William Morrow

THE BLACK PHONE: STORIES (20th CENTURY GHOSTS) by Joe Hill

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The Black Phone: Stories
(20th Century Ghosts)
By Joe Hill
William Morrow & Company — December 2021
ISBN: 9780063215139 — Paperback — 480 pp.

First published in 2005 as 20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill’s debut collection of sixteen short stories has been reprinted and rebranded as The Black Phone to coincide with another short story found within, now adapted into a film by Blumhouse Productions and directed by Scott Derrickson of the original Doctor Strange film. Blumhouse debuted the film at a festival in September 2021, with Universal slating it for broad release in January of this year. The film tie-in version of the collection therefore released just prior, in December. However, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic pushed the film into February, and then ultimately until now, June 2022. With the film now finally released to strong reviews, it seemed the right time for covering this copy I received. There is currently a new Goodreads giveaway for the collection as well, for anyone interested in winning a copy.

Of all the stories found within, “20th Century Ghosts” works the best as a representative title for the whole collection. “That Black Phone”, not so much. But, the latter does make some sense for adaptation into a film. It’s the most conventional horror story within the collection, with a plot that calls to mind real-life, serial-killer horrors and fictionalized retellings alike. And the characters of “The Black Phone” are closest to what one might find in something by Hill’s father, Stephen King.

The story of “The Black Phone is very simple. A young teen is abducted off the street by a fat man who works as a clown. The man gets the boy close to his van by drawing his attention after clumsily ‘losing’ a cluster of black helium-filled balloons from his van. The boy awakens locked in a basement, with only an old-style rotary phone hanging from the bare walls. The man seems on edge, both from keeping the abducted boy hidden in his basement, and from hallucinations of the phone ringing. But that can’t be possible. The phone doesn’t work. They boy hears the phone ring himself, and when he answers he hears the voice of one of the man’s past victims, a voice offering encouragement and the hope of escape.

Even with how well this general plot fits the mold of standard horror film plots, it remains unclear reading the few pages of “The Black Phone” of how it could be effectively expanded into a full length movie. And Ethan Hawke is a far, far cry from descriptions of the abductor in the short story. The short story is good, but its clear that the film is taking the basic plot and some visual elements of the story to craft something more complex, and perhaps more interesting, though also more derivative of King’s work in the opinions of some reviews I’ve read.

Though “The Black Phone” is good, other stories in this collection are clearly superior, with more originality and emotional resonance. Many fall into the category of horror, some simply the darker side of fantasy, and one of the best is actually on the conventional side of literature, and sweet. Hill also employs darkness and horror with a varying touch. Some stories, like “The Black Phone” are full-on horror from start to finish, while others only give a small dose of dread or terror, even just subtly implied.

And that calls to mind the stylistic tendency that does seem to unite most (if not all) the sixteen stories in the collection: Hill’s penchant for leaving things implied, for reader’s to form a complete image of their own, constructed from the pieces he provides. For some casual readers this could make the stories here feel unfinished, cut-off just when a clearly stated resolution or final image should be divulged. Hill’s stories typically lack any sort of coda, and even leave off directly telling the reader how things ‘conclude’.

However, this should not equate to the stories being interpreted as ‘unfinished’. Hill does provide plenty of details and contexts on how things will likely proceed from the moment the text of the story stops. His literary endings easily segue into film-like images that should spool through the reader’s mind. Often those ending moments also involve that little injection of horror, in a frightening realization and grim interpretation of where the story really has gone, despite expectations and assumptions.

