Fuckin' Fantastic Fiction Follow-Up

There's been a healthy amount of interest in the previous post, so I'm following up with some related items.

These Greenhall/Hamilton novels, though not as well known as Baxter, are also must-reads. Both employ the author's patented 1st person point of view, and are written with the familiar sardonic dryness one expects after the previous two novels. 

 

As noted in correspondence from regular attendee here, Soiled Sinema, a writer of considerable note himself, Gregory A. Douglas's The Nest is cockroach heaven for those inclined towards the genre. The British Devil's Coach Horse, by Richard Lewis, also mined this terrain.

The seriously underrated Stephen Gregory delivered on the promise of The Cormorant with this '88 novel from St. Martin's Press. The Ramsey Campbell blurb is justified, as are the other reviews that hint at the book's themes of "obsession" and "breakdown". Gregory does obsession extremely well, and it's pitiful that his debut didn't earn the attention of something like Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory.

 Higgs' follow-up to The Happy Man was another grim outing with a solid thread of nihilism.

Recently, I reviewed Nathan Tyree's Mr. Overby Is Falling on this blog, and commented on the book's chilling nihilism. Higgs achieves an equal measure of nihilism here, and delivers a superb climax. 

It's a shame he abandoned the horror genre. I'd love to know why.

The Toy Shop Tragedy

Have you ever felt sorry for a book? -- or a book's hard working author?

I have.

I still feel sorry for The Toy Shop and its author J. Robert Janes.

Take a good look at this cover. Study it and learn... learn how not to sell a book.

Pretty fuckin appalling, isn't it? It's another winner from Paperjacks, a long gone Canadian publisher. This strange little company didn't publish shit, but they sure packaged it that way.

They put out several novels by Mr. Janes including The Hiding Place, The Third Story, and The Watcher.

They also published one of my favorite horror novels ever, Eric Higgs' The Happy Man, a book I covered on this blog way, way back when Jesus was a grasshopper.

 The first edition of The Toy Shop came out in '81, via General Publishing,  in the midst of a horror novel boom. Bookshelves were top heavy with the stuff back in those days, and there were at least a dozen publishers -- Fawcett, New American Library, Pocket Books, Ballantine, St. Martin's Press, Avon, Zebra, Pinnacle, Dell, Charter, Jove, Popular Library -- cashing in and jostling for shelf space before boom turned to bust. Paperjacks released the book's second edition in a still-horror-friendly market in '84. 

I bought The Toy Shop because the cover art was so odd -- a picture of a rag doll with another picture, a face, pasted (badly) on top of it. Was this supposed to look amateurish? Was I missing the point?

I felt great sympathy for J. Robert Janes because writing books is damn hard work and he was being short-changed in the marketing department. If you do manage to get something published, its a little miracle. Unless a writer has lots of of devoted fans, he depends on cover art to attract some newbies (who or what was this going to attract?) The hope is, the potential punter will find the cover art enticing enough to want to flip the book to read the blurb on the back. If they don't want to do that, you're shit out of luck.

Not the best of blurbs. Not the worst, either.  A toy shop you can't trust. "Daddy's Secrets" (not hard to figure what those are). Nosy neighbors disappearing. Terror, sex, and innocence. And "innocence"? It's an abstract that doesn't quite fit with terror and sex. I get what they're trying to say, but it's awkwardly put.    

The front cover blurb isn't any great shakes, either: "Daddy, Mommy, Madness, Sin, Here We Let The Terror in!"

"Here"? Does that make any sense to you?

Wouldn't the correct -- no, smoother -- word be "Now", as in "Now We Let The Terror In!"?

 Zebra Books used to get roasted for their artwork -- unfairly, I feel. Sure, the art rarely connected with the story, but it was eye-catching and slick (see below!).

This nonsense -- The Toy Shop art -- is just drab and uninspired.  

Perhaps I'm pissing up the wrong pole? The Toy Shop did earn a second printing in November, '84, after Mr. Janes had released The Third Story (my favorite of his) and The Hiding Place. Had the cheap little rag doll composite attracted readers for the same reason it attracted me? Was its anti-aesthetic an engine of persuasion?

 An internet search reveals that Mr. Janes has written fourteen novels, was born in 1932, and is Canadian. That explains the Paperjacks and General Publishing connection (was Paperjacks an arm of General?). I'm curious about The Watcher, and must start upending every second hand bookshop between here and Ontario to find a copy. It's not like I need more obsessions, but another one won't hurt. The writer, it appears, was a mining engineer and teacher before turning full time wordsmith. He had this to say about writing:

"If anyone tells you that this is fun—forget it! It is lovely sometimes to be able to write every day. There are the highs and lows as in any other job. But it is absolute hell most times."

Despite the cover art, the pure horror work of Mr. Janes (as opposed to his crime/detective work) remains curiously entertaining, and twisted in just the right way. If you know what the right way is, you'll know it needs no explanation.   

I remain in sympathy for The Toy Shop.

This woman's face is featured on the front cover of two Janes books.

Was she the Alfred E. Neumann of Paperjacks?

Enquiring minds would like to know.

The Inside Scoop On Happiness

I wasn't a happy camper until I got my hands on "The Happy Man".

After reading a glowing Fangoria review, I set out to snag myself a copy. Unfortunately, its publisher, Paperjacks (long defunct), did a miserable job of distributing the book, so it dropped out of sight. Years went by. Lives changed. TV shows got axed. Nightmares of not ever reading "The Happy Man" plagued me. The book was making me very un-happy.

A chance encounter on-line pointed me to a seller who was holding a mint condition copy. After paying them close to what Paperjacks probably paid Eric C. Higgs to write the damn thing, I became the proud owner of a minor horror classic.

The book hooked me instantly with this: "The Marshes rotted in their house two full days before they were discovered by a delivery man from Sparklett's."

I never looked back. Sick humor and ghastly horror. Perfect.

"The Happy Man" of the title finds a grotesque brand of happiness when he is plunged into a strange, suburban world of perversion, mutilation and murder.

Eric C. Higgs might well be the unsung Albert Camus of horror. His trim little novel, which is perfect at 166 pages, is a masterpiece of humor, horror, subtlety and menace.

Originally published by St. Martin's Press in '85 (hardback, I presume), the Paperjacks edition is April, '86.

It's not speculating too wildly to say that the book's terrible cover may have contributed to its market demise.

Dropping the "C" from his name, Eric Higgs' returned in '87 with "Doppelganger". A St. Martin's Press paperback, it has a stronger supernatural slant and opens with a smart quote from von Schiller: "What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul."

Higgs' opening paragraph is funny and horrible at the same time: "The shove sent Mr. Sam tripping backward, arms flailing wildly. His ankles hit against the service island's curb and he started going down, right between the pumps for unleaded and unleaded supreme..."

"Doppelganger" was never going to rise to the level of brilliance accorded "The Happy Man", but it's not too shabby, either. Grisly. Grotesque. Odd. It's all that and more.

Where is Eric Higgs now? I don't know. Was he sent to Coventry by his competition? Did he retire with the non-profits of his only two horror novels?

This inquiring mind would like to know.

There is a fresh simplicity in Mr. Higgs' language, a sense that there's no disconnect between what he's thinking and what he's writing. He's giving us the bloodied truth. That makes him important.

I'm very happy that I discovered Eric C. Higgs , but his long absence from the genre is starting to chip away at my happiness.