Yellow Fog by Les Daniels (1988): Blood and Tears

Now here's a Stephen King paperback blurb you can believe! Author Les Daniels (1943-2011) had been writing his series of historical vampire novels for about a decade, all featuring the "protagonist"  Don Sebastian Villanueva, an immortal Spanish nobleman. Yellow Fog (Tor Books, August 1988/cover by Maren) was originally published in 1986 by specialty genre publisher Donald M. Grant (see cover below) and is the second-to-last in the series. The only other novel of his I've read is the last one, No Blood Spilled (1991), which I quite enjoyed. In fact I wished Daniels had written more of these! Daniels has lively way with common classic monster tropes, delivered in the fond, knowing manner of someone well-acquainted with them. Yellow Fog is highly reminiscent of Charles Grant's Universal Monsters series (also published by Donald M. Grant) but surpasses that because Daniels is a much, much livelier writer, engaging the reader with effortlessly-drawn characters and setting.

To begin: after an intense train crash prologue in 1835 that leaves one survivor, we move forward to 1847 and meet twenty-ish Londoner Reginald Callender, a callow, immature, shallow, and greedy fellow. Rather than being a unlikable protagonist, Reggie (how he hates that diminutive!) provides much delight for the reader as he is repeatedly confounded in his efforts to secure vast wealth at his own minimum cost. His rich uncle William Callender, he of upper-crust London country clubs, of wealth and taste and hidden vice, has shuffled off this mortal coil, which doesn't upset Reginald overmuch as he stands to inherit the old man's hard-earned money. And yet that is not to be. Even though betrothed to the lovely Felicia Marsh, a young woman with her own inheritance—and the survivor of that earlier train crash— Reginald is beside himself with frustrated greed when he learns Uncle W. left behind nothing save enough to cover his (extensive) funerary, legal, and my-mistresses-shall-be-cared-for-after-I'm-gone costs.

Felicia, as well as her middle-aged Aunt Penelope, are intrigued by all manner of the occult, superstition, and questions of life after death. "Death is only a passage," Felicia tells a nonplussed Callender after his uncle dies, "A journey to another land." She speaks of a man named Newcastle, who can communicate with spirits, and invites Callender along with her and Auntie to one of his seances. Grumbling at the indignity of a betrothed who believes such nonsense, Callender goes along. He's taken aback by this Sebastian Newcastle: clad in black, drooping black mustache on a scarred white face, inviting them into his darkened home lit only by candlelight. The creepy seance that follows, in which Uncle W., in all his irascibility, appears, does nothing to convince Callender that Newcastle isn't a fraud after Felicia's inheritance. Neither does Callender realize that Newcastle is, the astute reader will have noticed, a real live vampire.

Callender, suspicious as only a crook can be, hires a former "runner," a kind of private detective, named Samuel Sayer, to look into the elusive Newcastle. Callender learns of Sayer through Sally Wood, a nightclub singer and dancer, a woman of "cheerful disarray" who would not do as a wife but does great as a mistress (but of course) and who is fond of a new work of fiction titled Varney the Vampyre ("Sounds deucedly unpleasant to me," he sniffs). A wonderful scene ensues of Callender tracking Sayer down at The Black Dog, a dingy bar of ill repute, and later Sayer explains who, and what, he is, and what he does and how. It's a great bit of political theater, a hard-bitten old gent explaining things to a clueless snob.

"A pup like you has no idea what London was like before there was such a thing as a Bow Street runner. Nobody to enforce the law at all... [the runners were] men who were as sly and strong and ruthless as the thieves and murderers they were hired to catch. And I was one of 'em!"

 Donald M. Grant hardcover, 1986, art by Frank Villano

A visit to Madame Tussaud's House of Horrors thrills and chills Aunt Penelope and Felicia as they are accompanied there by Mr. Newcastle, Callender muttering behind the latter two as they view torture instruments and waxen murderers. Then out steps aged Mme. Tussaud herself, who takes one look at Newcastle and states, "Have we not met, sir?... There were stories in Paris, when the revolution raged, about a magician, one who had found a way to keep himself alive forever." Newcastle, polite and deferential as all get-out, engages her in an ironic conversation that Callender can barely stand. The nerve of this guy! Sayer really better be worth it, he's thinking. Of course you can probably guess what happens to Sayer, and to Felicia as she's drawn under Newcastle's spell. Or is she? Perhaps she goes willingly, to see the other side...

