The Devil’s Heart (Devil’s series #2)

The Devil's Heart, by William W. Johnstone

No month stated, 1983  Zebra Books

I actually loved the book. Even though the missed spelled words but what author don’t and the grammar was ok. 

 

-- From an actual Goodreads review 

Eleven years ago I read The Devil’s Kiss, the first volume in the Devil’s series by William W. Johnstone, and at the end of my review I promised that I’d move on to this second volume once I’d sufficiently recovered. Well, it didn’t take me that long, and it’s mostly because I read other Johnstone novels in the interim, but I’m finally now recovered enough to read this second volume of the series. 

And boy, I could’ve just as easily read The Devil’s Kiss again, because William Johnstone writes the exact same story! In fact, he even uses the same character names throughout, even though these characters are the children of the protagonists in the previous book! What’s more frustrating and confusing is that Johnstone bides his – and the reader’s – time for 300+ pages, not picking up the pace until around pg 228…and the novel is only 382 pages long. 

Actually, I shouldn’t say “only.” As with any other Zebra horror novel from the ‘80s, The Devil’s Heart is way too long; as I’ve speculated before, there had to have been some sort of requirement authors had to follow for this publisher. I mean it becomes painfully clear that Johnstone has an ending in mind, but has to waste nearly 300 pages until he can get there. If over a hundred pages were cut out, this would be a much better novel; I kid you not when I say that so many pages are repetitive, with characters worrying how or when something will happen, and some divine or evil force telling them to wait, and they wait, and then it’s the next day, and they wonder “when will it happen?” again, and the divine or evil force tells them to wait…I mean over and over, throughout the entire book! 

To get it out of the way posthaste, I read Johnstone’s horror novels mainly to see how perverted they are, and I’ll say up front that The Devil’s Heart, while sleazy and lurid, is nowhere in the league of The Nursery. And it’s also not as action-packed. The Devil’s Heart is seriously let down by the aforementioned stalling, which goes on, literally, for the entire book. From page one we know that Whitfield, the small town that factored in the first book of this loose “series,” The Devil’s Kiss, will be destroyed…and we’re reminded throughout the book that its destruction is imminent…and 300+ pages later we’re still waiting for it…and then it finally happens like on the very final pages. 

In the interim, we’re treated to a lot of sleaze and filth, but it’s muted when compared to The Nursery. This one is more along the lines of its predecessor, but even The Devil’s Kiss had more going on than The Devil’s Heart, mainly because this one retreads a lot of stuff from the previous book. It’s really as much a rewrite as it is a sequel. That said, I was happy to see that Johnstone slightly whittled back on the “Satanists stink because they don’t bathe, but forget about that while I tell you how hot their women are” schtick. Then again, we are told that they “reek” at points, so it’s still there…just not as OTT as it was in the previous book. 

So what’s it about? Well, it’s a little over twenty years after The Devil’s Kiss, which as we’ll recall took place in the late 1950s. Don’t worry if you didn’t read that book, though, as Johnstone essentially refers to it throughout the entirety of this book and tells us what happened. And the characters from that book are back – even hero Sam Balon, who died in the denouement of the previous book, is back in this one, as a deus ex machina force who shows up to voice vague warnings, suggestions, and other such stuff, appearing as a “ghostly mist” and basically telling all of his old pals they’re going to die in nine days. 

This includes Jane Ann, the young woman Sam fell in love with in the previous book, who now is in her 40s, married to a doctor named Tony King (a Satanist, like everyone else in town), and mother to a 24 year old named Sam, who is the hero of this book, and also of course the son of Sam Balon – so, yes, “Sam” is the star of this book, but it’s not the same Sam as the previous book. 

Warming to his theme, Johnstone has another progeny of Sam Balon, Nydia…who is named after her mother, the Nydia of the previous book…who also appears in this book, but as “Roma!” So the Nydia of this book is not the same Nydia as the previous one…but the old Nydia is here, but has a different name. Not sure why Johnstone didn’t just name the new Nydia “Roma,” but whatever. I’d say he was going for some sort of thematic content, but if so he didn’t execute it very well. 

