Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Green Woman - by Peter Straub and Michael Easton (writers) & John Bolton (art)

"He's been at it a long time.  But he's losing it.  He's getting full"

A burnt out cop tracks down a burnt out serial killer and his young protege.  Doing so forces the cop to bump heads with the ancient evil that drives the two men to kill.

It has been several years since I read the supposed final volume of Peter Straub's Blue Rose Trilogy, The Throat.  I write supposed because Straub has routinely returned to the characters and events of the Blue Rose Trilogy in a variety of novels, short stories, and short novels.  Straub's Blue Rose Trilogy, like Douglas Adams' five or so book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, seems to have more than just three volumes to it.

Straub adds yet another volume to his "trilogy" with The Green Woman, a graphic novel collaboration with writer Michael Easton and artist John Bolton, and the results are both chilling and exhilarating.

As was the case with each of the books in the original trilogy, and the subsequent and concurrent spin-off and tie-in stories that swirl around them, key characters and events have been changed or rearranged.  The Green Woman, again like all the other stories and novels, also takes place in a world where the other Blue Rose connected books and stories (or some of them, at least) exist as books and stories that the characters have either read, wrote, or are aware of, and they discuss them with the reader.  Serial killer Fielding Bandolier - who has changed names and faces, and even died once, perhaps twice, in several, if not all, of the Blue Rose connected stories - returns yet again, crying foul at being murdered in one of the books, because the unnamed book's unnamed author (who could either be Straub or his fictional creation, and some time collaborator, Tim Underhill) wanted "a nice, pretty ending to his story."

Got that?

If you can follow the above paragraph, then you will have no trouble following the twists, turns, and reveals that swirl within The Green Woman.  But even if you feel hopelessly lost and confused about what the hell is going on, or how the anguished loneliness of Fielding Bandolier, who is drowning his sorrows in the ruins of a Millhaven Tavern called The Green Woman, relates to the criminal investigation of a troubled New York City detective named Bob Steele, do not worry and just keep reading.  It will all make perfect sense by the time you reach the end of the story.

If you find the ending discomforting, and you probably will, don't worry about that, either.  There is little to no reason to doubt that an unnamed author will come along to write "a happier ending" for the story, at some point in the future.  Because the Green Woman Tavern and the people who frequent it all reside within Peter Straub's multi-layered and multiple reality hosting Blue Rose universe.

Julia book cover

Sides - by Peter Straub

How can I avoid sounding like the pompous (and fictitious) blowhard Putney Tyson Ridge while reviewing this hodgepodge of essays and ephemera from horror genre icon Peter Straub?  I don't know if I can.  I also do not know if that is a bad thing.  Ridge's over-the-top ramblings are very entertaining.

Sides gathers together some 21 plus years of Peter Straub's predominantly non-fiction writing.  Collected in this book are the totality of Introductions and Afterwards that Straub has written for either new "deluxe editions" of older, classic books, new editions of his own books, or for anthologies of a particular writer's short fiction.  The book also contains the complete text of his Guest-of-Honor speech at the 1998 International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, as well as a tear inducing essay about his mother.

The remaining work, a "frivolity" titled Why Electricman Lives in New York, and the collected ramblings of Straub's fictitious childhood friend, Putney Tyson Ridge, do not qualify as non-fiction.  Electricman is just a short-short about what an awesome and literate place New York City is, while the Ridge ramblings are just Peter Straub satirizing (or ridiculing, or making fun of) himself, his work, his friends, and even his family.

But first the real non-fiction.  Straub, who was working towards a doctorate degree in literature when he "bolted" from academia to become a writer of fiction, shows his literary chops in his introductions to Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives, Lawrence Block's Hope to Die, H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Of the quartet, the "introduction" to Block's novel (which became a literary critique of Block's entire Matthew Scudder series) is the undisputed highpoint.  When I finished the essay I wanted to close Sides and download some of Block's novels onto my Kindle, so I could start pouring over the text with refocused eyes.

Straub is at his worst, though, when he fawns over some "hot new thing", which he does in his introductions to Leningrad Nights and Tales of Pain and Wonder.  The less I say about Straub's utterly incomprehensible introduction to the Poppy Z. Brite collection, Are You Loathsome Tonight, the better.

But Straub is at his best when speaking respectfully and intelligently about a relative, friend, or fellow writer.  Straub's remembrance of the late, great "Quiet Horror" writer Charles L. Grant, Quietly Now, is a touching farewell to one of the great unknown giants in the Dark Fantasy field.  His essay about Stephen King, Secret Windows, is an excellent examination and defense of the oft-derided "King of Horror", and, as stated before, his easy about his mother, simply titled Mom, is capable of moving a reader to tears.  All three are rewarding reading and, coupled with the above praised quartet of essays, makes for an easy to recommend compilation of non-fiction writing.

Which leaves me with the fiction stuffed into this supposed collection of non-fiction.  It has been said that only the thinnest of razor thin lines separates horror and humor.  It has also been pointed out, with great frequency, what a bunch of pranksters most horror writers are.  The twenty or so caustically comical "critiques" and "remarks" by the "renowned literary figure and leader in Popular Culture Studies" that was Putney Tyson Ridge, Ph.D., shows that Straub could have made a living writing Woody Allen style comedy, had he been called to follow that path.  It's a side of Peter Straub's talent that I wished I could read more often.

A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter - by Peter Straub

Keith Hayward's Uncle Til is supposed to give the boy a stern talking to about what Keith has done to a neighborhood cat.  Instead the man educates Keith on the importance of having a special place in which to torture and kill, so as not to be interrupted or discovered...

