Tag Archives: Book

Horror Novel Review: Teddy by John Gault

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I wrote about a Canadian horror film called The Pit.  I mentioned that it was a film about a creepy 12 year-old named Jamie who had conversations with his teddy bear, developed a not-so-innocent crush on his babysitter, and who regularly fed the people he disliked to a bunch of underground monsters who lived in a pit in the woods.

Yesterday, I also read Teddy, the 1980 novelization of The Pit.

(The Pit was originally titled Teddy.)

Teddy is even more creepy than The Pit, largely because it includes all of the disturbing details that were either cut from the finished film or perhaps dropped when the script was rewritten.  Jamie is still a creepy 12 year-old who talks to his teddy bear.  Unlike the film, the novel makes it clear that Teddy is actually a living force of evil and that his words are not just a figment of Jamie’s imagination.  The book actually suggests that Teddy moves from child to child, corrupting each of its owners.  Teddy in the book is also a hundred times more pervy than Teddy in the movie, making some rather crude comments about Jamie’s mom and later encouraging Jamie to join him in checking out some porno magazines.

The book also delves into the investigations surrounding the disappearance of Jamie’s many victims.  As a result, we get to know the victims a bit better in the book than we did in the movie.  Also as a result, Jamie also comes across as much more deliberately evil in the book than he does in the movie.  Even if he is under the possible demonic influence of Teddy, Jamie still seems to take way too much pleasure in people dying.  This is especially true of the scene where his babysitter falls into the pit.  In the movie, Jamie tries to help her escape.  In the book, Jamie not only pushes her but smiles afterwards as he listens to her screams.

Agck!  What a creepy kid!

Teddy is a pretty effective little horror novelization.  It’s also not easy to find a physical copy.  However, you can read it at Open Library.

Horror Novel Review: Killer On The Road by James Ellroy

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1986 and considerably shorter than the typical James Ellroy novel, Killer On The Road takes the form of the memoirs of Martin Plunkett, a child genius who grew up to be a prolific serial killer.

The book starts with Plunkett already serving a life sentence at Sing Sing.  He’s a killer who is now off the road and his memoirs are less about his plans and more about his own struggle to understand how he became the killer that he became.  There are plenty of possible explanations, going all the way back to his dysfunctional childhood and the trauma of his parent’s divorce.  He may be brilliant but he spends all of his time wishing that he could turn invisible like a comic book character and spy on people in their homes.  He comes to idolize Charles Manson but is disappointed when, while in prison, he meets the actual Manson and discovers that he’s just a rambling loser.  The book is written in Plunkett’s own words and, in typical sociopath fashion, he thinks very highly of himself but careful readers will look between the lines and see someone who is just as confused by what he became as everyone else.  For all of his intelligence and his nonstop speculation about the human condition, Plunkett ultimately seems like an empty vessel.  Plunkett’s years on the road are full of unexpected detours.  A meeting with a cop definitely do not go the way that anyone would probably expect it to go.  Even though the story is narrated Plunkett, people like FBI agent Dusenberg come across as fully developed characters as well.

It’s a disturbing and sad but compulsively readable book.  It may have been written before Ellroy developed his signature style but it stills shows his strengths as a storyteller.  Interestingly enough, Ellroy later stated in My Dark Places that he based Martin Plunkett’s dysfunctional youth on his own, which definitely leaves one happy that James Ellroy discovered writing as an outlet for his emotions.  Unlike Martin Plunkett, James Ellroy went on to become one of the best writers of our current era.

Horror Book Review: X-Isle By Peter Lerangis

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

X-Isle!?

Is this a book about an island that is populated by the twenty or so people who actually refer to twitter by it’s “new” name of X?

No, actually, it’s not.  X-Isle was published in 2002, in the days before social media and ever-present phones.  X-Isle is a slasher story, one in which a group of good-looking teens end up hanging out at the exclusive Spinnaker Lodge, a luxury resort on an isolated island.  It’s like that island that Kim Kardashian took all of her friends and employees to during the COVID epidemic?  Remember that?  Everyone else was locked inside or wandering around triple-masked while Kim went to an island and then scolded everyone else for not taking proper precautions.

(Sorry to get off topic there but seriously, the COVID era was messed up in ways that people are still struggling to full comprehend.)

