Deathchain by Ken Greenhall (1991): My Baby Just Wrote Me a Letter

Reading Ken Greenhall is unlike reading anyone else in paperback horror. Never a glimpse of a cliche or tired phrasing, an ill-chosen word or jejune observation, his precision prose is whisper-quiet but razor-sharp and deceptively deep. You'd never know it from the dire cover art of Deathchain (Pocket Books/Dec 1991), which evokes '80s YA computer lab intrigue and little else. Boy, if anyone deserved a King-sized blurb extolling the virtues therein, it was Greenhall. Long a TMHF favorite thanks to his quiet paperback original masterpieces Elizabeth (1976) and Hellhound (1977), Greenhall died in 2014 after a career of being unappreciated for his fine, fine talent. It's disheartening and I'd rather not dwell on it. To the task at hand:

Chain letters have long poked and prodded at the deep superstitions seeded deep in even the most rational minds; even while one is tossing them in the trash it's a creepy thought that someone out there thinks so little of their fellow humans that they will compose a missive of vague threat and malice intended to motivate behavior for selfish gain. Kinda gross, actually, as it implies the letter-writer knows something about you that you yourself do not. Which is what's behind Deathchain: the Chainmaster, as the letter-writer refers to itself, knows There is someone you wish were dead. And so begins the novel, with youngish clock-repairer Dwight Bailey murdering an old indigent woman as instructed by a letter he's received. Rather than creeping Dwight out, the letter pleases him, flatters him, inspires him. He will do what it says because  there is indeed someone he wishes were dead, someone who never pleases or flatters him or notes how careful and perceptive and resourceful he is: that person is his hateful mother. And so the chain, though its beginning to us is clear, will not be unbroken.

Ken Greenhall (1928-2014)

Paul Monay is a divorced father, a New York portrait painter who makes most of his living working for his family's business as a producer of fine, and not-so-fine, French cognacs. His 11-year-old son Luke is smart in a budding engineer way, while his ex-wife remains if not a friend than an ally in raising the boy. Dalliances with women are not uncommon but his life is perhaps too footloose and fancy-free (He seldom asked himself questions of any kind—primarily because he thought self-analysis would probably just add to the vague dissatisfaction he felt with his life).

When Paul almost inadvertently notices people in town are dying off and sees their connection to one another, he idly begins to look into it and eventually enlists a detective. All this while starting up a romance with a hot-to-trot NYC theater actress named Phyllis Arno. Since he meets Phyllis through his current casual lover, psychiatrist Hillary Brock, and dumps her for Phyllis, this causes some conflict, duh, which is well-described by Greenhall: "What I want you to realize is that I'm losing both of you," Hillary tells him, and the reader can feel the heartbreak. It's good, grown-up stuff, and as such will lead to problems later on.

A novel about a deadly chain letter would be worthless without some good murder-by-chain-letter sequences. The men and women who receive the letter and then become casual murderers involved all have a tenuous connection to Paul: aforementioned Dwight, who enters Paul's orbit when his son wants to build clocks as a hobby; auto mechanic Lamb Johnson, who works on Paul's car and has grievances against his wealthy father (he believed death should be sought only over matters of family honor, as in an ancient tragedy); Connie Nickens, the shrewd sultry hostess at a good restaurant Paul frequents upon whom Paul has a minor crush (he liked looking at Connie and that wasn't because there was a great beauty or character in her features; it was because there was the implication that intimacy was a possibility) who is mixed up with a shady business partner. And last is Sarah Hopkins, an editor and researcher who hates her former boss (hey, that was one of Greenhall's jobs!). Last because Sarah is now shadowing Paul, and surely after what he's noticed about recent mysterious deaths this can't be an innocent coincidence...

They all hear the icy madness commanding them to kill: You must not break the chain, you must not become anxious or confused... You are a person who goes not the way of the crowd but the way that you have chosen and that has been chosen for you. It appeals to their narcissism and ego, that deadly, deadly psychological combo.

Aw man read this scene the day after Harry Dean died!

