When we originally set out on this road, I had no idea what the final outcome would be. But here it is … and even though much has happened, I still feel hugely honoured that anyone, let alone someone as talented as Helen, would take it on themselves to create an original painting based on any book of mine. I appreciate that my snapshot doesn’t really do the painting justice, but as Helen has recently sent through some notes outlining the main influences she took from the novel, I thought I’d get up close and a bit more personal with the picture, and relay these to you myself on video.
You’ll find that below, along with some short story news. In addition to that, because we’re again on the subject of mystery-thrillers but with an undercurrent of the arts, I’ll be reviewing THE DOLL-MASTER, another exquisite collection of shorts by that mistress of literary dark fiction, Joyce Carol Oates.
If you’re only here for the Oates review, shoot down to the lower end of today’s blogpost, where you’ll find it, as usual, in the Thrillers, Chillers section. If on the other hand, you haven’t yet had enough for my novel-to-painting chatter, stick around for …
I don’t want to repeat too much of my previous blogpost today, so I’ll keep this introduction short and sweet. You’ll hopefully recall that, last summer, a challenge was put to the Birmingham Art Zone to transform my crime novel of 2022, NEVER SEEN AGAIN, into a single canvas.
In my mind, this would be an artistic interpretation of the whole novel, rather than an alternative book-cover or an advertising poster, though in speaking to the artists interested in participating, I made no requirements at all. It was to be entirely up to them what they did (a little bit like the notes I send out to those writers who compete to appear in my TERROR TALES anthologies: “DO what you DO”).
You may ask why Birmingham was chosen instead of my native Northwest. Well, that’s because Birmingham’s Westside Business Improvement District, with whom I’ve become very friendly in recent years, were hugely supportive of the idea and threw it out to their local artists.
You’ll find that below, along with some short story news. In addition to that, because we’re again on the subject of mystery-thrillers but with an undercurrent of the arts, I’ll be reviewing THE DOLL-MASTER, another exquisite collection of shorts by that mistress of literary dark fiction, Joyce Carol Oates.
If you’re only here for the Oates review, shoot down to the lower end of today’s blogpost, where you’ll find it, as usual, in the Thrillers, Chillers section. If on the other hand, you haven’t yet had enough for my novel-to-painting chatter, stick around for …
All on canvas
I don’t want to repeat too much of my previous blogpost today, so I’ll keep this introduction short and sweet. You’ll hopefully recall that, last summer, a challenge was put to the Birmingham Art Zone to transform my crime novel of 2022, NEVER SEEN AGAIN, into a single canvas.
You may ask why Birmingham was chosen instead of my native Northwest. Well, that’s because Birmingham’s Westside Business Improvement District, with whom I’ve become very friendly in recent years, were hugely supportive of the idea and threw it out to their local artists.
The three painters who eventually undertook the challenge – Helen Roberts, the eventual winner, and runners-up, Helen Owen and Paula Gabb – did, frankly, an incredible job. Any one of their finished works could have taken first place.
Having pondered the winner for a couple of weeks now, all I can really say about why I chose this one over the others is because of the way the central figure in it, Jodie Martindale, immediately hooked me with those hauntingly beautiful eyes, and said: “Come and find me, please. I was kidnapped six years ago. No, we don’t know who by. Yes, I’ve never been seen or heard from since. But I’m still alive. So please, send someone to find me.”
But enough. Rather than keep waffling on via keyboard, here’s a video I shot once we’d got the painting framed, in which I present some of the info that was transferred over to me by Helen Roberts herself. A quick word of warning: if any of you haven’t read the novel yet, and are still hoping to, there may be one or two SPOILERS here, so it might be an idea to only watch this video when you’ve turned the final page.
So, there we go. Apologies for my slightly rough and ready approach and shoddy camerawork. I’m no expert at this sort of thing, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting. (One detail I’ve stupidly neglected to mention, is the pendant that Jodie is touching so delicately at her throat. That is the symbol of the United Nations Blue Heart campaign, which raises awareness around the globe about human trafficking. A beautiful touch of Helen’s own).
Short story updates
I have one or two other things to report as well, which I’m quite excited about.
Proof that my TERROR TALES anthology series is as strong as it ever was, if not stronger, has finally arrived in the form of a number of the stories included in last year’s TERROR TALES OF THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS gaining the attention of Ellen Datlow, that inestimable editor of the Best Horror of the Year series along with countless other high-end horror anthos.