While many a writer has had a segment, or even an entire section, of a work in progress grow and split off into a separate "stand alone" story- F. Paul Wilson describes just such an occurrence when introducing a tale in his anthology Soft & Others that began as a chapter in his novel The Touch- Peter Straub has made it an integral part of his body of work ever since the publication of Koko, the first book in his Blue Rose trilogy.

A Special Place is a small part, a mere 80 pages small, in fact, of A Dark Matter, a soon to be published novel formerly titled The Skylark, that grew apart and fell off of the larger manuscript during the creative process.  While this brief and brutal story sheds crucial light on an integral character in the forthcoming novel, A Special Place stands alone.  For very good reason.  Those who dare to read it must be very careful, for its bite is savage and wounding.  Place is one of Straub's darker, if not one of his darkest, short stories in ages.  (Straub's Bunny Is Good Bread, also known as Fee, is its only current rival.)  It builds slowly and methodically to a stomach churning finish that cannot be easily shaken off, and I loved every word of it.  It is easy to see why Borderlands Press opted to publish A Special Place as a limited edition book.  (At the time of this writing there are only 250 copies available, signed and numbered by the author.)  Despite its brevity, or because of it, A Special Place is a powerful story that deserves to be read.

Having had a taste of what is to come, I am now looking forward to reading A Dark Matter even more.

In the Night Room - by Peter Straub

Timothy Underhill, best-selling author of The Divided Man and the soon to be released lost boy lost girl, is having a very bad day.  First he sees the ghost of his dead sister, April.  Then he is menaced by a delusional "fan."  After that he begins receiving strange e-mails from people he soon learns have recently died.  What the hell is going on?

Willy Patrick, Newbery Medal Award winning author of the young adult novel In the Night Room, finds herself drawn to a warehouse parking lot.  Although she knows that her daughter Holly is dead, murdered alongside her father, Willy's husband, Willy cannot stop herself from thinking that her daughter is being held captive inside the warehouse.  What the hell is going on?

When their strange but somehow linked circumstances finally bring Underhill and Willy together, the question as to what the hell is going on is answered with a reality shattering and utterly impossible truth.  A truth that forces Underhill and Willy to undertake a journey together; one with a bitter and grief filled ending...

Peter Straub's In the Night Room is a meta-fiction sequel to his brilliant - and Bram Stoker award winning - return to supernatural meta-fiction form, Lost Boy Lost Girl.  While In the Night Room has intriguing ideas and plot twists to spare (more than enough to make the novel well worth reading) it falls far short of the book it follows.  Especially after the major plot twist (one that has been revealed in several reviews, but that I will refrain from giving away in this one) when Straub unwisely ignores a splendid opportunity to explore that twist on several different levels; despite the fact that his novel is clearly being told on several interconnected levels already (i.e. Straub's now trademarked story within story within yet another story narrative structuring).

Not helping matters is that the book never really reaches the blood chilling level of creeping dread that Lost Boy Lost Girl did.  Oh, there are several creepy moments prior to the "big reveal" and there is one particular moment at the end that chills the blood and sends a delightful shiver racing up and down the spine, (well, that was my reaction to it) but that moment is followed by what has to be one of the most anti-climatic endings I have read in ages.  My jaw literally hit the floor and I was gasping, "That's it.  All that build-up for this!?!"  If I was prone to disrespecting books I would have thrown In the Night Room across the room. But I'm not, so I didn't.

I know that this sound like I hated the book, I didn't.  I found its ideas and plot twists fascinating and stimulating; excellent reminders of why Peter Straub is one of my all time favorite writers.  But the book felt incomplete, as if there were huge chunks of narrative missing.  The best way I can describe it is that In the Night Room reads like the middle novel of a trilogy.  Perhaps it is and, in the not too distant future, I might be treated to a concluding chapter that ties up all of the far too many plot threads that Peter Straub has left dangling from this novel.

Lost Boy Lost Girl - by Peter Straub

Writer Tim Underhill returns to his childhood home of Millhaven to attend his sister-in-law's funeral.  Something horrible had driven the woman to suicide.  A short time later, Tim's nephew Mark goes missing and Underhill returns yet again to assist his estranged brother Philip in the search for the lost boy.  Philip and the police suspect that Mark has fallen victim to the Sherman Park Killer, a suspected serial murderer who targets teen-aged boys.  Tim suspects that the disappearance might be linked to Mark's sudden obsession with the abandoned house just behind the Underhill home.  A house with a very dark past, one with a familial connection to Mark's mother.

Peter Straub has almost become a literary genre of his very own and Lost Boy Lost Girl is an excellent example of it.  While the book is a rather unsettling ghost story, it is also a complicated mystery, thus connecting together the supernatural stories that first made Straub an international bestseller (Ghost Story, Shadowland, and Floating Dragon) with the complex psychological mysteries he penned in the late '80s and early '90s (the Blue Rose trilogy - Koko, Mystery, and The Throat).  Mr. X, the novel just prior to Lost Boy Lost Girl, had Straub returning to the supernatural with a vigorous and fascinating evil twin story, one with a Lovecraftian twist.  Here he uses the supernatural to add a deeper level to the human horrors at the heart of the tale.

From page one Straub is fully in control of his story's sharp twists and turns.  The labyrinthine maze that is hidden within the walls of the abandoned house is an excellent illustration of the Straub's own complex narrative.  He surges forward, jumps back, feints to one side, then the other, each time dropping a vital clue of the revelations to come.  From an early reference to serial killer Dr. Herman Mudgett (a.k.a. H.H. Holmes) to the rich, delicious smell of baking chocolate-chip cookies, Straub builds layer upon layer.  When the pieces were all in place, I could only marvel at the masterful job that he had done with this deceptively simple story.

Suspenseful, scary, and packing an emotional wallop, Lost Boy Lost Girl is classic Peter Straub.