For reasons of laziness, the “Sam” I refer to in this review is the new Sam, who presumably will be the hero of the next two books in the series (The Devil’s Touch and The Devil’s Cat). He’s basically the same as the previous version, with the exception that this one, obviously, is too young to have fought in Korea. But he’s a former Ranger and saw a lot of action around the globe; unlike his dad, he’s not a minister, but he’s plumb curious about Christianity. 

Then there’s Nydia, a raven-haired beauty like her mom…who, we’ll recall, is an ancient witch who has been granted immortal beauty by the devil and who spent the entire previous book trying (and succeeding) to bed Sam Balon. Well for the past 20 some years she’s hooked up with another immortal black magician, Falcon (who replaces the previous book’s character Black – but don’t worry, there’s another Black in this one), and they have a big estate up in the wilds of French Canada. Unlike her mom, this Nydia is not only a sort of good two-shoes, but a virgin to boot. 

Sam and Nydia meet each other in the first pages; Sam is visiting French Canada with his army pal, Black…yep, same name as the character in the previous book, but this Black is Nydia’s brother, and also the son of Sam Balon and Roma (ie the old Nydia). These characters all basically repeat the scenarios the previous versions of the characters experienced in The Devil’s Kiss. And meanwhile the survivors from the previous book, still living in Whitfield, also encounter the same tribulations as in the previous book, to a lesser extent – for the most part, the Whitfield characters only appear infrequently, and, you guessed it, their appearances are relegated to, “How much longer until the town is wiped out and we die?” 

The Satanists here are typical of those in Johnstone’s other novels; only in the Whitfield scenes do we see a few of the cultists, and they lack the sodomitic fervor of the Satanic reprobates in The Nursery. But despite which the cult members are worse than Satan himself – for, whether unintentionally or not, Johnstone gives us a Lucifer who is prone to yell in frustration, “Can’t I make a joke?” before huffing and puffing about the Almighty. 

Curiously, Satan and God are supporting characters in The Devil’s Heart, and there are several scenes where they will argue with each other. But the thing is, both figures are reduced in their appearances; Satan, as mentioned, comes off like a pompous blowhard, and God comes off as vague and absent-minded. It’s very bizarre, because Johnstone’s depictions of the figures do not correllate with the figures as they appear to their followers – the vague-minded God demands unwilling obedience from his flock, and Satan demands torture and vile acts from his (though, despite us often being reminded that it’s “acceptable to Satan,” the devil isn’t very crazy about homosexuality). 

The God-Satan arguments are just another way for Johstone to pad the pages. Satan insists that God made a promise back in the first volume that Whitfield could become Satan’s one day, but here God tells the devil that the place will be wiped out in nine days. “My team against yours,” Satan challenges, which should be all the indication you need that this isn’t Milton. And yet it seems evident given the goofiness of these exchanges that William Johnstone is not taking the book or himself seriously – he pulled the same trick in Wolfsbane. 

If you look at The Devil’s Heart as an intentional comedy, it’s a great success. For one, despite being a ghost, Sam Balon is able to interract with people and even write them letters; there’s a hilarious bit where he sends his son a handrwitten note from beyond, in which Sam Balon states that “it’s difficult for me to write,” and then goes on to write a four-page letter! 

This extends to the prose style, which trades off between actual quality writing and clunkers like, “Her ears had been listening” and “The feeling of foreboding suddenly became much more intense.” Or even, “Utilizing a hand-held handy-talky.” What’s weird is that there are flashes of actual introspection amid the banality, but Johnstone never sees it all the way through, either due to lack of awareness or lack of ability. Or, perhaps, lack of care – it’s debatable how much he cared for the horror genre. 

