Night Shift / Stephen King

Night Shift is a short story collection of Stephen King.
Stephen King is known mostly for his novels but he has published several short stories collections and Night Shift is the first and, I believe, the best.
The stories in Night Shift are among the finest horror stories I have read.
Some of the more familiar ones are: Children of the Corn which tells of a couple which stumbles into a town which is populated by a homicidal cult of children who had murdered all the adults in their town. Children of the Corn was made into a film which had several sequels.
The Ledge tells the story of a man who is forced by a gangster to walk a ledge around a building. Very terrifying. The Ledge was included in Cat's Eye which featured 3 Stephen King stories.
Quitters Inc. tells of a smoking rehab program which has gruesome incentives.
And the Lawnmower Man which was also made into a film though one which varied greatly from the story.
Overall a very fulfilling read. A must for horror fans.

Island / Richard Laymon

Another horror novel by Richard Laymon.

Island tells the story of a shipwrecked family, stranded on a seemingly deserted island after their yacht was blown up nearby. There are four women: Billie, Kimberley, Connie and Thelma and there are three men: Andrew, Keith and Rupert. Another man is Wesley who was aoard the yacht when it exploded (or so it would seem). Rupert is the hero of the novel which is written in the form of a journal which Rupert keeps.

On their first night there, Keith is murdered. They find him hung from a tree.

On the second day, Andrew is murdered, and Wesley turns out to be alive and the killer. He blew up the yacht to capture the whole family on the island. Thelma, Wesley's wife, cannot bear to see the others fight him, so she runs off and joins him after trying to wipe out Rupert.

At first, the survivors believe that Wesley is after money, because their family is rich, and killing them all would leave him as a sole heir. But as they realize that he goes for the men and leaves the women unscathed, they realize that his goal is much more sinister and twisted.

After a surprise attack in which Rupert is left for dead by Wesley and Thelma, he finds himself alone and searches the island for sign of the other three women.

He finds them imprisoned by Wesley and Thelma and kept for their psychotic pleasures.

Here the final battle between Rupert and the joint forces of Wesley and Thelma takes place.

Review:

Island is a terrific horror novel. It is graphic as are all of Laymon's novels and this one involves sexual depravity as well. It is not for the squeamish, for it filled with cruelty. But it is a very recommended read. It is fast paced, well written, with believable characters and well established dialogues. It is also damn fun to read.

One starnge thing in all of Laymon novels is the way in which women seem to recover from rape: as if at ease. That's about the only thing that I found wrong with the novel.

Bite / Richard Laymon

Bite tells the story of a guy called Sam. Sam is a regular guy leading a pretty mundane life when one night the love of his life whom he hadn't seen since high-school comes to his door wearing nothing but a robe. This is a pretty exciting turn of events as far as Sam is concerned but Cat (that's short for Cathrine) has a huge favor to ask of him. She tells him that over the last year she has been plagued by a vampire. This vampire, called Elliott out of all things, has been paying her nightly visits and sucking her blood as well as doing other things to her (rape mostly).
Cat asks Sam to come with her back to her house, hide in the closet and then kill Elliott with a stake through the heart when he dines on Cat.
At first Sam is skeptical to say the least, but he cannot stand to let this chance of getting Cat back into his life slip by, so he agrees.
And indeed, come midnight, he watches from the closet as Elliott swoops into Cat's bedroom in his black cape and starts to suck her blood.
Sam comes out of the closet with the stake in one hand and a mallet in the other and hammers into Elliott's back. The blow isn't sufficient to kill and Elliott lunges at him, biting him with steel fangs which he had placed on his own teeth. Cat finishes the job by driving the stake deeper into Elliott.
Sam and Cat decide to take Elliott to a deserted location and bury him.
They drive off towards the deserts of Nevada when they get a flat tire and have to get off the freeway. It is night and they stumble upon a man with long white hair who asks them for a ride. Since they don't know the way they agree and pick up Snow White (the hitchhiker's nickname). This turns out to be a bad decision as White is homicidal and once he gets wind that they are carrying a vampire in their trunk, he decides that he must have Elliott's body so he could remove the stake come nightfall and allow Elliott to turn him into a vampire and thus attain immortality.
Cat and Sam give him the slip in a roadside diner so White kidnaps a van with two inhabitants.
He follows Cat and Sam, and sends one of his hostages to inform them that they should follow him or else they will have the blood of the remaining hostage on their hands.
Reluctantly, Sam and Cat follow White to a secluded dserted mine where they have a final showdown with him and with his two hostages who turn out to be a menace in their own right.