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But the laurels don’t end there. Five other stories featuring in LOWLANDS have been singled out for special mention in Ellen’s annual longlist of the year’s best horror, which also appears in BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR 14.
They are: The Moss-Trooper by MW Craven, Drumglass Chapel by Reggie Oliver, Herders by Willie Meikle, Birds of Prey by SJI Holliday and The Fourth Presence by SA Rennie.
Now, all told, that’s a substantial chunk of TERROR TALES OF THE SCOTTISH LOWLANDS, I hope you’ll agree. And as editor of the series, I’m really delighted that we’re winning such acclaim. If you’d like to know what the TERROR TALES books are all about, you can always check them out for yourself … HERE.
Uncaged is a slightly unusual one for me in that it’s set in the distant past (a hint of future novels to come, perhaps?), at the height of the Roman Empire in fact, but its contents concern events that I trust will be familiar enough to put a thrill of fear even into the most modern bloodstream.
your attention to another short story of mine, No Such Place, which will appear next year in a the fantasy/horror anthology called THE OTHER SIDE OF NEVER. I think you can see for yourself that this one will contain dark stories inspired by the many legends surrounding Peter Pan. The editors in this case are the ever-energetic Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
by Joyce Carol Oates (2016)
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most revered authors working in America today, and the creator of a phenomenal body of work, which includes 58 novels, plus numerous plays, novellas and collections of short stories and poems. She’s also been the recipient of countless awards and honours and has five times been shortlisted for the Pullitzer Prize. Fortunately for those of us who prefer our fiction dark, Oates, while a keen advocate for social justice, often focusses on the grimmer aspects of life in her writing, and as such is a regular creator of high-quality horror and thriller literature
Fans of the short form are particularly well-served by Oates, whose eerie and mysterious tales have appeared regularly in magazines and anthologies, and as already stated, are often published in special single-author collections, all of which are worth checking out. The Doll-Master, which appeared in 2016, is only one such. Here is the blurb that graced its back cover:
Six terrifying tales to chill the blood from the unique imagination of Joyce Carol Oates.
A young boy plays with dolls instead of action figures. But as he grows older, his passion takes on a darker edge...
A white man shoots dead a black youth creating a media frenzy. But could it have been self-defense as he claims?
A nervous woman tries to escape her husband. He says he loves her, but she's convinced he wants to kill her...
These quietly lethal stories reveal the horrors that dwell within us all.
One of the most interesting aspects of Joyce Carole Oates’ writing in the darker genres – and we shouldn’t be surprised by this, because her remit goes much further afield than that – is her ability to spin scary stories that are a world away from the more conventional realms of ghosts, monsters, goblins and psychopaths. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s more than capable of straying into all these territories, especially the latter. But Joyce Carole Oates’ fiction is invariably set in the mundane realities of everyday folk.
Terrible things invariably happen, but usually in circumstances the majority of us would recognise: broken homes, dysfunctional families, impoverished neighbourhoods, the aberrant minds of people who are basically unable to cope. She doesn’t judge. You almost never get anyone who is evil for evil’s sake. Likewise, though there is gore and violence, it rarely goes over the top. And contrivance is never on show. There is certainly nothing in The Doll-Master that would make you think the situation couldn’t genuinely occur. This makes every one of her short stories so much more of a gut-punch than it would be otherwise. It also may explain there is something of a pattern in this particular collection, quite a few of the stories ending ambiguously, leaving distinct uncertainty in the mind of the reader, and strongly hinting that in real life, serious problems are never just packaged away and done with. There will always be an aftermath, there will regularly be a second twist in the story that you never saw coming.
As The Doll-Master contains only six stories (all quite lengthy, novelettes really), I won’t do what I usually do with collections of stories, which is select the ones I liked the best and talk about them in extra detail. Instead, I’ll run through them all in chronological order. And as I always enjoy doing some fantasy casting at the end, I’ll do the same here, only will invent a TV series adaptation and pick out a few actors for each episode (all in the spirit of having a laugh of course).