And you know how in horror novels where people take forever to realize they’re in a horror novel? Johnstone takes that conceit and runs with it for the entire friggin’ book…folks, from the get-go Sam and Nydia are having encounters with the beyond, from Sam receiving ghostly visits and messages from his father (and even the archangel Michael), and Nydia coming to grips with both her mental powers and the fact that her mom is an ancient witch…and despite this, the two continue wondering “How did that happen??” throughout the damn book!! Or worse yet, each of them will get divine flashes of knowledge – which is to say deus ex machina exposition – and then they’ll be like, “I won’t even ask how I knew that.” 

Really, it’s laughable given how stupid it is. And given the sophomoric nature of God and the devil, one wonders what these two are even fighting for! To his credit, Johnstone has the Satanic figureheads Roma and Falcon asking these very same things…but any profundities are glossed over quickly as soon thereafter we’ll have Falcon ramming his “inhumanly large” dick into some unwilling female, or Roma will be conspiring to bed Sam so she can sire a demon child through him, even though Roma knows the birthing of the demon will kill her. Hey, maybe this is where Danzig got the idea for the Samhain song “The Birthing!” 

Another Johnstone schtick is to have characters act polite and normal to each other, while secretly hating each other or knowing they are divinely-opposed enemies…yet pretending that nothing amiss is going on. This happens a lot in The Devil’s Heart, particularly with Sam being cordial with Roma while thinking “evil bitch!” to himself and the like. And Roma being nice and friendly while wondering, “I wonder if he has his father’s cock?” (Of course she eventually discovers that he does!) This is all well and good, but Johnstone does it for like the entire novel – people pretending everything’s normal to one another and questioning how and why all these strange things are happening, even though they know they’re in the middle of a war between God and the devil and are on opposite sides. 

Oh, and not content with Roma and Falcon being immortal black magicians, they’re also vampires! This isn’t even followed through on, other than either of them randomly displaying their fangs and drinking some blood. This also raises the question of how Roma could give birth to Black and Nydia – and, indeed, why Nydia is of a different age than Sam if she was also conceived by Sam Balon – but Johnstone as ever doesn’t concern himself with the partticulars. 

There are periodic sequences that recall the wildness of The Nursery, which by the way is probably my favorite horror novel, if only due to how wild and depraved it is. Especially a bit where Sam and Nydia with her “full breasts” get it on, in full-on sleaze detail, Sam taking his half-sister’s virginity…but then after they’re constantly plagued with doubt, that they’ve sinned in some way…leading to a crazy bit where Satan intervenes as a test and makes ‘em super horny for each other, complete with Nydia fondling herself as she pleads for Sam to take her, and Sam screaming, “Fight it!” 

But then there is grimness as well, and out of the blue stuff at that – like when Falcon rapes Nydia (off-page), after which Sam makes love to her but has to be gentle because she “hurts.” This is understandable, given that we’re often informed of how inhumanly large Falcon’s dick is. There’s also a lot of grimness in the finale, in which Jane Ann endures the fate she’s been awaiting the entire novel – frequent, constant scenes of the ghostly Sam Balon telling her that her end will be violent – and she’s raped by all and sundry in the town, multiple times, and then crucified. Again, absolutely no reason is given for why Jane Ann has to so suffer for her own (and Sam Balon’s) salvation, given how goofy and unserious God is. Imagine a soldier going off to die in a war that Kamala Harris started, and one might understand the pointlessness of the sacrifice.  

We get that recurring bit of “God’s Warrior” kicking ass on full-auto, but it’s muted compared to The Devil’s Kiss; though Sam uses his dad’s gun, a Tommy subgun, which is “mysteriously” left for him in his room. Cue another of those “How did that get there?” conversations between the constantly-befuddled Sam and Nydia. 

Speaking of our heroes, the novel ends with Sam acting as their minister, just as his father married himself to Jane Ann (again, the book basically retreads its predescessor throughout), and also Nydia is pregnant – but the question is whether it will be Sam’s child or a demon child from Falcon. After stalling for the entire novel, Johnstone brings in a ticking clock finale where Sam’s seed must beat Falcon’s seed, before it’s too late. 