We get those scenes, but, unfortunately, they are after the first one somewhat strangely muted. It's like Greenhall didn't want to let his hair down and give us the gory details of "accidents" and "mishaps." His pen is spent more in describing the characters' interior lives and motivations than in the final outcomes of such. Which I enjoy, as Greenhall is an astute chronicler of the impolite notions most people have about others. He's also very good at depicting healthy sex lives, an appreciation for good food and drink, art and its creation, parenting, and other adult activities that so many horror writers find bewildering to contemplate and impossible to convey. It's just that Deathchain is ostensibly a horror novel—it says so on the spine! It has a bloody knife on the cover! It has the word "death" in its very title!—there is very little real horror to be found. It rather feels like a missed opportunity, despite the high caliber of prose.

I had a sense that Greenhall may have felt he was somewhat above the material, that much of what he was writing could have been in a book not about or entitled Deathchain. The lead-in to and the climax itself feature some grody stuff, but too little and too late. I would have loved a gruesome scene or three in Greenhall's inimitable style. I kept waiting and waiting but it didn't happen. There isn't much suspense and there's nothing really scary going on, not on the surface anyway. There's an intellectualization of pain and death that's akin to Thomas Tessier, but not as satisfying. It is simply Greenhall's skill at observing truths about human nature that make Deathchain readable. It is not a must-read like Hellhound or Elizabeth, and his other novels are still on my to-read list, but if you dig his style like I do and don't mind a novel that isn't trying to terrify you constantly if at all, Deathchain could be for you.

Powell's Birthday Visit

Spent Friday afternoon kinda hungover after a late night of birthday dinner and drinks on Thursday. But I wouldn't let that deter me from shopping at Powell's House of Books, here in Portland. One of America's premier bookstores, I visit maybe three or four times a year. Their horror section is a mix of new and used titles (all of their stock is, actually) and while their pricing reflects a knowledge of the collector (Charles Beaumont's 1960s paperbacks going for $15; a first-edition paperback of I Am Legend for $35), you can often find great deals mixed in. In fact, they had a whole spinner rack of 1980s horror paperbacks for fans of Netflix's "Stranger Things" series, priced around $2 - $3 each.

First read is that Barker bio from 2001 by the great Douglas E. Winter; I'm enjoying all the behind-the-scenes stuff about deals with his first publishers and editors. Not sure what's next; I've got some other writing projects I'm working on and am halfway through a not-so-great 1970s horror title that I'll probably review before the end of the year. Anyway, any visitor to Portland needs to stop in at Powell's and give themselves plenty of time to explore their delirious maze of seemingly endless shelves... hope you make it out alive!

My Favorite Horror Reads of 2014

I think that 2014 was the best year yet for Too Much Horror Fiction: the blog reached a million views, I wrote two series on horror fiction at Tor.com, and read some great books for the first time. In no particular order I present my fave horror reads of the past year.

The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell. An all-too-convincing portrait of the murderer's mind. The intro essay, Campbell's account of his mother's mental illness, is essential reading.

The Nest by Gregory A. Douglas. Repulsive pulp chiller that delivers. Too bad more Zebra horror paperbacks weren't this outrageous.

Feral by Berton Roeche. Understated thriller about cats on the attack. Rouche as an unassuming, quiet and literate prose style that heightens the tale's believability (some boneheaded Amazon reviewers think this
means the guy can't write).

Burning by Jane Chambers. A haunting historical love story about a forbidden love. I know that sounds cheesy but really, this is a sensitive and thoughtful novel. Terrific cover art as well, although it probably made some folks dismiss it.

Gwen, in Green by Hugh Zachary. Erotic ecohorror with that full '70s flavor. Also one of my all-time fave covers.

Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall. A forgotten, overlooked masterpiece of the sociopathic mind of a dog. Yes, a dog. Hope someone publishes a reprint.

A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle. A powerful collection of stories that highlight horror at home. Tuttle's '80s short horror fiction should not be missed.

The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory. A gloomy, doomy, almost poetic tale about a man, his family, and his bird. Unique, startling, powerful.

Big life change too: in June I moved across the country and to live in Portland, OR! On the drive across the country, I visited plenty of used bookstores and added dozens of vintage paperback titles to my shelves. Photos of my hauls:

And February will be the fifth anniversary of Too Much Horror Fiction! So here's to a great 2015--who knows what horrors lie in wait...

Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall (1977): I Wanna Be Your Dog

By appearances, Hell Hound (Zebra Books, Oct 1977) seems to be a cheap, tawdry knockoff thriller, just another nature-gone-amok horror novel in the wake of Jaws, except this one is exploiting an animal near and dear to the human heart. The name Ken Greenhall is familiar to no one, there are no blurbs from famous authors or reviewers, and those eyes, those demonically crimson canine eyes, oh man, that is just the cheesiest, just the worst, appearing stuck in lazily as the cover went to print. So you can't be blamed for thinking Hell Hound is bottom-of-the-barrell Zebra garbage. You'd be wrong though. Hell Hound is a revelation: dog as sociopath (that tagline A thriller of the surreal and the supernatural is just an irrelevant Zebra add-on). In fewer than 200 pages, we get a thoughtful, chilling, penetrating glimpse into the mind of man's so-called best friend. Baxter the bull terrier makes Cujo seem like a clumsy amateur.

First, a behind-the-scenes note: the book was published in the US under Greenhall's name with the title Hell Hound, while in the UK, it was titled Baxter and credited to his pseudonym Jessica Hamilton, under which he'd written the utterly marvelous Elizabeth, out the previous year. I believe both editions were pub'd in Oct '77. Also in the UK it was published in actual hardcover with the subtitle A Novel of Inhuman Evil, and a dustjacket that looks more like a mainstream pop thriller (I don't get the can image - dog food?) than its tacky American drugstore rack paperback. The book is not easy to come by for cheap. However last summer I finally found a used copy on Abebooks, for $3.95 and free shipping, even. It was pure random blind luck, I know that, so don't lose heart, horror fiction fans - be diligent in your book searches!

Now onto the book itself. Greenhall tells this story with the utmost conviction, and that's why you won't be able to put Hell Hound down, even though you'll want it to last and last. What is it about Greenhall’s style that I find irresistible? That I find so true and authentic? Beneath the cadence of Baxter’s thoughts there is the insistent rhythm of madness, the madness of pure unfettered rationality, unencumbered by the human emotional palette. Baxter regards humans with an almost contemptuous wonder:

Pity is not something I want to encourage in myself. It is something for humans to feel, one of the jumble of odd sentiments they burden themselves with. Their emotions are like diseases, I think; diseases that can spread among those who try to understand them. Let their feelings be a mystery, like the dozens of other strange traits they have... The ways in which they deceive themselves are endless.

Fright.com's review - I recommend Z7's review as well, the only reviews I found online - perceptively notes that Hell Hound is akin to such powerful unique novels as JG Ballard's Crash (1973) and Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory (1984). Like those works, the narrative voice is detached but brilliant, its psychological insights deft and razor-sharp, its originality startling.

*spoilers ahead so skip to the bottom* 

One of my favorite things about Hell Hound is how the worst scenarios play out: there are no surprises, only a sense of fate predetermined. In a way the story is tragedy, the seeds sewn within our very natures, beast and man alike. Baxter’s interior monologues gird the novel; every eight or 10 or 12 pages we have one or two pages of his italicized ruminations on the inscrutability of humans and how his life interacts with theirs, among other things. So when we meet Baxter, he is lamenting his exhausted and uninteresting and unbearable first owner, the widow Mrs. Prescott, and showing a keen interest in the young, vibrant, almost erotically-charged couple across the street, and wondering this passage we find on the back cover:

What if...? What if...? The dispassion in Baxter's voice is electrifying. Life in Mrs. Prescott’s perhaps lower middle-class home is a dreary affair. A widow whose daughter’s husband breeds dogs, of which Baxter is one and given to her after her husbands dies, Prescott is distrustful and uptight, withholding of affection, and feels neither one way or the other about the bull terrier: She had never been able to decipher his expressions. He had always looked either impassive or malevolent to her. Baxter is intrigued by his own conflicting feelings about her; the first time he pushes her at the head of the staircase he pulls her back in time using his powerful jaws. He tries to escape to the couple across the street - I need their joy - but of course he is brought right back. Baxter has no choice, and her death seems foretold for her: She had given her affection to another creature: an act she had all her life been convinced was dangerous. Now she knew she had not been wrong to mistrust affection... and as her head hits the floor at the bottom of the stairs: There was a faint aroma of floor polish. She smiled. "I was not wrong," she whispered.