The Doll-Master
Young Robbie falls in love with his female cousin’s new Barbie doll and steals it from her bedroom after she suffers an untimely death. But when his irritated father takes it away, he grows up in desperate need of replacements, and thus embarks on a mission to secretly collect abandoned dolls. At the same time, very disturbingly, local children start disappearing …
The unreliably narrated tale of an out-and-out psychopath, both his formation and the execution of his crimewave, as seen through his own eyes from earliest youth to young adulthood. Oates is renowned for her grim slices of ‘real-life’ horror, but even though, as with most other stories in this book, the ending to this whistle-wetter is left open (to an extent), it’s probably one of the closest in the book to the traditional macabre tale. Not because it’s filled with slasher-type nastiness, but because fear and dread are the thing, and Oates drip-feeds them in with a true master’s touch. A conte cruel from the top drawer.
In our imaginary TV show:
Robbie – Harry Gilby
Mother – Lena Hall
Soldier
Brandon Schrank, a young white misanthrope, is charged with murder when he shoots a black youth in what he claims is self-defence. The country is soon divided over the matter and a heated, even violent debate follows, neither Schrank’s supporters nor his detractors particularly concerned about whether he is innocent or guilty, instead concentrating on trying to best each other. The mystery persists, though. What happened that night when Schrank says he was attacked? …
Probably the most thought-provoking story in the book, an assessment of America’s current race issues and bizarre gun culture, and the massive passions generated on both sides of the debate, all seen through the prism of a fictional but melodramatic news story in which the actual facts are difficult to ascertain. Neither a thriller nor a horror story, but bone-chilling and prophetic in the extreme when you consider that it was written several years before 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse became famous for shooting three people during a public order situation in Wisconsin.
In our imaginary TV show:
Brandon Schrank – Tom Holland
Gun Accident: An Investigation
Hanna, a schoolgirl from a humble home, is delighted when her favourite teacher, the beautiful, stylish and sophisticated Mrs McClelland, requests that she access her palatial home several times while the McClellands are out of town to look after the plants and the cat. Neither Hanna nor her teacher are aware of the tragedy that will unfold when Hanna’s drug-crazed cousin, Travis, learns about this convenient arrangement …
A dark and disturbing little vignette, which is certainly a crime story, but not something you’d classify as a mystery or a thriller. If anything, it’s more a slice of social drama, a grim tale that you could really picture happening in towns where there are haves and have-nots, and where those at the very bottom of the scale have slipped into anarchic oblivion (a situation that rarely resolves itself with one-off tragedies). Yet another powerful read.
In our imaginary TV show:
Hanna – Parker McKenna Posey
Travis – Chosen Jacobs
Mrs McClelland – Julia Stiles
Equatorial
Audrey, a neurotic heiress, accompanies her ambitious academic husband on a holiday to Ecuador, but in due course becomes convinced that he has not just brought a secret mistress along with him, who is somewhere in the party they are travelling with, but also that his plan is to commit murder while they are here and so clear the way for a new relationship …
The longest story in the book and for me the least effective, though that’s primarily because, though this is yet another tale in which the author purposely cuts the narrative short, allowing us to insert the denouement ourselves, in this instance we seem to take an awfully long time getting there, and when we did, I couldn’t help feeling short-changed. This is all the more disappointing because the tension and suspense that Oates generates in the body of this narrative is immense. Equatorial has all the basics of a dark and intense psychological thriller, but in this case the lack of pay-off is detrimental.
In our imaginary TV show:
Audrey – Natascha McElhone
Henry – Patrick Dempsey
Big Momma
Violet’s over-stressed single mom moves them both to a new town and in Violet’s case, to a new school. Dumpy and unattractive, Violet feels lonely and self-conscious among all these new kids, but gradually befriends an eccentric local family, who make her welcome in their ramshackle home and keep promising that one day they will introduce her to a mysterious personality known only as Big Momma …
Probably the most ‘horror’ of all the horror stories in this collection, and easily one of the best in terms of its gleefully fiendish premise. We’re in vintage Joyce Carole Oates territory with this chiller, focussing on one of society’s misfits whose efforts to find acceptance backfire on her in the most gruesome and ghoulish way, though in this case she falls prey to her fellow misfits (proving that there is almost nobody nice in the world of Ms. Oates). This is one the old Pan Books of Horror Stories would have been happy to publish. Marvellously horrible.
In our imaginary TV show:
Violet – Milly Bobby Brown
Mr Clovis – Holt McCallaney
Mystery Inc.