Review:
I have read many Richard Laymon novels and this is one of the worst. The story is a bit farfetched, especially the ease in which Sam is persuaded to kill Elliott. The story is thin and ludicrous and bloody as hell without it serving the story at all. It is very readable but not as entertaining as Laymon's other novels.

The Afghan / Frederick Forsyth

The Afghan's hero is once again Mike Martin, British Special Forces veteran who has already starred in one of Forsyth's novels: The Fist of God (Which is also summarized in this blog).

When information of a pending Al-Qaeda attack reaches western intelligence, Martin is called back from retirement.

He is about to try to assume the identity of an Al-Qaeda operative who is detained by the Americans and try to infiltrate Al-Qaeda. The Afghan, Izmat Khan, is a Muslim zealot and a worshipper of Bin Laden. Martin knows him from when he served in Afghanistan and aided the local fighters against the Russains. He is fluent in Pasthun and Arabic and has an oriental appearance. He is also adept at the arabic and Muslim customs as he grew up in Iraq.

The Americans stage a release of Khan and Martin slips in as the terrorist. He manages to make contact with Al-Qaeda and is brought into a secret terror operation, though he is kept in the dark regarding the exact nature of it.

As Al-Qaeda plan and start to execute the worst terror attack in their history, Martin is faced with the realization that he will have to stop them alone.

Review: As with all of Forsyth's work, this is meticulously researched and presented. Again, Forsyth has mellowed somewhat over the years so this novel lacks the poignancy of his earlier work, but it is still a worthwhile read. Make sure to read The Fist of God first, though, so will know all the major characters.

Cell / Stephen King

Cell is an apocalyptic novel by Stephen King. On October 1, a computer program which will later be known as the Pulse is set loose through every cell-phone in the world. Anyone using a cell is immediately infected and becomes homicidely crazy. Violence is loosed as millions become savage maniacs and kill any who cross their path.

Those who understand that the phones should not be touched strive to survive against the tidal wave of violence. Clay Riddell, a graphic artist, is on a visit to Boston when the Pulse hits. He runs for his life and with other survivors he meets along the way makes his way out of Boston and heads for Maine where his wife and son live. He doesn't know whether they're alright or even sane, yet he has to go.

Over time, the people struck by the Pulse, the phoners evolve and develop telepathic abilities. They lack in hygiene and healt so lose many of their numbers, but they are so many to begin with that it matters very little. They also develop group consciousness and traevl in flocks. Clay and his friends must travel by night as the phoners rule by day.

They try to fight back, manage to blow up a single flock of a few hundred Phoners, but soon the Phoners' psychic abilities prove too much for active struggle. The Phoners lead the survivors to a place where they can "process" them: turn them into Phoners and complete the takeover of the Pulse. It is here that Clay knows he'll find his wife and son, though not in what condition. It is also here where the final chance for a showdown lies, if Clay and his friends will only know how to take it.