Reading X-Isle, I found myself wandering if you really could write an effective, non-ironic, old school slasher story nowadays.  The whole key to the slasher genre is that people have to be isolated and there has to be no way of reaching out for help.  Every slasher movie now has to come up with some extended to reason to explain why no one can call the police.  Whenever a horror movie starts with someone saying, “Give me your phone, you’ll get it back after the weekend,” I roll my eyes a little just because it’s become such a cliche.  At this point, I imagine even Camp Crystal Lake has free wi-fi.  It’s easy to imagine a camp counselor tweeting out, “Help!  There’s a murderer at Crystal Lake!” and someone replying, “Whatever, Jussie.”

X-Isle gets off to a good start with a collection inner-office dossiers that introduce us to the main characters.  What the memo reveals is that the main requirement to work at the resort is a handsome face or a good body.  Once the story kicks in, we meet our group of potential victims and, unfortunately, none of them really live up to all the hype in the introduction.  We spend a good deal of time with Carter, a womanizer who, at one point, feels the need to tell us that he’s not psychotic despite the fact that his behavior is often manipulative and narcissistic.  When you actually have to tell people that you’re not a psycho, you probably are. Of course, in this book, Carter is one of the heroes.

Someone is killing guests and employees.  It’s a YA book so we don’t actually see the kills but the aftermath is described in properly grisly fashion.  The reveal of who the killer was doesn’t make much sense but, given that the book ends with a cliffhanger, that was perhaps deliberate.

Anyway, I’ve always kind of enjoyed the slasher genre, even with all of its cliches and its issues towards anyone who shows the slightest spark of independence.  X-Isle was a fast and entertaining read.  None of the characters were particularly likable which made it a lot less stressful to read about them being put in danger.  In the end, the main lesson is to stay away from mysterious islands.  That’s probably good advice.

4 Books For The Weekend (10/3/25)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I want to start by recommending The Friday Afternoon Club, Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up amongst the rich and famous in Hollywood and Manhattan.  The son of Dominick Dunne and the nephew of John Gregory Dunne, Griffin Dunne came of age in the 60s and the 70s.  Reading his memoir, it’s easy to wonder if there’s anyone who he didn’t rub shoulders with at one time or another.  Sean Connery saves him from drowning when he’s just eight.  He attends one of Ken Kesey’s acid tests with John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion.  A pre-stardom Harrison Ford does carpentry work at the Dunne family home and shares his weed with the young Griffin.  In New York, Griffin’s roommate and (for the most part) platonic best friend is a hyperactive young actress named Carrie Fisher.  While Griffin tries to find himself in Hollywood and New York, his father Dominick drops in and out of the film business.

For it’s first half, The Friday Afternoon Club is, at times, a laugh-out-loud memoir.  Griffin Dunne is a very funny storyteller and his command of language reveals a bright and insightful mind.  However, the second half of the book takes a dark turn with the murder of his sister, Dominique.  Dominique, who had just appeared in Poltergeist, was strangled by her abusive boyfriend, a chef named John Thomas Sweeney.  Griffin Dunne writes unsparingly of the horror of watching as Sweeney’s lawyers tried to present Dominique as somehow being to blame for her own death.  After the judge refused to allow the prosecution to introduce evidence showing that Sweeney had a history of abusing and choking women, the jury found Sweeney guilty of manslaughter.  (The jury foreman later said that, if the jury had been allowed to hear the evidence of Sweeney’s past abusive behavior, they would have found Sweeney guilty of murder.)  Sweeney was sentenced to six years in prison and was paroled after only 30 months.  Griffin Dunne writes of the years that both he and his father spent obsessing on Sweeney’s whereabouts.  (Sweeney, for those curious, continued to find work as a chef even after his prison sentence.  He currently goes by the name of John Maura.)

It’s a powerful memoir.  Griffin writes honestly about his dysfunctional family, describing even their conflicts with a good deal of love.  Probably the most touching passages in the book are about his relationship with his brother Alex, the one member of the family to see through Sweeney from the start.  Those looking for Hollywood gossip will find plenty, though Griffin is never malicious.  Those looking for details about the filming of An American Werewolf in London and After Hours will find those as well.

Published earlier this year, Susan Morrison’s Lorne is a biography of Lorne Michaels, the man behind Saturday Night Live.  Lorne has actually produced quite a few other shows and movies but, as this book makes clear, his legacy will always be Saturday Night Live.  The book follows Lorne from his beginnings in Canada to his time as a counter-culture tastemaker to his current position as a senior member of America’s cultural establishment.  Lorne went from being a rebel to being a member of the club and, reading about the process, one comes to suspect that he was always more comfortable in the club than outside of it.  It’s an interesting journey and the Lorne Michaels who emerges is occasionally idealistic, occasionally pragmatic, and — even after 595 pages — rather enigmatic.  It’s a fascinating story, one that provides insight into American culture has changed and developed over the past 50 years.  There’s certainly more insight to be found in this book than in Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night.

