pieces, but when he returns to the notes later, they don't seem to mean anything anymore. How can you buy a bus ticket if you don't remember why you were putting aside the money in the first place? And Paul is always fearful that he will forget something important, like to go to work, but daily events settle into a routine and they get a little bit easier for a while.

Then the police come for him....

Memory is a great book, and I write this without reservation. It outshines anything else Westlake has done and makes his intricately plotted Dortmunder and Parker novels seem like silly trifles. I'll even go so far as to say that from now on, every Westlake book will be compared to it, every fan defined by their appreciation of it. ("You like Westlake? Have you read Memory?") How ironic that such an early book could end his career on such a pinnacle of achievement.

The real beauty is how Westlake takes the reader along as if we are on the business end of a leash. Everything Paul feels, we feel (torpor, joy, happiness, confusion, fear), only with the extra knowledge of an outsider, adding suspense to the mix. Since Paul doesn't know what to expect, neither do we, though we desperately want to find out, so we watch with breathless anticipation as he continues on his path toward the rediscovery of Paul Cole. It's tragic to watch Memory unfold, as Cole takes a step forward only to fall behind again, but utterly compelling in a voyeuristic way.

It's almost a good thing that Memory was not published back when it was written, because given the author's reputation for short crime novels, it likely would not have seen print at its full 360-page length. And I imagine that one of the scenes that would have been cut — because it does little to further the plot and adds nothing to the character — is also one of my favorites. Showing Paul looking for work, with no documentable past, lets Westlake make a wry stab at employment offices who demand efficiency while making it difficult to accomplish due to their interest in doing things just so.

And maybe it's also a good thing because, if Memory had been published in the 1960s, Westlake's career might have gone in a different direction. We may have never met Dortmunder or Parker and would know the author instead for his increasingly weighty philosophical novels on the human condition, with crime novels merely something he did "in the early days" (and tried not to talk about too much). Or maybe he would have disappeared altogether. Who knows? What's important is that it is being published now. Forgive the pun, but Memory is unforgettable.

Drood by Dan Simmons (audio book read by Simon Prebble)

Author Dan Simmons's novel Drood ostensibly tells the story of the last five years of Charles Dickens's life — focusing on the events inspiring his classic unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood — as told by his close friend and fellow author Wilkie Collins.

That summary is all well and good if you're a bookseller trying to move product based on a familiar author's name and work. But Dan Simmons has produced something much more intriguing than that little attempt at conciseness would lead you to believe.

Simmons's greatest achievement is his accomplished characterization of the true protagonist, Wilkie Collins. Simmons has allowed Collins plenty of room to breathe, and to stick his own foot in his mouth. Simmons shows all of Collins's facets, and even allows him to be mostly unlikable while still managing to retain the reader's interest and sympathy. Collins's narrative voice feels so true, it's as if you could try out Collins's own novels (like The Woman in White or The Moonstone) and it feel like revisiting an old friend.

Simmons also exercises his usual firm control over the setting — something he has excelled at since his debut, Song of Kali. In Drood, Victorian England is as much a character as its people, and Simmons's portrait is as detailed as a pointillist painting.

At first I was disappointed by the direction Simmons was taking. But I slowly realized that this was due to my own preconceptions. What had happened was the author had circumvented my expectation and was going in a different direction, taking me completely by surprise. I love it when an author sneaks up on me like that. from that point on, I was willing to let Simmons lead me where he wished, and it became much clearer what an astoundingly original novel Drood really is. Simmons uses history as a starting point but adheres closely only when it suits him. Yet at no point does Drood veer off into the unbelievable.

Audiobook reader Simon Prebble's embodiment of Collins is nothing short of phenomenal. Prebble's skill with various regional British accents adds depth to Simmons's characterizations (though he seems to have learned his Chinese accent from Ben Wright on radio's Have Gun, Will Travel). Prebble also gets the often-dry humor across that written text often does not. His reading of Drood is sure to be an award contender, and I'll be going immediately in search of other audios by him.

It takes time to travel the twisty, treacherous path Simmons has designed, but the destination is far more than worth it. Simmons's characterization of Collins transcends any interest in Dickens the reader originally had, leaving one with doubts and sadness along with a new insight into the antagonistic friendship between a greater and lesser writer. It's hard to predict these kinds of things in advance, but Drood feels like a modern classic.

Road to Purgatory by Max Allan Collins (sequel to Road to Perdition)

For more of Friday's Forgotten Books, visit Pattinase.

It seems odd to write of a book as "forgotten" when it's only a few years old, but since Road to Purgatory is already out of print, I guess it applies. But perhaps it's not as much forgotten as it is simply little-known. One hopes that the film version currently in production (directed by the book's author, Max Allan Collins) will bring the story to more people, however, because it just may be the best thing he's ever written.