A serial poisoner working under the fake name Charles Brockden is intent on acquiring a beautiful, old-fashioned bookshop in an idyllic seaside town, and so launches a careful scheme to dispose of its current owner, the elegant and friendly Aaron Neuhaus. He’s done it before and anticipates no problems, but this time finds himself in a new and frightening predicament …
We end on another high note, with just the sort of low-key suspenser that Oates excels in, something that wouldn’t be out of place in Alfred Hitchcock Presents or perhaps Thriller, as once fronted by Boris Karloff. It doesn’t really matter that in this one you can see the end coming. What works best here is the cat and mouse game played between two like-minded protagonists, the stakes at the end of which could not be higher. Thoroughly enjoyable and a fine way to found off what is overall an exceptionally good if quickfire selection of distressing stories.
In our imaginary TV show:
‘Charles Brockden’ – James Frain
Aaron Neuhaus – Ian McKellen
So, that’s The Doll-Master. I’ve been a Joyce Carole Oates fan for many a year now, usually having read her short stories in anthologies and magazines. This was the first of her actual collections that I made an effort to get hold of, and it certainly won’t be the last. So, keep tuning into this blog, and you’ll find much more from America’s grand mistress of dark letters.
And you could do a lot worse than start with this one.
In our imaginary TV show:
Hanna – Parker McKenna Posey
Travis – Chosen Jacobs
Mrs McClelland – Julia Stiles
Equatorial
Audrey, a neurotic heiress, accompanies her ambitious academic husband on a holiday to Ecuador, but in due course becomes convinced that he has not just brought a secret mistress along with him, who is somewhere in the party they are travelling with, but also that his plan is to commit murder while they are here and so clear the way for a new relationship …
The longest story in the book and for me the least effective, though that’s primarily because, though this is yet another tale in which the author purposely cuts the narrative short, allowing us to insert the denouement ourselves, in this instance we seem to take an awfully long time getting there, and when we did, I couldn’t help feeling short-changed. This is all the more disappointing because the tension and suspense that Oates generates in the body of this narrative is immense. Equatorial has all the basics of a dark and intense psychological thriller, but in this case the lack of pay-off is detrimental.
In our imaginary TV show:
Audrey – Natascha McElhone
Henry – Patrick Dempsey
Big Momma
Violet’s over-stressed single mom moves them both to a new town and in Violet’s case, to a new school. Dumpy and unattractive, Violet feels lonely and self-conscious among all these new kids, but gradually befriends an eccentric local family, who make her welcome in their ramshackle home and keep promising that one day they will introduce her to a mysterious personality known only as Big Momma …
Probably the most ‘horror’ of all the horror stories in this collection, and easily one of the best in terms of its gleefully fiendish premise. We’re in vintage Joyce Carole Oates territory with this chiller, focussing on one of society’s misfits whose efforts to find acceptance backfire on her in the most gruesome and ghoulish way, though in this case she falls prey to her fellow misfits (proving that there is almost nobody nice in the world of Ms. Oates). This is one the old Pan Books of Horror Stories would have been happy to publish. Marvellously horrible.
In our imaginary TV show:
Violet – Milly Bobby Brown
Mr Clovis – Holt McCallaney
Mystery Inc.
A serial poisoner working under the fake name Charles Brockden is intent on acquiring a beautiful, old-fashioned bookshop in an idyllic seaside town, and so launches a careful scheme to dispose of its current owner, the elegant and friendly Aaron Neuhaus. He’s done it before and anticipates no problems, but this time finds himself in a new and frightening predicament …
We end on another high note, with just the sort of low-key suspenser that Oates excels in, something that wouldn’t be out of place in Alfred Hitchcock Presents or perhaps Thriller, as once fronted by Boris Karloff. It doesn’t really matter that in this one you can see the end coming. What works best here is the cat and mouse game played between two like-minded protagonists, the stakes at the end of which could not be higher. Thoroughly enjoyable and a fine way to found off what is overall an exceptionally good if quickfire selection of distressing stories.
In our imaginary TV show:
‘Charles Brockden’ – James Frain
Aaron Neuhaus – Ian McKellen
So, that’s The Doll-Master. I’ve been a Joyce Carole Oates fan for many a year now, usually having read her short stories in anthologies and magazines. This was the first of her actual collections that I made an effort to get hold of, and it certainly won’t be the last. So, keep tuning into this blog, and you’ll find much more from America’s grand mistress of dark letters.
And you could do a lot worse than start with this one.
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