On a similar note, Todd S. Purdum’s Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television argues that Arnaz deserves far more credit for …. well, inventing television than he’s usually given.  Often dismissively described as being Lucille Ball’s less talented husband, Purdom persuasively argues that Arnaz deserves far more credit for the success of I Love Lucy than he is commonly given.  The book details how Arnaz’s family lost their fortune in one of Cuba’s many revolutions, how Arnaz came to America and built a career for himself, and how Arnaz revolutionized television as the producer of I Love Lucy.  The book deals with both the good and the bad of Lucy and Desi’s marriage.  Desi emerges as a complex and flawed character, one whose career never really recovered after his divorce from Lucille Ball.

Finally, an old friend recommended that I read Bryan Burrough’s 2015 book, Days of Rage.  Days of Rage takes a look at the the domestic terrorism of the 70s, the bombings, kidnappings, and even murders that were committed by members of such groups as the Weatherman, the BLA, the SLA (they kidnapped Patty Hearst), and the FALN.  Along with taking a look at the motivations of the terrorists themselves, Burrough also writes about how the FBI reacted.  In the end, it’s a book without any heroes.  The FBI frequently violated the law in their pursuit of domestic enemies.  Meanwhile, the radicals often come across as being a collection of hypocrites who were essentially more interested in playing revolution than actually accomplishing anything.  The Weathermen, in particular, come across as being a bunch of smug and overly privileged LARPers.  It’s an interesting book and one that feels very relevant in our current cultural moment.

Check out my previous book recommendations here!

Horror Novel Review: My Secret Admireir by Carol Ellis

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1989, My Secret Admirer tells the story of Jenny.

Jenny is a teenager who has lived in four different town over the past six years.  Her dad’s job requires him to move from town to town and her mother doesn’t like the idea getting tied down anywhere.  I have to admit that I could relate to Jenny because my family used to move all over the place.  By the time I was 12 years old, I had lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana.  Frequently moving meant that I had to continually get used to new towns, new schools, new teachers, and new friends.  Years later, I realized that spending my childhood on the go left me with massive trust and abandonment issues.  In other words, it really sucked.  My heart went out to Jenny.

When the book opens, Jenny has only been in her new home for a few days.  She’s still nervous about the house and the town.  She’s scared of the hills that are near her home and the rocky bluffs that sit behind the hills.  She worries about wild animals.  She doesn’t know anyone in town and school doesn’t start for another few days.

So, of course, her parents decide to abandon her.

When they are informed that their old house has been sold, Jenny’s parents buy plane tickets so that they can fly back to their former home and collect the rest of their belongings.  Jenny is left behind so that she can deal with the painters (who are scheduled to show up in three days).  Parents in YA book — especially YA horror books — are usually not that great but I have to say that Jenny’s parents take selfish parenting to a whole other level.

Fortunately, Jenny meets her neighbor, the very talkative Sally.  Sally ropes Jenny into taking part in a big scavenger hunt.  During the hunt, Jenny meets Dave and his bitchy girlfriend, Diana.  Diana and Dave are having a fight so Dave teams up with Jenny for the scavenger hunt and, within an hour or so, Jenny and Dave are in love.  Unfortunately, the scavenger hunt does not go as well for Diana.  A day after a sudden storm brings the hunt to a close, Diana is found at the bottom of the cliff.  With Diana in a coma, Jenny wonders if it’s possible that Dave pushed her.

Meanwhile, Jenny seems to have a secret admirer, someone who calls the house and leaves messages on her answering machine.  It’s all good and well until someone leaves a present on her porch.  When Jenny opens the package, she discovers the head of a rattlesnake!

This novel was fairly ridiculous.  Between Jenny’s parents basically abandoning her in a town and house that she barely knew to Jenny falling in love with Dave after spending 30 minutes with him, this book was all about people making bad decisions.  Unfortunately, despite all of the silly plot developments, the book never quite becomes the sort of over-the-top, melodramatic spectacle that one might hope it would become.  That said, I could relate to how Jenny felt about always being the new girl and it was a quick read.  For that matter, I don’t like heights either.