Of course you may be able to guess what happens a lot of the time. That's rather the enjoyment factor in Daniels's work. He doesn't belabor readers with details they can fill in themselves: the stinking fog-enshrouded cobblestone streets of early 19th century London; a dank, frigid dock on the Thames; a derelict bar; the Gothic horror/romance of a church graveyard haunted by the shades of the dead; the candlelit drawing room during a seance. Sketched briefly, these settings are perfect for the characters that inhabit them. Sharp dialogue and keenly-observed human folly Daniels does quite well, and his knack for plot, short chapters that clearly advance the narrative, are quite welcome; moments of dramatic confrontation are scattered throughout the book, satisfying hooks of grue that propel readers forward. Daniels could have in my opinion been quite a scriptwriter.

Raven UK paperback 1995, art by Les Edwards

Weaving interesting historical trivia into an larger story to add color and background isn't always easy; it can read too much like an encyclopedia entry. Daniels knows, and does, better. In Yellow Fog, readers will learn a bit about the origins of England's professional police force, the class distinctions relevant to it, and find it all fits with the larger tale of vampirism, greed, and desire (Daniels shrewdly compares Callender's incipient alcoholism to the vampire's bloodthirst). I read the novel over two cold, rainy days, listening to John Williams's score for the 1979 Dracula, and I consider it time well-spent.

Early on the notion struck me that, considering the familiar scenario, that Yellow Fog was a cozy-horror. Unlike the cozy-mystery, there is violence, and sex, fairly explicit, but in such a way that is easily digestible; Daniels is not upending decades of horror convention, he is simply utilizing them in a satisfying, understanding manner. You know what you're getting, you get it, maybe a little bit extra, but it's all been seen before... which is precisely the point. Sayer's meeting with Newcastle, Callender meeting Sally at novel's end: both provide the serious horror creeps. The finale sets up No Blood Spilled, I guess at some point I'm gonna go back and read the previous installments, see what I missed.

Origins of cover art: Germán Robles in El Vampiro (1957)

This is horror comfort food, if you will. When you want mom's mashed potatoes, or grandma's mac n' cheese, nothing else will do; when you want a Universal or Hammer-style vampire story, that's what you want and no revisionist take will do. Okay, there's some Anne Rice-style eroticism tinged with immortal regret, but you had that first in Universal Dracula's Daughter way back in '36. Daniels knows what's up.

Then they were on the carpet, her carefully coiffed pale hair spilled upon its darkness, her gown in disarray, her body throbbing with delight and dread. She felt an ecstasy of fear, stunned more by the desires of her flesh than by the small, sweet sting she felt as he sank into her and life flowed between them... She took life and love and death and made them one... 

She was at peace, but Sebastian knew that she would rise full of dark desire when the next sun set. 

His tears, when they came, were tinged with her bright blood.

Childmare by A.G. Scott (1980): A Riot of Their Own

A pack of children had reduced London's most highly trained law enforcers
to a chaotic rubble.

This quote is the essence of Childmare (Signet, June 1981). It's a horror novel that almost voyeuristically revels in death and destruction, both up close and at a distance. Appropriately enough, I was reading it when James Herbert died, because Childmare is 100% in the Herbert tradition of fast-paced, graphic pulp horror, filled with snippets of everyday British life and locales. At times I even forgot it wasn't written by Herbert! But these are not criticisms at all, not for a moment: Childmare is a rip-roaring ride with some nicely tasteless moments of bizarre violence and cruelty that I think will make quite an impression on horror lovers.

I first heard of Childmare through a reader who remembered one of those tasteless scenes but not the title of the book, and another, sharp-eyed reader was able to identify this book as the culprit. Later I found a copy - pretty sure it was Artifacts in Hood River, OR - and immediately snatched it up. Glad I did! This is vintage horror fiction with a pretty bad-ass mean streak, with a classick cover by, most likely, the wonderful Don Brautigam.

We get right into things with some bullying in the Martin Balliol School, a comprehensive in London, a perfect example of the modern industrialized educational facility. Small, fat and unathletic Samuel Rose is pretty much getting the snot beat out of him by a gang of teenage thugs when, at the last moment, the school's American head of security, a 38-year-old New Yorker named Max Donnelly, arrives to bark orders and assert authority. Of course Rose refuses to rat out his attackers, knowing that to do so would simply result in more, and worse, abuse. After a disgusted Donnelly dismisses him, Rose sneaks into the cafeteria storeroom, gorges himself on pilfered food - as most emotions did, fear had left him ravenously hungry - and hides out till the schoolday's end. That night, after lying to his parents about his torn clothes and various bruisings, he pummels them both to death with a cricket bat.

