The thing about being a hero is that first you must lose nearly everything, and then you must sacrifice whatever you have left. Park ranger Richard Sundstrum is that hero in Scott Johnson’s “Ungeheuer,” due out in April.
During a prolonged Central Texas drought, four young spelunkers find an underwater cave entrance in the river and inadvertently let loose….something. At the same time, Richard and his young son are camping near the river just two weeks after the death of Richard’s wife.
The pair’s trip is cut short when Richard is called in to help investigate an “animal attack” that killed all of the staff and diners at the Grist Mill restaurant. What follows is a grueling marathon of violence, gore, and death for the characters as well as the reader.
What sets this novel apart from other blood-fests is the structural complexity. Although the third-person narration gives us a relatively objective bird’s-eye view of the slaughter, Johnson alternates perspectives among the primary characters. He often uses a sound effect to signal the reader that the action rewinds a few minutes and begins another character’s point of view.
The gruesome, heart-racing action will appeal to fans of the horror genre. However, the Central Texas setting and scenery, the suspense, and a few surprises will appeal to all readers.
Those who prefer ghosts to monsters will enjoy “The Hacienda” by Isabel Cañas, which releases May 3. Although it has been compared to Du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” it is closer to 2020’s “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Beatriz marries young, handsome widower Rodolfo to escape poverty and her cruel tia’s kitchen. She moves into his hacienda on a remote maguey plantation and soon discovers that no one else is willing to live in the house, and in fact, that the house doesn’t want Beatriz there either.
Young Padre Andrés tries to help Beatriz “heal” the house of the strange voices and apparitions but must hide his native powers from the Inquisition and his fellow priests. He must also hide his feelings for Beatriz.
This title was a fun, chilling read that transports the reader to 1820’s Mexico, just after the Revolution and the social turmoil that followed. Beatriz and Andrés each narrate alternating chapters, including Andrés’s flashbacks to his youth, and why he was banished from the hacienda by Rodolfo’s first wife.
Colson Whitehead’s latest, “Harlem Shuffle,” is no hero’s journey and offers nothing supernatural but it has plenty of suspense and not a little bloodshed.
Furniture dealer Ray Carney isn’t crooked; he’s just a little bent in a city where anyone who’s not probably isn’t breathing. Carney is happy with his sideline in radios and TVs that have fallen off trucks, and sometimes the odd piece of jewelry, when his cousin Freddie gets him involved in a hotel heist.
The heist puts Carney on the radar of the local mob as well as the local “bent” detective. Not long after Carney settles back into his old routine, he gets swindled by a Harlem banker, which of course requires Carney to exact revenge, just as his crook father would have done.
Whitehead approaches Carney with more than a little humor. When a “colleague” dispatches another crook who has come gunning for them, Carney rolls the body in a “Moroccan Luxury rug” and delivers it to the local body dumping ground. Near the end of the novel, when he and the colleague go to ransom cousin Freddie, the mob lawyer supervising the “deal” is seated in an office furnished with “Templeton Office’s new fall line.”
Whitehead’s graceful prose captures Harlem of 1950s and 60s: “This first hot spell of the year was a rehearsal for the summer to come. Everyone a bit rusty but it was coming back, their parts in the symphony and assigned solos. On the corner, two white cops recapped the fire hydrant, cursing. Kids had been running in and out of the spray for days” (p 21).
The novel traces the mid-twentieth century changes to New York and its skyline as well as Carney’s maturity from small-time fence, to grudge-bearing criminal, to slightly-bent businessman. It is a fun and rewarding read.
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