Reading Daydreams, by Mitchell Smith, gave me the push of bravery I needed to review Omens. The latter stars a man who bites off the penises of little boys and bigger men. This doesn’t happen in a cartoonish horror type of way, but in an unsettling creepy kind of way.
I read Omens and I thought, "This is freaked-out. What are people going to think of me if I'm reading this?" Is that silly? Yeah, sure, but you haven't read the book yet, so you don't quite know what I'm talking about now, do you? Mostly I was thinking, "I can't put this in the newspaper as a review, because I'm not sure I'm ready to subject my readers to this without a seven-layer dip of warning."
But then I read the pulp-horror-mystery of Daydreams, with the scalded-off skin and cooked-banana-up-twat lead-in scene, and those apprehensions melted away. Publishers Weekly, New York Times, and a slew of newspaper blurbs weighed in with positivity. So, the fact that I liked Omens didn't mean I was insane.
See, not only can we readers feel sorry for the boys in the story, caught with their pants down in the Arizona desert, but the author guides us into feeling sorry for (well, at first) Cliff Rilek, the disillusioned, under-an-illusion, bitter biter. The horror starts in 1960 with a drunked up, bollixed up, too-incisive circumcision that 30-or-so years later gives a whole new meaning to SMS - Small-Man Syndrome. The book tries deeply to root itself in the real world — real fears, real actions, real pain — but the introduction of the supernatural is profound. The two primary elements in this area are psychic insight from new Safford Police Chief Collins, and the actions of a wannabe-werewolf, Rilek.
We see the story — ultimately a cop chasing a bad guy tale — unfold through the eyes of the hunter and the hunted, and watch their connection come closer, like a lit match and a stick of dynamite. It's a long fuse. After Rilek starts a gory killing spree in a small town, the chase bounds across eastern Arizona, from isolated sun-burned desert to isolated, snow-bound lakes. For anyone who has experienced the Arizona environment and the Arizona rains, Coleman's descriptions bring back the real life of lightning, the rain and their effect on the desert and its life: "The storm was the manifestation of a world in cardiac arrest..."
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
2 - Jim W. Coleman
Nice work, Temple! Good, fair review. Sorry about that part where he slapped his knee in hilarity. I'll try to do better by avoiding those cliches in the future.
In writing this book, I wanted to craft a story that the author himself (me!) would be afraid of. I succeeded - this book still gives me the willies. What could frighten even the most manly of men? The fear of emasculation. This book will touch you in places and it ways that you don't want to be touched...