Original UK 1980 Hamlyn paperback

And so on from there. Soon all - almost all - of the 1,500 schoolchildren have rolled their pupils up into their eye sockets (an image sorely lacking on both US and UK paperback covers) and begun systematically attacking, in the most gruesome manners possible, teachers and other staff members. Think Dawn of the Dead-style mayhem and striking set-ups just not with bloody tattered zombies, but hordes of uniformed teenagers. There's mass destruction as special forces are called in with their guns and helicopters and tactics, all to no avail.

The children soon take to the streets of London, leaving mutilation and death in their wake. Donnelly, accompanied by sly, slovenly cop Tarrant and female interest and English teacher Tracy - herself nearly raped to death by her students in one particularly unsettling scene - narrowly escape the school and commandeer an ambulance and race through the familiar streets and boroughs of London, trying to deliver to authorities a folder of medical notes that could solve the entire unbelievable catastrophe, aghast at what the children have wrought. All too close for comfort for our protagonist:

To Donnelly it was a familiar sight, yet startling in its present context. It was Vietnam... Donnelly himself had led patrols which had perpetrated this sort of monstrous barbarity. And like the streets in Vietnam this one did not appear the victim of a sudden holocaust. There was something oddly long-term and durable about the destruction; as though it had wasted away over a period of many years to its present dilapidated sate. The street looked uncared for, abandoned, rather than the victim of a few minutes of inconceivable violence.

Childmare is, as was once said about other matters, nasty, brutish and short. The pace never slackens in its 200 pages; the writing is powerful, direct, taut. The author allows readers to see the horror from all angles: from the grimly-determined heroes to the hapless victims, from one young student not affected but swept up into the madness and fearful of being found out, to the actual perpetrators, victims themselves of a raging unquenchable thirst for violence: It was as if his cranium no longer contained a brain but, instead, an imploded star that raged with heat and light and pulsed fierce, agonizing energy through his body. Yikes. More and more of England's cities are plagued by the same nightmare, and in a few hours half a million kids are running to the town centers...

At times Childmare seems a dire, almost callous affair as the main characters must fend for themselves and leave others to the homicidal hands of the teens. Everything comes to an appropriately fiery end, but not before several pages of somewhat tiring jargon as to the origins of this ordeal - you really want to get back to the good stuff! Then there are the usual sentiments against uncaring royals and politicians, big business greed, scientific endeavor and progress: all deemed guilty of causing the tragedy. The children, it's true, are innocent, but they pay the final price.

Oh yeah: author A.G. Scott is the pseudonym of a writer named Nick Sharman, the name Childmare is copyrighted under. In the '80s a handful of genre novels were published by Signet in the US under this name, but the only other info I could find about a Nick Sharman was the fictional detective. After some internet sleuthing - and where I ended up is where I should have started, at the Vault of Evil - I discovered that "Nick Sharman" is the pseudonym of one Scott Gronmark. However I don't know why the American paperback was published as written by A.G. Scott - I suppose it's a closer pseudonym to the author's real name. Such are the interests and pursuits of a horror bibliophile.

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman (1992): A Nightmare of Delight

Look, I'm just gonna jump in head-first and not fuck around: Anno Dracula, the fourth non-pseudonymous novel from British film writer Kim Newman, is one of the most accomplished and thoroughly enjoyable novels I've read, not just for Too Much Horror Fiction, but, like, ever. Would that I read it upon its original publication, when I was working in a big chain bookstore and reading at a pace like never before or since (blame the internets). For some reason, when reading its jacket, I just thought, Oh, sounds kinda cool, but wasn't overly convinced of its readability and anything about the British monarchy generally bores me beyond tears. Shame, because I'd loved loved loved Newman's book on the modern horror film, Nightmare Movies (1988). But last month I found a perfect edition of the original Avon paperback and bought it on a whim. Just think: if I'd read Anno Dracula back then, I'd have had well over 15 years to recommend it to people. Damn, what a missed opportunity. Out of print for ages, it's finally back in 2011!