Humorously, Johnstone has stalled for so long that he rushes through the stuff he’s been promising for the entire friggin’ book; he so runs out of time that the old folks from The Devil’s Kiss, the ones who stayed in Whitfield and are told in the opening of this book that they’ll die in nine days…well, their entire fate is summarily rushed through, and Jane Ann’s happens off-page, though we see her in the afterlife with Sam. A scene which, despite it all, actually succeeded in bringing a tear to my eye, as did the off-hand comment that God, after Jane Ann has suffered and still demands to forgive her torturers, knows that “He had chosen well.”

Johnstone ends on a cliffhanger, with a normal baby born to Sam and Nydia, but meanwhile an eleven year-old girl they’ve saved from Satanic sodomy (Janet) is an undercover demon or somesuch, and who knows what might happen next. The story continues in The Devil’s Touch, which I’ll read a lot sooner than it took me to read this one. 

Overall, The Devil’s Heart moved fairly well for its near 400 pages, despite its constant stalling…like a Pavlov’s Dog, I kept reading for another dose of sleaze and perversion, and while the book never reached the heights (or depths) of The Nursery, or even The Devil’s Kiss, it kept me entertained, and it made me want to read the following installment.

The Devil's Kiss (Devil's series #1)

The Devil's Kiss, by William W. Johnstone
No month stated, 1980  Zebra Books

Apparently William W. Johnstone devoted himself to writing for ten years before he finally got published, but reading The Devil’s Kiss you’d think it was more like ten minutes, and that’s with frequent breaks. But what do I know, because this, Johnstone’s first published novel, initiated a stream of a few hundred books published over the next twenty-plus years, with Johnstone still getting published today, even though he’s been dead for over a decade.

This was also the start of an untitled, unnumbered series which apparently has the same plot over and over again: Satan comes to Smalltown, USA, and God’s chosen Warrior blows a bunch of his followers away after debating about it for a few hundred pages. This was of course the exact same plot of The Nursery, which wasn’t part of this “Devil’s series.” But then, it would appear that the majority of Johnstone’s horror novels feature this same plot. If the formula works, why change it? At least, I guess that was Johnstone’s feeling. Either that or he just didn’t give a damn.

Running to 448 pages, The Devil’s Kiss is mostly comprised of exposition-laden dialog exchanges, brief detailings of the sordid shenanigans of a group of Satanists, and out-of-nowhere flashes of sex and/or sadism. Unlike The Nursery it takes a good long time to get going, and it isn’t nearly as over-the-top or trashy as that later masterpiece. But like The Nursery it’s heavier on telling than showing, with a gruff protagonist who acts almost like a reporter, going around his podunk town and basically interviewing every character he meets, with the reader treated to huge dollops of Christian Right sermonizing.

One difference is that The Devil’s Kiss takes place in 1958, but other than occasional mentions of the Korean War or “that new rock and roll music,” the novel could just as easily take place in 1980. What I mean to say is, there’s not really any attempt at capturing the styles of the period; our hero, Reverend Sam Balon, even sports “longish” hair, has tattoos, and acts in every way like the protagonist of a ‘70s or ‘80s novel. But he is a preacher, and here is the biggest drawback so far as The Devil’s Kiss is concerned, when compared to The Nursery; we must read as our reverend of a hero constantly berates himself for his “unChristianly thoughts” and the like. At times it’s almost like a burlier Ned Flanders with a gun.

But Sam, whose last name sounds a whole lot like “Bolan,” was part of the experimental UNPIK detachment in Korea, which we’re informed eventually became the Special Forces. In a vaguely-described backstory we learn that he came here to smalltown Whitfield, Nebraska at the behest of his super-hot wife, Michelle, who eagerly demanded that Sam take this particular parsonage from the list that was offered to him. But over the past few months Sam has noticed a darkness seeping into the little hamlet of Whitfield; in particular church attendance has been dropping across the full Judeo-Christian spectrum (there’s even a synagogue in this supposedly-small town!).