The highlights of this collection for me were “20th Century Ghosts”, “Pop Art”, “You Will Hear the Locust Sing”, “Abraham’s Boys”, “Dead-Wood”, and “Voluntary Committal”. The last of these is a novella that concludes the main collection. I’ve written before how I dislike novellas, with their long length, at the end of things when my instincts call for a winding down. Despite this, the slow build unease of the plot and its understated horror were a success. “Dead-Wood” is on the opposite end of the length spectrum: a flash fiction done very well, touching on an aspect of ghosts I’ve often wondered about as a biologist. “Abraham’s Boys”, taken from an anthology on Van Helsing, is a powerful take on the effects of horror and trauma on the Dracula character, and his family, well after the novel concludes. It looks at the absolute violence and horror that define that character traditionally considered heroic and ‘good’. “You Will Hear the Locust Sing” is a wonderful creature horror-Kafkaesque mash-up, with bits of gore and humor alike. “Pop Art” is a touching story of friendship that shows Hill has talent well beyond the fields of horror genre tradition (which, interestingly, father King has often showed as well with works like “Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption”.) Finally, “20th Century Ghosts” is a well done ghost story of longing and memory – not ghosts for terror – that also displays a nostalgic love for the ‘ghost’ of cinema past.

Besides these stories, “Best New Horror”, the aforementioned “The Black Phone”, and “The Last Breath” were solid tales with a lot going for them, but also limitations. Like “The Black Phone”, “Best New Horror” felt very familiar, and predictable. Featuring a writer protagonist also seemed too well worn in this genre of horror, or any. Nonetheless, it’s still an entertaining horror read. “The Last Breath” has great atmosphere and is a fun idea, but falters at the end with predictable inevitability. It’s a case where Hill could have (and probably should have) ended it sooner, leaving the obvious conclusion unspoken and implied alone.

“In the Rundown”, “The Cape”, “The Widow’s Breakfast”, “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead”, and “My Father’s Mask” all failed to really captivate me, though they had moments of inspired brilliance (“The Cape”) or a fun foundation from horror geekdom (“Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead”).

If you are counting along, that’s fifteen stories, and I mentioned at the start that this a collection of sixteen. Don’t skip the acknowledgements, because Hill places a meta flash fiction within, “Scheherazade’s Typewriter” like a hidden CD bonus track. It’s worth the quick read.

While all the stories of The Black Phone (20th Century Ghosts) may not connect for readers, short horror fiction fans should find several tales within that make it worth reading, particularly when Hill’s general style works for personal tastes. If you only know of Hill vaguely and indirectly through the Blumhouse The Black Phone movie, or another of his numerous TV/film adaptations (and enjoyed any of those) you should definitely give his writing a look.

THE MURDER RULE by Dervla McTiernan

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The Murder Rule
By Dervla McTiernan
William Morrow — May 2022
ISBN: 9780063042209 — Hardcover — 304 pp.

Hannah Rokeby reads an article in the popular press about The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia and the founder behind it, attorney/professor Rob Parekh. A program set in place to check and correct imbalances in the US legal system, The Innocence Project fights to prevent or overturn wrongful convictions and related injustices. But, Hannah is a bit skeptical about Parekh’s motivations, and she is particularly alarmed to see the project’s current poster case: fighting for the release of Michael Dandridge, a man convicted of rape and murder. Parekh and his team seem convinced of Dandridge’s innocence. But Hannah is aware of a relevant past history that no one at the Innocence Project could possibly know. Hannah knows this man is a monster.

As the novel opens, Hannah is working on her first steps of an elaborate plan to earn a coveted spot with the ace team of students working closest to Parekh on the high-profile Dandridge case. She will do anything that is needed to achieve that. And then she will destroy any hope that Dandridge has of seeing freedom.

McTiernan writes this page-turning legal thriller in a way that slowly reveals Hannah’s plans and motivations. A diary kept by her mother serves as the catalyst for Hannah’s radical actions, and the reader sees the contents of these pages in chronological order interspersed with chapters from Hannah’s point-of-view. Written when her mother was around the age Hannah now is, the diary testifies to how her mother’s life became debilitated and turned to alcohol to give Hannah the familial life she now has.