Michael Satariano, formerly Michael O'Sullivan Jr. — son of John Looney's "Angel of Death" — has become the one-eyed war hero who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Bataan. He is looking to avenge his father's murder by the famous Chicago gangster Al Capone, now released from prison but sequestering himself from all but his most intimate fellows (including acting Outfit boss, Frank Nitti) due to the advanced debilitating effects of syphilis.

To succeed in doing that, Michael will have to infiltrate the highest echelons of the Outfit, using his apparent Sicilian heritage to his benefit (Papa Satariano, his adoptive father, ran a restaurant that was a favorite hangout of Outfit personnel) — and with the full knowledge of FBI agent Eliot Ness, who has kept Michael's true identity a secret (and even assisted with his eventual adoption).

Part sequel (primarily to Collins's Road to Perdition novelization — the events begin ten years later) and part prequel (four chapters focus on Michael O'Sullivan Sr.'s, role in a political riot in 1922, his antagonistic relationship with Connor Looney, and the birth of Mike's brother, Peter), Road to Purgatory is, above all, a novel of betrayal.

Mike can't seem to keep his promises to anyone but himself — not even the too-good-to-be-true hometown girl he left behind when he went to war — and a good deal of the novel's suspense comes from wondering when Frank Nitti, who all but adopts Mike as a surrogate son, will find out the truth. Mike digs himself deeper with each new relationship, and things really start to fall apart when someone from his pre-war past resurfaces in the present.

The Chicago gangland of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s is author Max Allan Collins' specialty. Eliot Ness, in particular, has appeared in many of his novels, including the author's well-known series starring historical private-eye Nathan Heller. Ness is also featured in his own quartet of novels (Bullet Proof, et al.) and the film Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life, which Collins wrote and directed. So, it's hardly a surprise that Ness plays a sizable role in Road to Purgatory — though, with Prohibition over, he's pretty much stuck fighting that other social pariah, venereal disease, giving him yet another connection to Capone.

Collins' characteristic exhaustive research (he even lets us in on the Outfit's "made man" ceremony) adds considerable depth and atmosphere to this not-so-simple revenge tale, the middle story in a saga named after the three parts of Dante's Divine Comedy. He takes the bold step of making Capone and Nitti sympathetic characters and also manages to add Nitti's death into the narrative in a way that does not contradict his earlier dramatization of it in his Nathan Heller novel, The Million-Dollar Wound — something that was reportedly in his mind while he was writing it. In many ways, Road to Purgatory is a culmination of certain parts of Collins's career, and I look forward to what he does with the film adaptation.

The Best of the Spirit by Will Eisner (introduction by Neil Gaiman)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission.

The name Will Eisner is synonymous with groundbreaking comics, and his most famous and most widely acclaimed creation is criminologist Denny Colt, left for dead and prematurely buried, but escaped from the grave and revived as a crimefighter known only as "The Spirit."

The Best of The Spirit culls twenty-two stories from the dozen-year run of The Spirit, with two early selections (including the 1940 origin story). The vast majority, however, come from the postwar period, with 1946, 1948, and 1949 the most heavily represented. The introduction by Neil Gaiman (author of The Sandman series) acknowledges Eisner's influence on him and otherwise reinforces Eisner's importance to the medium (the community's annual awards are named after him).

Since I'm not a comics historian, I'll have to take his word on whether Eisner's work was ahead of its time. But what I can vouch for is the readability of The Best of The Spirit. These are short, seven-page dark crime stories often blended with human interest, the drama of the common man. Sometimes criminals are redeemed. Sometimes victims triumph despite the odds. But always, right wins over wrong — often with an ironic twist that makes the justice more delicious.

The comics format allows Eisner to combine mature storytelling with Dick Tracy-style character names (like Silk Satin, Rice Wilder, and Sand Saref) and not have the latter detract from the former. People just don't stand for that sort of thing in prose, but inside the format of four-color illustration, somehow it's OK. Even hardboiled crime fans who usually scoff at the graphic format (like me) will be pleased, because these are mature tales whose quality is immediately evident and that remain instantly accessible to modern audiences, despite their circa-World War II origins.

The Best of The Spirit is a terrific introduction to Eisner's style, particularly his combination of the trappings of film noir with an occasional dose of slapsticky humor. And it especially succeeds at its primary intent: through an affordable sampling, to pique people's interest in the full Spirit Archives series of hardcover volumes.

"Sense of Humor" by Damon Runyon (Broadway short story)

Any fan of crime fiction would do well to check out the short stories of Damon Runyon. One of the most most popular writers of his day, he is now largely forgotten among modern readers, except for fans of the musical Guys and Dolls (and they may not even know that Runyon's work was its source).

Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly his reputation for unapologetic sentimentality (almost completely absent in crime fiction since the "tough guy" 1950s) and his propensity for O. Henry–style twist endings — both aspects that appear dated to readers in the 21st century.

But alongside those traits runs an ironic (often pitch black) sense of humor that would probably surprise someone expecting a more "innocent" tone from 1930s fiction. Take for example this (more than somewhat edited) selection from the story "Sense of Humor" (available along with many others in the new collection Guys and Dolls and Other Writings):

"Say," [Joe the Joker] says, "I am going to play a wonderful joke on Frankie Ferocious."

"Well, Joe," I say, "you are not asking me for advice, but I am going to give you some free gratis, and for nothing. Do not play any jokes on Frankie Ferocious, as I hear he [...] will not laugh if you have Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Ed Wynn, and Joe Cook telling him jokes all at once. In fact," I say, "I hear he is a tough audience."

"I am going to have myself delivered to Frankie Ferocious in a sack."

"Well," I say, "personally, I see no percentage in being delivered to Frankie Ferocious in a sack, because as near as I can make out from what I read in the papers, there is no future for a guy in a sack that goes to Frankie Ferocious. What I cannot figure out," I say, "is where the joke on Frankie comes in."

"Why," Joe the Joker says, "the joke is I will not be asleep in the sack, and my hands will not be tied, and in each of my hands I will have a John Roscoe, so when the sack is delivered to Frankie Ferocious and I pop out blasting away, can you not imagine his astonishment?"

Well, I can imagine this, all right. In fact, when I get to thinking of the look of surprise that is bound to come to Frankie Ferocious's face when Joe the Joker comes out of the sack I have to laugh, and Joe the Joker laughs right along with me.

Add to that Runyon's signature use of present tense (which can come off as stilted when he forces past- and future-tense phrases into its rules but has a charm all its own), and you have something that is difficult to get into at first, but that is immensely rewarding once you "learn the language."

"Sense of Humor" ends with a twist worthy of the darkest crime fiction and had me open-mouthed, but at the same time, it's really the only ending that fits the story. Runyon's stories often wrap around themselves and tie up neatly with a ribbon, often in a way that elicits a smile at the author's craftsmanship.

Books I Read in May 2008

Trailin'! by Max Brand
The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins
The Max by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley
"The Frigid Flame" (novella from American Pulp) by Richard Matheson
Ten Plus One by Ed McBain
British Invasion edited by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, and James A. Moore
Shooting Star / Spiderweb by Robert Bloch
Lemur by Tom Bradley
Rio Largo: a Ralph Compton novel by David Robbins

True Grit by Charles Portis (unabridged audio book read by Donna Tartt)

I read a lot of books (over 100 a year), and it's rare that I actually have an emotional response. Not to the story — that has to happen or reading would be no fun at all. I mean feeling genuine affection for the characters, so that I'm actually sorry the story is over.

True Grit is the first book in a long time to elicit that response from me, and I'm not exactly sure why it did. It was certainly not the plot, which is simplicity itself: fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross hires an unconventional deputy U.S. marshal (and former member of "Quantrill's Raiders"), Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn, to hunt down Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father. That’s all, but it takes the whole book for that storyline to complete itself, and what a glorious ride it is.

What makes the read memorable is how Portis draws his two lead characters. The title attribute is at first meant to apply to Cogburn, of course, but we soon discover that Mattie herself has just as much "grit" (the word "sand" is also used in this way) when she asks the local sheriff for his opinion on who the best marshal is:

He said, "...I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking.... Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive.... He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say that Quinn is about the best they have."

I said, "Where can I find this Rooster?"

Mattie is full of surprises, but we soon find that Rooster is, too. Introduced as a hard-drinking, unreliable man who is the epitome of the loner, Rooster begins to grudgingly admire the "sand" (a.k.a. "grit") of this "child" and a kind of respect (and later, affection) grows between them. It is this unexpected turn of character (along with other surprising touches that kept me on my toes) that display Portis's skill to such great effect.

Donna Tartt (an author in her own right) gives a fine reading on the audiobook of True Grit. Her Mississippi accent substitutes for the Arkansas twang of the characters well enough for most listeners, and her vocal characterizations are utterly perfect. Not only are they distinct and unmistakable, but they also express a deep knowledge of these people as individuals, allowing the listener to completely get lost in the story.

Tartt's afterword adds little except to express her entire family's love for the book (it is, I understand, an introduction to the print edition, and is probably better served in that capacity), but acts as a good celebration of a book that is likely to become one of my favorites, as well.

Like I stated at the beginning, very few books speak to my emotions the way that True Grit did, and I look forward to reexperiencing its wonders in the near future because this is one book that will require multiple readings to really understand its subtleties. This is not just a terrific Western; it's a terrific novel, and one that deserves a wider audience.