With a breathtaking effortlessness, Newman brilliantly weaves together the twin nightmare mythologies of real-life monsters Vlad Tepes and Jack the Ripper into an alternate history whole unlike any horror novel I have ever read. All manner of historical figures waltz through the book, particularly fictional vampires (and other people too) from film and literature. Part of the fun of reading Anno Dracula is recognizing these characters, often wittily referenced and employed. Famous Victorian characters from Conan Doyle, Dickens, Wells, Stevenson, Le Fanu, and others appear (much as in Alan Moore's later The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novels). Lord Ruthven is made Prime Minister; Count Iorga, a much-mocked general; Drs. Moreau and Jekyll are consulted in the Ripper case; Kate Reed, a character cut from the original 1897 Dracula, is a young reporter; Oscar Wilde stops by; why, even Florence Stoker, Bram's wife, is part of the action. Too bad Bram was exiled after his friends failed to stop the king of the undead.

Newman's Vlad Tepes is also Stoker's literary creation Count Dracula, and it is this towering king vampire who wins out over Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker and the other men who'd banded together to stop him. This happens before the novel begins, but Dr. Jack Seward (he ran the madhouse and studied Renfield, remember) recounts the tragedy in his diaries early on: We were defeated utterly. The whole country lay before Count Dracula, ripe for the bleeding. Dracula, ever the military strategist, makes his way to Buckingham Palace and marries Queen Victoria, and then turns her into one of his unholy concubines. Van Helsing is recast as a traitor to the British Empire, his head placed upon a pike. Dracula, who had been King of the Vampires long before he was ruler of Great Britain... the undead had been an invisible kingdom for thousands of years; the Prince Consort had, at a stroke, wiped clean that slate, lording over warm and vampire alike.

And now it is the year and age of our Lord and our Savior, the mighty Prince Vlad Dracula, and every knee shall bend, every tongue shall... well, not confess, exactly, but you know what I mean. From here he turns the country into a new police state; the reign of Dracula is powered by the Carpathian Guard, brutal old-world vampires (you'll recognize some of their names; does Graf Orlok ring a bell?) he has brought to England for the purpose of spreading vampirism and stamping out any political insurrections. Criminals and traitors and others - living or undead - who try to defy the edicts of the "Prince Consort" are, of course, summarily impaled. Newman relishes those details, you can be sure. Unpleasant indeed, particularly for those who get not the pointed spike, but the, uh, rounded blunt spike. Hey-oh!

As the novel begins, vampire prostitutes are being murdered on the foggy midnight streets of Whitechapel by a killer at first dubbed the "Silver Knife," alluding to his weapon of choice, since only pure silver can truly kill these nosferatu newborns. In this bloodthirsty new world, many living want to become immortal undead - it's seen as a step up in society - while vampires can live quite well on small amounts of blood that humans - or "cattle" - willingly give up. Vampire whores offer sex in exchange for a, ahem, midnight snack. As one might expect, though, Christian anti-vampire groups have formed, and England faces turmoil and riot in these days of class struggles and uncertain future.

Anno Dracula also enlists elements of espionage and detective fiction. The Diogenes Club, a mysterious gentlemen's group referred to by Doyle in his stories, sends for the adventurer Charles Beauregard and requests his services in bringing the Silver Knife to justice. The head of this club? While not mentioned by name, he is the criminal mastermind Fu Manchu. One of Newman's long-running creations, Geneviève Dieudonné, is a vampire, older than Dracula himself, who is driven and brilliant but an outcast whose long life puts her at odds with the warm, or living, and vampire newborns around her. She and Beauregard, aided by real-life Inspector Abberline, join together after the infamous murderer, soon to be dubbed Jack the Ripper. Although widowed Beauregard is now engaged to a prim and proper social climber, he will find he and his beautiful vampire partner are alike in many ways.

Like vampire or Gothic erotica? Well, even if you don't, I was quite impressed with this: Dr. Seward, in a Vertigo-esque bit, "keeps" a vampire prostitute named Mary Jean Kelly, bitten by the doomed Miss Lucy Westenra. You'll recall she was Dracula's first victim, or "get," those many years ago. Mary Jean was Lucy's get, a little girl lost who slaked Lucy's thirst and was repaid with immortality. Seward and Kelly engage in bloody erotic fantasies fueled by memories of his unrequited love, Lucy:

Sometimes, Lucy's advances to Kelly are tender, seductive, mysterious, heated caresses before the Dark Kiss. At others, they are a brutal rape, with needle-teeth shredding flesh and muscle. We illustrate with our bodies Kelly's stories.