I don’t want to reveal more about the plot to avoid the surprises of a good mystery/thriller, but I can talk a little bit more about the central theme of the novel and why it resonated for me. The Murder Rule is all about story, what we choose to believe as the truth, and what we view with skepticism. Having just sat on a jury in a murder trial myself (even as I read this novel), I can’t think of any considerations more important than these within the law, justice, and punishment. Hannah herself sums up the human tendency to run with assumptions and accept false narratives:

“We, I mean people, all of us, we love a story. We want a hero. We want a bad guy. We want a beginning, a middle, and an end. And life is more complicated than that but we love it when we’re served up a story and sometimes if we don’t get it, we make it for ourselves. We believe only the facts that suit the story we like and we ignore everything else.”

The Murder Rule reveals how true this is, in ways unexpected for all of its characters, both primary and secondary. McTiernan actually plays with this from the very opening of the novel, which is presented as an email exchange between Hannah and Parekh. The text of those emails, with no other context, heavily implies that Parekh is guilty of sexual misconduct, and other offenses linked to that. However, once Hannah and Parekh meet we find additional information that this is actually not the case. We didn’t have the whole story yet to really make the correct judgement.

Hannah’s personality is an aspect that I adored about the novel. Though extreme and misguided in ways that could lead many readers to find her unsympathetic or dislikable, I found traits of her character to show, at heart, a tenacity for justice and loyalty. There is a complexity here of someone doing horrible things, for the right reason – or the utterly wrong reason, that shows the complexities and possible errancy of human decisions. Now, consider that ordinary people make exactly such decisions every single day in court rooms when deciding the fate of other people. This complexity is the heart of the Innocence Project in the novel (and the real one in life.) Still not perfect, it’s an added check to a generally imperfect system.

The title of the novel is another layer of complexity to what otherwise might be read as a simplistic legal thriller. It refers to the Felony Murder Rule, a legal doctrine whose merits Hannah and another character discuss in the novel. How this doctrine relates to the plot of the novel is a little less obvious. Directly, I don’t know as it is. However, in its general sense as a matter of ‘transfer of intent’ it is most certainly relevant. The Murder Rule revolves around the delicate uncertainties of agency and intent in crime, not just murder, but broadly.

For reasons of plot, once the diary text by Hannah’s mother has been fully revealed, chapters stick to Hannah alone, with one glaring exception: a chapter near the close fo the novel written from the point-of-view of a male secondary character who works with Hannah on Parekh’s team for the Dandridge case. The consistency and pattern of the novel could have been aided by finding some way to work around this bit of plot that Hannah is not present for. It’s a minor point, but such architecture and consistency bears some aesthetic import for me at least.

The other negative thing I would have to say about the novel is that it is a sort of missed opportunity to get into the social justice that the Innocence Project and its ilk provide. The characters of the novel don’t really allow exploration of the political or sociological issues relevant to this topic at all. McTiernan could have delved into that more without sacrificing the deeper legal ethics she goes into generally or the entertainment of a well plotted and paced thriller.

Nonetheless, The Murder Rule provides a good amount for a diverse audience to chew on. It’s sure to be enjoyed by readers who are looking for an easy summer thriller to read in leisure, but it’s also a story whose deeper themes invite some optional introspection and consideration.

THE GODMOTHERS by Camille Aubray

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The Godmothers
By Camille Aubray
HarperLuxe — June 2021
ISBN: 9780063090279 — Paperback — 592 pp.

Greenwich Village, New York City, the 1930s. As war breaks out in distant Europe, a wealthy family of Italian Americans with business ties to the mafia works hard to ensure their continued success for themselves, and even more for their children. Gianni and Tessa have one daughter, Petrina, and three sons, Johnny, Frankie, and Mario; partnering them each with the right spouse becomes the immediate parental priority to facilitate their continued familial prosperity. However, the fashionable and intelligent Petrina has a marriage on the rocks, and she still hasn’t fully recovered from a potential scandal in her past that threatened the family’s stability.