Now Baxter is taken up by the Graftons across the street, after Florence, Mrs. Prescott's bitter, alcoholic daughter with repressed lesbian tendencies (many a character is repressed or a failure or a fool), offers them the creature. Greenhall's economic, precision-point insight into even the human psyche cuts deep and true, as Florence regards the upwardly-mobile John and Nancy as something probably like liberal do-gooders (there is a mildly discernible undercurrent of class satire throughout the novel). Those familiar bitter disappointments that rise from our lives and poison us:
 

Take the beast, she thought, take the people, the houses, the trees. Have as many pregnancies and ideals as you can manage; you won't save any of it. Something or someone will defeat you.

My pleasure increases endlessly... She has learned to feed me fresh, raw meat. She brings me large, mysterious bones, which I crack fiercely, feeling pride and pleasure in the strength of my teeth and jaws.

Once ensconced in the Grafton home, Baxter feels satisfaction and control, and knows the man and woman rely on him. There is order, a place for everyone. And then the inevitable: the woman is changing. Her body is becoming thicker and thicker, and there is an added scent about her that I find unpleasant. It is almost as if she had the scent of two people. Uh-oh. And it all plays out precisely as you think, which makes it all the scarier. The newborn’s mindlessness and many stupidities offend Baxter’s notions of power and weakness, and he resents the parents’ dotage on the offspring, and he now waits for an opportunity to - well, you know. And after Baxter realizes too late, their love has turned to fear.

Baxter is next given to another neighbor family. The son is Carl Fine, a 13-year-old loner who spends time in a bunker-like hideaway he's built in the junkyard. Carl is fond of - wait for it! - Hitler, as well as Eva Braun, their dogs and their final days in a bunker of their own. His idea of flirting with a neighbor girl, Veronica Bartnik, who shows interest in him is to tell her about ol' Adolf and his dog Blondie:

"He had these cyanide capsules he was going to use to kill himself and Eva. But he wasn't sure they would work - he didn't rust the people that gave them to him. So he gave one to Blondie. He watched her die. Then he had her puppies shot."

What a charmer! It's no surprise Baxter and Carl hit it off, and their relationship is a push and pull of authority and understanding. Baxter mates with Veronica's father's hunting spaniel (Mr. Bartnik has his own set of special problems); Carl starts staging junkyard dogfights with Baxter; Carl begins having an intimate relationship with Veronica. When Carl tries to sic Baxter on a 10-year-old boy - which Baxter refuses to do - Baxter sees treachery, a misunderstanding of their relationship, and wonders if the day will come when the respect will no longer be there. I wonder whether he could ever be so foolish. That day will come, spurred by the death of Baxter's offspring and Carl's own growing sociopathy... The final chapters are a masterwork of unmitigated malice, of spiraling doom, of existential purity, even. Greenhall comes full circle with his story and ends it the only honest way: I have a strength and knowledge that they have never known...

This long review doesn't even touch on everything I loved about Hell Hound. Definitely one of the best novels I've read for TMHF, and one that deserves to be much more well-known and not simply as a "cult classic." It's obvious: I cannot recommend it highly enough! It is the kind of “horror” novel that makes you look askance at the genre’s hallmarks - at the flamboyant excesses of blood and gore streaked across the pages and the faces of psychotic killers, of the bizarre monstrosities conjured up, of the contrivances of plot and circumstance, character and dialogue, the elaborate fantasies of evil and demons and gods beyond space and time. Who needs 'em? Not Greenhall; he dispenses with all that and gives us the dispassion of a creature which beggars our belief in good and in compassion. This is horror found in one of our most recognized and beloved animals, one with which countless millions have bonded daily for millennia, one which seems to exist in our world but is more like an utter alien, staying its power till that moment in which we innocently bare our hairless throats to its ivoried jaws, and then revealing what its instinct has been since birth.

Elizabeth by Jessica Hamilton (1976): She'll Reflect What You Are In Case You Don't Know

"It doesn't follow, Elizabeth, 

that because you are old enough to be evil, 

you are an adult."