Other wonderful scenes abound: Beauregard's misadventures in the city, Jack's heartless murders, explosive riots in the streets, the hopping Chinese vampire who stalks Geneviève, trickery and ruthlessness, general bloodletting and blood-drinking of various sorts. It is definitely part gruesome horror story; Newman regales us with this almost eternal England night.

For virtually all of the novel, Count Dracula is referred to but never seen, but when he finally is revealed, in all his revolting glory, ensconced in a filthy throne room in the Palace, Newman outdoes everything that's come before. Beauregard and Geneviève have been summoned to appear before him and his Queen, and they are aghast at how they find him in his rank and hellish quarters (highlight if you want to read the spoiler): bestial and bloated, enormous and naked but for a bedraggled black cape, his beard matted with the gravy of his last feeding, yellow fangs the size of thumbs, shadows of all his other shape-shifted selves in his crimson corpulent face, the great Count Dracula is obscenity personified. Chained to him at his feet is the newborn Queen, while nearby his famous Brides writhe in feral lust and red thirst. This is no regal steel-haired gentleman clad in elegant black bidding his guests welcome and to leave some of their happiness; this is a bursting tick gorging on humanity itself. The novel's ultimate confrontation is at hand.

Audacious and unique, written in an unobtrusive manner that doesn't scream "Hey, get this name, get that reference, wink-wink," Anno Dracula is an unparalleled work of popular fiction, filled with inventive touches, expertly twining several sub-genres into an utterly satisfying and engaging whole. Historical fact and historical fiction bound together with nary a seam to be found. My review only touches on a few of many pleasures to be found between the covers; Mr. Newman has written an essential, unmissable horror read that is a nightmare of delight for fans and horror newcomers alike.

Julia by Peter Straub (1975): Mama, Where's Your Little Daughter?

It's been some time since I read this whispery and subtle novel of a dead child who may or may not be haunting her sad, confused, dominated mother, so my recollection of it is just as hazy and diffuse. Julia was Peter Straub's third novel and his first that incorporated any kind of horror or supernatural doings. Definitely paved the way for his later novels. The accidental death of little Kate Lofting, in the bright kitchen of her family's home, is shocking, bloody, prosaic, heartbreaking. Afterward, her mother Julia, an American, spends time in a mental hospital and then abandons her English husband Magnus (all-too-obvious name) as she flies to London and purchases an old home, eager to start a new life... but is the young girl she starts to see in the mirrors her beloved Kate, or some other manifestation...? Or the child in the nearby park, whom the other children shun, is she...?

Unsurprisingly, Julia has a dreamy and indistinct feel, sort of modern Gothic, complete with a callous and cruel husband, his evil plotting sister, and their ineffectual brother to whom Julia runs to for understanding. The specter of a lost, malevolent child will feature largely in Straub's Ghost Story in just a few short years. In 1977 the novel was adapted into the little-seen (at least, I've never seen it) movie Full Circle, aka The Haunting of Julia, with, if I imagine correctly, the perfectly-cast Mia Farrow as Julia. I don't think any of these paperback images quite accurately captures the slightly hallucinatory haunting-ness quality of the novel itself, but then, that'd hardly be the first time.

Lair by James Herbert (1979): The Rats, the Rats in the... Trees

More mutant rodent mayhem from one of England's most famous purveyors of pulp horror, James Herbert. In the first sequel to The Rats, his repellent 1974 shocker, Lair is both more of the same and less of the same. Set five years later, the graphic scenes of rats attacking helpless humans are intensified while the aspect that made the first book really uniquely enjoyable - colorful snapshots of the various social classes of England in the 1970s - has mostly been jettisoned.

UK paperback 1979

Rather, we get what I thought were quite boring meetings of various political factions: there are forest keepers and ratcatchers and scientists and law enforcement and commissioners and secretaries and ministers who bicker and fight over 1) whether the detestable, enormous black rats have returned or not, and 2) whether to do anything about the threat, if it exists, at first or not. You know, because it's such a pain in the ass to take precautions against two-foot long voracious rats with razor-sharp fangs and claws who love to burrow into the meat inside human skulls. That's gonna be expensive.

UK hardcover 1979 New English Library

This time, the vermin that have overtaken the enormous wilderness preserve of Epping Forest, 6,000 acres of woodland just outside London, and are better at hiding themselves after an attack. For awhile, many officials remain skeptical of the danger in the woods of Epping. It's all too much like Chief Brody and Hooper trying convince Mayor Vaughn there is a hungry shark in Amity's waters. I find this is a common problem with "creature horror" post Jaws.