Yes friends, the rapid decline of church attendance is a huge concern of The Devil’s Kiss. In fact it gets even more narrative space and character concern than the murder of the two teens which opens the novel. There’s a fenced-off, notorious woodlands area of the town called Tyson’s Lake, and these kids cross over it one spring night to screw and whatnot, only to find themselves attacked by these sub-werewolves which are referred to as Beasts. They make a gory mess of the boy and intend to use the girl as a “breeder,” but she escapes, finds Sheriff Walter Addison, and tells him what happened…only for the sheriff and his deputies to take turns raping her before throwing her back over the fence to the Beasts!

A few months later and the disappearance of the kids has been brushed under the carpet. Sam begins the first of his reporter-like methods by asking the local police chief about it. Sam will spend the first 300 or so pages of the book driving around Whitfield and engaging various characters in incredibly long, drawn-out conversations. I thought Johnstone told more than he showed in The Nursery, but that was nothing compared to this! Honestly, the reader must be prepared to endure back-to-back sequences where Sam will sit down with some other preacher or priest or gun store owner and engage him in about twenty pages of deep conversation. Repetition is rife.

Another difference with this volume is that Johnstone doesn’t dwell as much on the local Satanists, who were much more to the fore in The Nursery. We only get a few brief cutover scenes to them; they’re lead by Black Wilder, ostensibly the chief professor behind “The Digging,” in which an ancient sculpture is being dug up near Tyson’s Lake. But Wilder is in reality the devil’s agent and is thousands of years old. He has brought with him his minions, and has turned basically the entire town over to the devil, save for a handful – we later learn that there are only 14 Christians left in the population of 2,500. The horror!!

One of Wilder’s top accomplices is none other than Michelle Balon, yet here Johnstone, who is so overly-detailed about trivial stuff, mysteriously drops the ball. I mean, he informs us halfway through the book that Michelle too is ancient, hundreds of years old…yet by this point Sam has learned of “the Mark of the Devil,” which states that if one is touched by the devil or one of the devil’s followers, that person is forever lost. Hence Sam keeps his wife from kissing him or touching him, etc. But, uh, if she’s a few hundred years old, and married Sam because she knew he’d one day be God’s Chosen Warrior (an actual Johnstone title), then hasn’t she already touched him?? Like many times?

Another thing I didn’t like about the Satanists in this one is that Johnstone stresses how dirty and smelly they are; we’re informed over and over again of the stench of Michelle’s room (she long ago moved out of the master bedroom), and when the Satanists get together for a Black Mass Johnstone writes of the “unHoly” smell of their unwashed bodies. I don’t seem to recall any of this in The Nursery; maybe Johnstone wisely realized that overhyping the stench of his otherwise super-hot Satanic chicks sort of ruined the escapist nature of it all. And besides, wasn’t it the pious Christians of the Dark Ages who thought bathing was a sin and thus gloried in their own funk?

But Sam’s sure that Michelle has gone over to the other side, which makes his growing feelings for hotstuff local blonde Jane Ann Burke all the easier to “endure.” For here’s all the “Sam berated himself for his thoughts” stuff I mentioned above; Jane Ann is good and horny for the preacher, and Sam increasingly feels the same for her, but keeps chastizing himself for this due to his being married and being a preacher and all. He’s the first person Jane Ann calls when some deputies try to smash in her door and rape her, though. Sam insists she move in with gun store owner Chester and his wife, and then returns to his impromptu interviews with the other Christians in Whitfield.

Two of the elder preachers in town, Reverend Lucas and Father Dubois, actually fought the devil years before, and they impart their wisdom to Sam and his reporter friend Wade (as well as Miles the Jew, whom Johnstone assures us is okay even though he isn’t Christian) in one of the longer conversation sequences. Here’s where Sam learns, about 200 pages in, that he’s likely been chosen to be God’s Warrior, and his mission will be to KILL EVERYONE. This in itself is hilarious, as Sam instinctively knows that he should not try to save any of the Satanists, that death is the only option for them. Kind of flies in the face of the entire concept of Christianity – wouldn’t a true Christian try to save their souls?