Considerate and responsible eldest son Johnny has married naive Amie, a young French widow from upstate New York, who he helps after she has used a gun to end her abusive marriage to a bar owner. Fiery middle son Frankie marries the equally spirited Lucy, an Irish nurse who has prior experience standing up to members of organized crime. But for quiet and cerebral Mario, the doted-upon baby boy of the family, Tessa decides that he needs a good Italian woman from the old country, a woman who has not grown up with the influences of American culture. Tessa and Gianni arrange to bring a young woman named Filomena over for marriage to Mario. Outbreak of WWII in Italy and tragedy leads another girl to seize the opportunity to secretly come in her friend’s place, adopting Filomena’s name and identity.

The bulk of the novel deals with the history of this family from the 1930s through the 1950s. Chapters set in the 1980s frame each side of this story, featuring Nicole, who is learning all these hidden secrets of her family’s past from one of the four Godmothers. Aubray follows the opening bookend with chapters that separately introduce the pasts of each of the four women, with particular focus on Filomena. By the point of Filomena’s marriage to Mario, the singular path of the woman as part of the familial is followed. Their generation takes over more business operations with the death of Gianni and Tessa.

The gradual departure or loss of the men to illness or war gradually allow the women to take leadership more fully, making use of the survival skills they have each learned from their pasts, and their keen intellect. With strengths to complement one another, and ferociously protective of each other’s secrets, these Godmothers work together to separate their lives from dependence on crime and keep their children safe.

The basic feminist story in The Godmothers is solid. It’s a story of divestment from situations they have been born or married into while maintaining loyalty to ‘blood’. Establishing social independence alongside separation from criminal business ties that leave them vulnerable and at the mercy to immoral powers that they’ve all had personal prior experience with in some way.

Aubray’s construction of the novel is less perfect. The bookends to the story set in the 1980s are unnecessary, and even detrimental. The opening sets up expectations of really dark secrets and mystery that will have big implications for Nicole. There are some dark secrets and mysteries revealed in those days of the 1930s – 1950s. But from the point of view of decades later, they are all pretty unsurprising, and hardly scandalous to warrant panic for Nicole. If framed solely as learning more about her family it may have worked better at least (even if not needed). Instead it sets the novel up to be far more of a thriller and mystery than it ever is.

The other major issue with The Godmothers is that it becomes progressively less compelling as the read continues. The first half or so was engaging, but the plot soon settles into a lull of predictability, and the character developments among the women and their relationship stagnates into repetition of themes. Coupled with an anticlimactic end to the 1950s era story of the Godmothers gaining criminal independence, the fizzling of any story on the 1980s side of the history makes the final chapters of the novel more skippable than engaging.

Though Aubray writes well – if a bit melodramatically – and crafts interesting characters with a meaningful history, the structure of the novel and a second half of smooth-sailing against any remotely rough waters ends up dampening the initial joys of reading The Godmothers. Given the numerous mentions of the novel on “Best of the year/summer” lists and many enthusiastic reader responses, there are certainly readers out there who will enjoy this and not mind structural elements I found to not work.

For those who are interested in looking into The Godmothers further, there is currently a new Goodreads Giveaway running until April 26, 2022 to win a copy of the novel.

WILDALONE, by Krassi Zourkova

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Wildalone
By Krassi Zourkova
William Morrow – 6th January 2015
ISBN 9780062328021 – 384 Pages – Hardcover
Source: William Morrow, via Skiffy & Fanty

In case you missed it, my review of Wildalone appeared recently on Skiffy and Fanty.
“Talented pianist and bright student Thea Slavin leaves the familiar confines of family and her Bulgarian homeland for the opportunity of study at prestigious Princeton University in the United States. Compounding the normal cultural shocks of studying abroad in an unfamiliar land, Thea discovers that she has chosen to accept an opportunity from the same school her older sister attended years past, an era mired in family secrets. Thea learns that this sister mysteriously died while at Princeton, leaving a hole in her parent’s lives about which they refuse to speak…”
I also ran into the cover reveal for the Bulgarian edition the other day and I think it fits beautifully:
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Disclaimer: I received an advanced reading copy of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review that originally appeared at skiffyandfanty.com.

