Frankenstorm by Ray Garton, also including the novella "The Guy Down the Street" (2014)

Frankenstorm by Ray Garton, also including the novella "The Guy Down the Street" (2014): Great, fun, pulpy horror-thriller with a terrible title. An unlikely West Coast hurricane and a sinister government bio-weapon project team up to cause major problems for the citizens of Eureka, California, north of San Francisco. Ray Garton handles the multiple viewpoint third-person narration smoothly, cranking up the tension as the disparate plot threads begin to dovetail towards the conclusion. 

As pretty much always, Garton manages to work a social consciousness into the horrors and thrills. The bio-weapon team has been abducting homeless people from the Eureka area and experimenting on them in order to develop a viral weapon. 

Both the first chapter and various sections throughout generate sympathy for these unwilling test subjects, as well as for a working-class woman who also gets pulled into the terrible events of the novel simply because she needs money for her son's medical care. It's rare that a thriller can end with a solemn contemplation of mortality, but Frankenstorm does, and effectively. This is the sort of thrilling agit-prop we could use more of.

Nonetheless, thrills and surprises are paramount. Frankenstorm stirs a bunch of things that have often served as the plot-engine for a thriller -- a crazy cop, a conspiracy-busting reporter, a well-armed private army, a mad scientist, a hurricane, a child custody battle -- into the same pot. And it's delicious! This paperback edition also includes an X-rated version of the sort of American-suburban contes cruel that Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont created in the 1950's, "The Guy Down the Street." In all, recommended.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Strangers on a Train: adapted by Ben Hecht, Whitfield Cook, Czenzi Ormonde, and Raymond Chandler from the novel by Patricia Highsmith; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Farley Granger (Guy Haines), Robert Walker (Bruno Antony), Ruth Roman (Anne Morton) and Patricia Hitchcock (Barbara Morton) (1951): At the very least, Strangers on a Train is one of Alfred Hitchcock's ten greatest films. And maybe it's top five. It's a terrific thriller that holds up beautifully and which contains an absolutely terrific performance from the tragic Robert Walker, who would die at the age of 32 the same year Strangers on a Train came to theatres.

Farley Granger's Guy Haines is a tennis player with a marital problem. His wife's been unfaithful. He wants to get a divorce so he can marry the daughter of the United States Senator for whom he'll be working full time once his tennis career ends. But his wife, now carrying someone else's child, no longer wants a divorce.

A seemingly random conversation with a stranger Guy meets in the club car of a train rapidly becomes sinister: Robert Walker's Bruno Antony is a superficially charming psychopath who seems to know an awful lot about Guy's marital problems, and indeed his entire personal life.

While spit-balling various theories on how to murder someone and get away with it, Bruno suggests that potential murderers should swap victims so as to eliminate motive. Guy thinks the creepy guy on the train is just indulging in a lurid fantasy (or mentally goofing around the way that the father and the Hume Cronyn character spin out perfect murder theories in Hitchcock's earlier Shadow of a Doubt).  But then Mrs. Haines ends up murdered at an amusement park. And now Bruno wants Guy to hold up his side of a bargain Guy didn't realize he'd made.

Funny, thrilling, and creepy, Strangers on a Train contains a number of shots and sequences that have been discussed in film schools and film criticism for decades. I'll let you experience them for yourself. Farley Granger does solid work as the slightly dense Mr. Haines, as does Hitchcock's daughter Patricia as the smart-aleck sister of Guy's new love interest. But it's Walker who steals the movie with his insinuating, creepy, hyper-intelligent psychopath. It's an absolutely marvelous performance made tragic by the reality of his death. Highly recommended.

Nihilist Spasms

The Museum of Dr. Moses by Joyce Carol Oates (collected 2008): As prolific as a pulp writer, Oates has been lauded again and again for the quality of her prose. She is a fine writer, but don't go to her work to feel good. Or even to experience catharsis. There aren't any conventional happy endings here in these dozen or so stories and novellas.

The title novella deals with family secrets and long-standing conflicts, as do most of the other stories -- the heart in conflict with both itself and other hearts. There's suspense here, though it's of a peculiar sort, as one generally waits to see what horrors will unfold by the end of a story. Oates is a witty writer, but I wouldn't call her funny. Frankly, her fiction is mostly humourless. "The Twins: A Mystery" has wit to spare but unlike, say, Kafka or Thomas Ligotti, Oates doesn't generate absurdity that can be laughed at despite its attendant horrors.

The grimness can wear a bit. A lot, sometimes. One story, told from the POV of a serial killer, is a small gem of characterization that nonetheless casts no light -- human cruelty has been so well-documented in fiction and fact that the story seems to have been rendered superfluous by the weight of its antecedents. It's a perfectly rendered, perfectly hollow bit of nihilism.

Other stories let enough light in to succeed, though. "Feral", ostensibly fantasy, devastates on a number of levels with its tale of a child gone horribly wrong. "The Man Who Fought Roland LaStarza" allows Oates to indulge her love of boxing within the context of a family drama, though the final revelation of the story doesn't shock. The aforementioned "The Twins: A Mystery" strives mightily for some sort of absurdist effect, but it just sorta sits there -- the shock ending in this case undone by the absurdity of the protagonists. Three stories are essentially static depictions of the thoughts of serial killers and/or child murderers: more gestural than narrative, and even one is almost too many.

Overall, Oates is fine writer, and one well worth reading. One's reaction to her will depend on one's tolerance for a universe without much light, and a writer who can't be light without the effort showing. More light! Recommended.