1990 Signet reprint

Despite some well-orchestrated scenes of epic rat violence against our fellows - a troop of Boy Scouts, entwined lovers, a faithless vicar, a squad of soldiers - the kind of thing Herbert does so well, I found myself skimming the final chapters, waiting for the twist I expected, but with no emotional investment whatsoever. The second half is one gory attack after another, so much so that they become numbing and inconsequential, grim and meaningless. Herbert throws in ridiculously graphic sex for (what was once known as) the raincoat brigade and adds a love triangle, but not out of any feeling for human relationships: this is simply for the dictates of pulp. Which is fine, but overall Lair is a bleak, callous affair; Herbert doesn't seem to be having any fun. And that, of course, means no fun for the reader - well, at least this reader.

The Nature of the Beast by Peter Menegas (1975): Pagan Babies

 

More quiet, slow-building, and low-impact "horror" fiction from the days before Stephen King and James Herbert made their presences known. The Nature of the Beast, a paperback original from Bantam by an utterly obscure author named Peter Menegas, about whom I could find nothing (really, Google him), features a fine example of vintage horror cover art by Fred Pfeiffer. What with its nudity and animal imagery, this just screams post-hippy alternative/ancient spirituality, kinda like The Wicker Man or perhaps Harvest Home, or the weird changes made to Lovecraft's classic "The Dunwich Horror" for its 1970 movie adaptation. An early example of folk-horror?

But I wouldn't really know, as I had to give up halfway on it. It's blandly written, though not actively terrible; simply too by-the-numbers for me. There are hints of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby as well as Peter Straub's first horror novel, Julia: women and children with distant, even cruel, husbands and fathers, who are soon endangered by supernatural powers that reveal themselves slowly. oh. so. slowly. Honestly I bought it for its pretty cool cover. and I don't dislike the back cover description:

But something tells me I should doubt all that will turn out to be the "ultimate horror." Strange to think pagans really were considered scarier than even Satanism (gasp! horror!) once upon a '70s time.

Peter Menegas (1942 - 1989)

Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier (1986): One Last Caress

I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. That clever little line from an old Bob Dylan song sounds innocuous and playful but in Thomas Tessier's Finishing Touches, it takes on a dreadful enormity. American Thomas Sutherland, just out of medical school, alone and visiting London for six months before deciding what the rest of his life will be, casually meets an older, odd little cosmetic surgeon drinking alone in a pub. Roger Nordhagen invites him out for nights of carousing in which Sutherland gets to see a London of elite establishments, the likes of which tourists never see.

One such place fulfills dark fantasies, a playpen for the pampered few. But these dark fantasies will pale and recede once Sutherland meets Nordhagen's assistant, Lina Ravachol. All alabaster features and raven-black hair, confidence and mystery, she soon has Sutherland willingly in her thrall. He is astonished that she desires him sexually, and their acrobatic, fantasy-driven trysts make him forget all about his past American life.

1986 Atheneum hardcover

And once Lina and Sutherland have forged an unimpeachable bond in a moment of orchestrated horror, Nordhagen can reveal himself as a minor Marquis de Sade. Espousing a philosophy of cruelty, its necessity and ineluctability, the good doctor now shows Sutherland his life's work, deep beneath his London offices, his medical talents have reached their fullest potential. And it is obvious he wishes the young American to continue his mad work after his death from drink. Sutherland dares to ask, why?

"Why, why, why." Nordhagen's face brightened with interest. "You might as well ask why the Mayan civilization collapsed, why Kennedy rode in an open limousine in Dallas, why we came down out of the trees. What is why? There is no why; there is only now, and this, this now."

Tessier has written a book both disturbingly grotesque and powerfully erotic. Finishing Touches (originally published in paperback by Pocket Books in 1987, with cover art by Peter Caras) fortunately back in print) is told in first person in a clear strong voice by a man who slowly comes to face the fact that he can plumb depths of moral insanity and remain psychologically intact (There was a malignancy in me I could not explain away) and even thrive.

This is a great horror novel, filled out with touches of London life, an exploration of men and women and the madnesses and fantasies they can succumb to and embrace, and even, perhaps facing extinction, use to forge meaning in the teeth of raw dumb nature. And even at the end Tom and Lina (whose namesake she seems to aspire to) desire to be a part of that nature, instead of trying to steer it ourselves, we would have to learn to let it go its own way. Death and terror will follow, like leaves falling out of trees.