So says Grandmother. And so will any reader say upon finishing Elizabeth, the debut novel from Ken Greenhall, writing under the pseudonym Jessica Hamilton. At just 14 years old, Elizabeth Cuttner is a startling little sociopath with powers natural and not (A Novel of the Unnatural states its tagline). She tells her story in a voice quite distinctive, yes, but also as cool and unforgiving as a marble tombstone. With dispassionate precision, she grasps the motivations of those around her, fathoms their subconscious desires; Elizabeth has psychological insights that people thrice her age never attain. She amazes, charms, bewilders, and ultimately horrifies. When I was younger, she tells us on the very first page, I saw James, my father's brother, look from our dog to me without changing his expression. I soon taught him to look at me in a way he looked at nothing else. And oh that's just a hint of what's to come.

Elizabeth lives in lower Manhattan, in a very old building not far from the once-bustling harbor. Her grandmother appears each evening in a full black dress and tells ever-changing stories about the family's ancestry at dinners to the remaining members of the Cuttners: the aforementioned James, her son, his wife Katherine, and their son Keith. Their live-in servants are the Taylors, who reside in the basement but have little interaction with the family (I suppose there is no need to speak to those whose dirt and appetites you know intimately). Grandmother's husband left her years before, but his office building is next door. Oh, Elizabeth's parents? You can probably guess why they're not around, can't you?

1988 Bart Books reprint

The supernatural slips in very early but oh-so-quietly. In the second chapter, Elizabeth and her parents vacation in a cabin at Lake George, and while on a nature walk she finds an unlikely-looking toad the color of decaying meat and takes it home, then she is compelled to hold it between her breasts. As she does this, a visage swims into view in the antique mirror in her room. "Do not fear me, Elizabeth. I have come to help you." She has a fearsome beauty and speaks in an antique language; her name is Frances, a distant Cuttner relative; indeed, we learn she is an English witch from centuries past. Elizabeth seems to fall in some kind of love or obsession with Frances, who wants to reveal and guide all of Elizabeth's familial powers... and warns Elizabeth of the new tutor from England that James has hired for her, Miss Barton. Young Miss Barton, who strangely resembles the woman in the mirror...

1978 Sphere UK paperback

There's all that, as it's said, and more. There is barely a whisper of actual violence or overt sex, yet the novel seethes with these powers, and the tone throughout is cool, almost affectless. Affairs that speak more of desperation and opportunity than real human feeling spring up in the home. Elizabeth is no Lolita-esque coquette; she is a young woman who accepts impassively the male sexual appetite - especially when it serves her own needs and ends. Her knowledge of male vanity, and flattery of such, is complete. Elizabeth notes that James feels about the Don Juan legend the same way a priest feels about the New Testament. Something seems to be going on between Katherine and Miss Barton too, but that's only par for the course:

James had never been happier. He accused Katherine of being in love with Miss Barton and pretended to be outraged. Actually, the thought of his wife being involved with another woman excited him... he became much more open about his relationship with me and on afternoons when Katherine and Miss Barton were uptown shopping together he would take me to his wife's bed. "You be Katherine," he'd say, "and I'll be Miss Barton."

Elizabeth is one of the most intriguingly written novels I've read in some time; it is deceptively rich and rewarding. Hamilton's style is one of allusion, of casual reference, an author in full command of the writing craft, knowing what to tell, what to show, and most especially what to conceal. And ironically in that concealment revealing all. Elizabeth herself is an amazingly complex character, her voice so confident, so ageless, so wise, as she begins to use her unnatural talents to harm others, such as Grandmother...

"Martha," I found myself saying, "with my gift and  power I bid thee desist. Martha Cuttner, I bid thee vanish. Thrice, Martha Cuttner, my gift and power bid thee desist and vanish." 

And then there was silence. Behind me stood the city and its people. Some of those people had passed me on the street and admired me, thinking I had never done unmentionable things in the night, as they had done or wanted to do.

1979 Sphere UK reprint

I really cannot recommend Elizabeth highly enough. This unheralded, forgotten work deserves rediscovery by fans of weird fiction. Copies are easily found online and I urge you to purchase one. If you enjoy the literary chill of calculating children, the frosty tales of du Maurier and Jackson, the quiet horrors of witchery and those it dooms, the foolishness of men in the thrall of women, do yourself a favor and become acquainted with Elizabeth.

For a little more on Greenhall, check out the Phantom of Pulp's blog.