Ice Shear, by M.P. Cooley

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Ice Shear, by M.P. Cooley
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 0062300709
320 pages, hardcover
Expected Publication: 22nd July 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

This is a very impressive debut genre novel that I didn’t expect to enjoy quite so much. My initial expectations were somewhat low because so many of the elements of “Ice Shear” I would describe with the word ‘average’. The plot is suitably complex. The writing is straight-forward, though very descriptive, with realistically rendered dialogue. The protagonist seems like a regular woman. The pace is constant and the small town setting is well-rendered.

Together this makes an enjoyable police procedural read, a novel that is really good, but where nothing really screams out as being exceptionally unique, innovative, controversial, or profoundly insightful. So what sets it apart from any other mystery novel out there is it is so ‘average’? Why in my heart do I feel like this is a really successful novel that was well-worth reading?

I think the answer to those questions lie in just how effectively Cooley manages to take the ordinary and produce a tight, well-crafted mystery out of it where everything does feel satisfying without becoming dull and mundane. Most impressive to me is Cooley’s protagonist June, a former FBI-agent returned to her hometown to serve on the police force. June is deceptively simple, one of the most realistically rendered female characters I’ve come across. Here strengths and weakness are given subtly, and her personality is one of straight-forward perseverance, simply being a good investigator and human being. Relatable and likable, she is flawed and challenged, but she overcomes and the reader enjoys the experience of seeing how she does so.

Cooley also manages to put in just the right amount of ‘outside’ information and personal conflict outside of the main crime plot thread. You learn a bit about June’s past and her family and professional relationships, but readers aren’t pulled too far down any side-tracks that don’t have bearings on the novel itself. This leaves Cooley room to further develop the character in future novels, hopefully just as effectively.

Four Stars out of Five

The Sound of Broken Glass, by Deborah Crombie

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The Sound of Broken Glass,
by Deborah Crombie
Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James Series Book 15
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 0061990647
384 pages, hardcover
Published February 2014
Source: Goodreads First-Reads

Normally I don’t sign up to win books that are in a series because I try to use this to discover authors and works that I otherwise wouldn’t discover or read anytime soon. So if it’s a series, I probably haven’t read any of the others. Even if novels are supposed to be ‘stand-alone’ I’d much rather read them all, in order, or not bother reading any of them. This makes getting into mystery novels hard though. So I must’ve read the description for this and decided my interest was worth giving it a try. I’m glad that I did because it was an enjoyable book, but I’m not sure if it is a series that I’d rush to find more of over the others I have in queue.

The primary strength I see in “The Sound of Broken Glass” is atmosphere. Crombie’s characters each exude particular British regions or classes, and the city itself is used almost as a character in defining the roles of the others, their pasts and how those circumstances now collide in the present. These past events are conveyed through italicized, flashback, passages, rather than in-time. This method seems largely employed to keep the secrets of the mystery hidden to the investigators in the novel until the last possible moment. The reader therefore has a greater, though still very vague sense, of what lies behind the murders than the protagonist does. Yet despite revealing more to the reader, Crombie still keeps the mystery unsolved and identities unclear through red-herrings, convolutions, and reader mis-assumptions.

Thus, it stands an effective mystery. The downside as I saw it, was that the structure of the novel with its flashbacks takes away significantly from any procedural aspects. The case is ultimately unveiled not completely through the investigator’s skill, but rather in large part due to chance coincidences and shared acquaintances, well-crafted connections on the part of the author between her characters that leave the entire events partially artificial in feeling. Crombie also uses the story and its themes to try to wedge in side plots involving the protagonist and her family, all of which seem highly tangential and never actually brought to conclusion. I suspect these aspects of the story relate more to the overall series as opposed to the novel itself, highlighting that a series novel never can really be ‘stand-alone’.

Three Stars out of Five