Wizard and Glass - The Dark Tower IV / Stephen King

In the beginning of Wizard and Glass, the fourth novel in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Roland's Ka-Tet (A band of destiny) finds itself on Blain the suicidal mono train. Blain plans to derail itself with them onboard unless they ask it a riddle it cannot solve. Roland rises to the challenge and tries to find a tough riddle for Blain but Blain solves them all one by one.
Roland gives up as his riddles run out and it is clear that Blain knows them all, yet Eddie comes up with the solution: Blain's weakness is questions of stupid nature such as why did the Chicken cross the street?
Blain's logical mind cannot stand such riddles and his circuits snap. It cannot solve the questions and it comes to a screeching stop at the end of the rail.
The Ka-Tet finds itself in another version of Topeka but this one has been struck by a plague. No one is left alive. This is reminiscent of Stephen King's The Stand, one of his monumental early novels.
In Topeka they stumble upon a thinny, which is an area in which reality has grown thin, another symptom of the Tower's weakening. The thinny is hungry for life and can cast a spell at those who come near it and swallow them whole. The Ka-Tet inquires as to how Roland knows about the thinny and indeed regarding his entire past, and Roland tells them the story of his adolescence.
Roland passed his manhood trial at fourteen the younger ever in Gilead, his home barony. After his trial, his father sends him and two of his friends to the barony of Mejis. This is done for fear that Marten, the man in black who has become Roland's mother's lover will kill him.
The Barony of Mejis is far barony in which no trouble is expected to befall Roland and his friends, Cuthbert and Alain. But trouble is there and in abundance, for Mejis has a lot of oil, and John Farson, Gilead's nemesis has discovered how to use it to fuel the ancient weapons of the Old People (Tanks of sorts). He had also sent for safe keeping one of the wizard's glasses: orbs of immense magical power. Mejis also has a thinny.
When Roland comes into Mejis he runs into Susan Delgado, a beautiful girl. The two fall intensely in love, yet she has been promised to be the mayor of Mejis's second wife.
The two meet continually in secret and Roland loves for the first and last time.
In Mejis agents of Farson who are in charge of the Wizard's Glass and the oil plot seize Roland and his friends and jail them. They intend to burn them alive in an ancient festival which is held in Mejis as they blame them as traitors who are working for Farson. Yet Susan aided by a retarded boy named Sheemie help them to escape and they set a trap for Farson's men, killing many and stealing the Wizard's Glass and drawing many more into the thinny which engulfs them. They also set fire to the oil field in Mejis, thus securing that Farson will not be able to tap into it again.
But Susan is killed. The town people catch her and she is burned alive. What is most troubling is that Roland sees his destiny within the Glass and knows that he must desert Susan for the Tower.
He heads back to Gilead with his friends.
When the story finishes, Roland and his Ka-Tet come upon a glass palace which is reminiscent of the wizard of Oz's. In it they come upon the man in black, Walter (also Marten) and nearly kill him. There another one of Roland's crimes is revealed: when he returned from Mejis, he was induced by magic to shoot his own mother. He is a matricide. The lengths to which Roland's quest has taken him, the deaths of his loved ones, is the series' underlying tragedy.

In my view this is the finest novel of the dark tower among the seven. It is beautifully written, suspenseful and touching. A must read.

The Plot Against America / Philip Roth

The Plot Against America is a novel by acclaimed author, Philip Roth, is a fictinalized historical work. The novel takes place at the time of WWII in the United States and its theme is that american aviator Charles Lindberg decides to run for president in the 1940 election vs. Franklin Delano Rosevelt.

Lindberg, a national hero, as he was the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic ocean, receives the nomination of the Republican Party. Lindberg is also an antisemite and an isolationist, i.e., is against the idea the theUnited States should join WWII against Germany.

Here Roth mixes fiction an actual history in an anviable way. Lindberg was indeed a rabid antisemite and a staunch isolationist. He also received a medal by the Third Reich. The possibility of Lindberg running for president was indeed plausible in the 1930's and Roth gets the reader to think of what might had happened had he indeed decided to run.

Roth, a Jewish author, tells the story through the eyes of a Jewish boy of a poor family (he himself, for the boy's name is Phil). In it he depicts the horror of the Jews at the possibility of Lindberg's election and the way inch by inch they feel the way american society alienates them and threaten their community.

The novel makes plain the day to day fear of a minority which is afraid for its very life and the way dormant antisemitism can awaken. Lindberg does win the national elections and the Republicans assume power. Britain is left with fighting the Germans on its own, with Russia joining in 1941, but America stays out of it.

Tales of the massacre of Jews in Europe do little to sway the mind of Lindberg who even summons the German foreign minister to the White House, which the Jews take as a sign of the fascism that Lindberg is planning for America. National programs are decreed whose aim is to assist in the assimilation of the Jewish population in the overall american one. Jewish communities are broken up and Jews are resettled.

Roth shows how easy it can be to start the dehumanizing process of a religion and a minority while keeping a liberal and benevolent face. The novel shows how Phil's father loses his job as a result of his denomination and how his brother is indocrinated by the new educational programs of Lindberg's administration.

Without telling how the book ends, I will say that this is a must read for anyone who wants to see how awful rascism can become, how sophisticated a face it can assume, and how much the public needs to be on guard to thwart it.