But nope, the only thing to do is load up on guns and ammo. (Actually, if history’s any indication, that is in fact a valid Christian response!) There’s a goofily maudlin scene where Sam and the others exchange crosses with Dubois and Lucas (they even give one to Miles the Jew!!); you can almost hear the saccharine choir on the soundtrack. Now it’s killin’ time! Oh wait, no it isn’t…we still have another 250 or so pages to go. No, it’s actually time for more discussion and impromptu interviews. Oh, and Sam trades in his car for a pickup truck. Humorously enough the used car salesman is also one of the last Christians in Whitfield.

All too infrequently Johnstone will cut over to Black Wilder and his fellow devil worshippers. We get a Black Mass sort of deal where they have a big ceremony in the fields at night, orgying and whatnot, culminating in a teenaged virgin (who refused to join them) being trussed up on a cross and gutted by Nydia, the raven-haired beauty who serves as Wilder’s chief aide. But again the unholy eroticism is ruined by the focus on the unwashed, smelly bodies of the Satanists. Also this time Johnstone doesn’t dwell on graphic sexual description, as in The Nursery. We’re just informed that lots of screwin’ occurs, including, gasp, homosexual stuff, which is the biggest sin so far as the still-Christian locals are concerned.

The hypocrisy of Johnstone’s vision is laughable; throughout the novel Sam condemns the devil-worshippers, or “Them,” as he soon calls them, because “[their] god says hate Christians.” And yet, Sam himself hates the devil worshippers so much that he relishes the opportunity to murder them: man, woman, and child. There is no attempt at mercy or salvation; even though he learns that the residents of Whitfield are under mind control, and perhaps not fully responsible for the evil beings they are becoming, Sam has no interest in saving them. Indeed, God basically tells him through his subconscious to forget about it. And even in death they won’t be saved; they’re going straight to hell.

Also of note is Johnstone’s view of women.  I don’t want to be the cliched modern reviewer who whines about “misogyny” and the like in old pulp fiction. Actually I think these now-outdated sentiments are part of the charm of these old books. But good grief Johnstone goes way beyond that and into a sort of Cro-Magnon realm; I lost track of the number of times Jane Ann or one of the other Christian women would sit quietly while Sam and the men were talking, only to finally get up and say, “I’ll go make us some sandwiches.”

Interesting then that the women are much more visible and important in the world of the devil worshippers. Nydia as mentioned is Black Wilder’s chief aide and takes central stage in the midnight ceremonies, sacrificing victims and lusting after new male (or female) conquests. Johnstone doesn’t outright state it, but it’s obvious that, per his skewed reasoning, this female empowerment is also part of what makes the Satanists so evil and so against God’s will. To prove this there comes a scene midway through where Sam finally attempts to do something about Michelle; finding her masturbating in her foul-smelling room, he pulls her into the shower and then calls over Father Dubois for an excorcism.

Bringing to mind the much superior (and much trashier) scene in The Nursery where the sodomy-lovin’ teenaged gal was called back to Jesus, here we have a similar sequence where a nude Michelle, tied down to Sam’s bed, curses God and spits at Sam and Dubois as they try to save her. But forget it – she’s too far gone, practically a vampire. Or something. Johnstone is vague, but Father Dubois, who has suddenly become Sam’s spiritual warfare advisor, states that the only option is a stake to the heart! After which they dump her corpse over the fence at Tyson’s Lake for the Beasts to eat.

This of course leads to more talking. Even when Sam, Chester, and Wade take up guns and make a sortie over the Tyson Lake fence, even there they engage in a long conversation. Here Johnstone just pulls out any idle thought from his head; we’re informed, for example, that there’s a nearby asylum which is filled with mutants, the radiation-twisted freaks of some nuclear test ten years ago. Sam and his buddies then shoot a few Beasts and talk about it. Then they go home and talk about it with the rest of their companions.

Then Sam finally decides to screw Jane Ann, right out in “the cheap showiness of nature,” to quote Rev. Lovejoy, and then what the hell, he officiates their own impromptu marriage. Around about this time Sam has suddenly started to realize he will die in the conflict, but his child will continue the war against the devil(?!). This seemingly spur-of-the-moment decision on Johnstone’s part comes increasingly to the fore in the narrative. But anyway he and Jane Ann have to be married as part of this last-moment prophecy, or something.

The final 200+ pages are given over to a days-long battle Sam and his followers wage against the devil worshippers of Fork County, which has been magically segregated from the rest of the world. There are many and frequent scenes of Sam gunning down Beasts and human worshippers with his Thompson submachine gun, Chester blasting away at his side with a Greaser. Johnstone doesn’t get very outrageous with the gore, though, and these “action” scenes get boring after a while, as there’s no variety to them. The Beasts and Satanists just rush pell-mell at Sam and his followers, who gun them down, and then mop up the survivors.

Johnstone loses track of all the stuff he’s spent a few hundred pages setting up…those asylum mutants, for example, show up and are anticlimactically blown away within a single paragraph! Long-time Whitfield residents are summarily killed by Sam and his cronies, and though Sam et all are shocked we readers have no idea who these characters are in the first place. Much better are the close-quarters moments where Sam will take a sharpened stake and go in some dark area to kill off one of the Undead, which are basically vampires. Johnstone has the glimmerings of some actual eerie stuff with murdered companions returning as zombie/vampires, but does nothing to capitalize on it.

As mentioned the “certainity” that Sam will die in the climax is further brought the fore, as well as a last-second development where hotstuff witch Nydia vows that she will sire a son through him. Johnstone, certain that he’ll get a contract for a sequel, introduces this concept that Sam will have a “good” son through Jane Ann and a “bad” son through Nydia, and they will fight each other thirty twenty-some years in the future. God unsurprisingly isn’t much help (he’s mysteriously absent whereas Satan is constantly beaming messages to his loyal followers), so Sam basically gives Jane Ann a goodbye kiss and goes off to meet his fate.

Johnstone doesn’t get as graphic in the infrequent sex scenes as he did in The Nursery, and for the Nydia/Sam encounter he doesn’t elaborate at all, yet ironically enough it features the best writing in the entire damn book. In fact Sam’s final moment has all the emotional power Johnstone has been trying to build over the entire endurance test of a novel, as Sam goes off to meet his God knowing somehow that he will have a son, a son that God will look over (which, judging at least from how the Christians are treated in this particular book, doesn’t really mean much).

In the end, Whitfield is in ruins, Sam and his companions having blasted most of it using handmade napalm (gasoline mixed with flour) and dynamite. Practically everyone is gunned down, the dozen Christians having killed a few thousand people. As for Black Wilder, he blithely gives in to his doom, having been ordered by Satan to give up, but Johnstone implies that the demon may return. Another potential return in the next volume would be a teenager named Jean, the only Satan worshipper who escapes Sam’s bloodbath; we’re informed that she eventually gets a job as a Government-sponsored psychiatrist (surely there’s yet another Johnstone-worldview message there).

Three years later Johnstone returned to the storyline with The Devil’s Heart, which brought events to the then-modern day, and apparently started off a series of four more books featuring Sam Jr. and his ceaseless battles against Satan. Once I have recovered sufficiently I will read it.

Finally, here’s a funny story Stephen Mertz told me, and with his permission I’d like to share it with the rest of you:

I met [William W. Johnstone] once. A biker buddy who enthusiastically collected his work once dragged me down to a book signing. Johnstone was on tour, promoting his Ashes series and he actually had two uniformed, armed off-duty cops with him, hired to stand in the background at the Hastings store as "security." (!?)

We chatted briefly and traded signed copies. I couldn't help myself. I nodded toward the cops. "What's this, Bill? You expecting the critics to show up?"

This brought a semblance of acknowledgement from a generally dour, guarded countenance.