In the end, the book’s message was one to which I could relate:

No, not that!  Instead, if you believe in yourself, you can get a boyfriend and you can survive being stuck in a scary old house!  That’s an important lesson to learn!

 

 

Horror Book Review: Driver’s Dead by Peter Lerangis

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Kirsten!

In the 1994 novel Driver’s Dead, teenage Kirsten is not only currently living in a house that she thinks might be haunted by the ghost of the son of the previous owners but she’s also somehow gotten a reputation for being a bad driver!  (Ironically enough, the son of the previous owners was also killed in a car crash …. or was he?)

When it come to having one’s driving unfairly criticized, I could relate to Kirsten.  I can still remember the pain of those days when I was “learning” how to drive.  Learning is in quotes because, quite frankly, I already knew how to drive.  I had seen enough TV shows and gone on enough road trips with my family to know which pedal to push and how to turn the steering wheel.  And yet, every driving instructor that I had to deal with insisted on being like totally critical of me.  One of the first times that I drove on the road, I got yelled at by the instructor because I didn’t look both ways before making a lane change.

“I looked in the rearview mirror!” I snapped.

Apparently, that was not the right answer because she kept yelling at me until I finally said, “How am I supposed to concentrate on driving with you talking all the time!?”

That also did not go over well.  That particular instructor refused to ride with me anymore.  I went home in tears so my mother went up to the school and yelled at all of the instructors for being rude to me.  The next time I drove, it was with the owner of the school, who was much nicer to me.  The owner of the school asked me if I had a lazy eye.  “Not anymore,” I replied.

Anyway, you get my point.  I somehow managed to get my license despite having to deal with some pretty clueless driving instructors.

Anyway, back to Driver’s Dead.  Kirsten decides to deal with her driving struggles by getting some help from Rob.  Rob shows her how to drive but it turns out that his father is a big-time racist and Rob is kind of a jerk as well.  When Rob tries to grope her, Kirsten tells him to get lost.  (Yay!)  Then Rob turns up dead.  Uh-oh.

Who murdered Rob and how is it connected to the blood that keeps seeping out from underneath the closet in Kirsten’s bedroom?  And what to make of Mr. Busk, the alcoholic driver’s teacher who has apparently never gotten over his experiences in Vietnam?

Driver’s Dead is a YA book from the mid-90s so it’s definitely a bit dated.  Check out the reference to floppy disks and running DOS on a computer!  Check out Kirsten’s crush on Jason Priestly!  But I still found it to be entertaining because Kirsten was a likable character and the plot neatly mixed the supernatural with a standard YA mystery story.

Plus, who can’t relate to being a better driver than most people realize?  Ghosts and murder aside, I shared Kirsten’s struggle.

 

A Book For The Weekend (7/25/25)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I received Daniel Budnick’s 80s Action Movies On The Cheap and I’m already in love with this book!

This book features 284 reviews of the 80s action films that tend to be ignored by those who now sing the praises of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.  We’re talking about the films of Michael Dudikoff here.  We’re talking about the directorial efforts of Cirio Santiago, Nico Mastorakis, Sam Firstenberg, and so many others.  We’re talking Italian action cinema.  In short, we’re talking about some of the most entertaining and unfairly overshadowed films of all time.

Yes, the American Ninja films are reviewed (or, at least, the ones that came out in the 80s are).  Yes, there’s a review of The Last Hunter and Space Mutiny and the Deathstalker films.  Much like me, Daniel Budnik appreciates Red Brown even if Reb’s habit of shouting during his action scenes does seem to be a bit weird.  But what I truly love about this book is that it also features reviews of films that even I previously didn’t know about.  I mean, honestly, there are hundreds of film guides out there.  What sets the great film guides apart from the good ones is how many previous unknown titles you can discover by just randomly flipping through it.  And when it comes to film reviews, the most important question is whether or not the review inspires you to try track down a film that you may not have seen or even heard about before.  The best film reviews inspire you to watch so that you can judge for yourself.  I’ve discovered a lot just by randomly opening this book.  And I now have a long list of cheap 80s actions films that I want to watch and which I will be watching and hopefully reviewing myself.

With 80s Action Movies On The Cheap as my guide, I look forward to all sorts of new discoveries.

(Click here for my previous entry in weekend books!)

A Book For The Weekend (6/28/25)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A man who has no memory arrives in the town of Lyncastle and immediately discovers that, whoever he may be, no one wants him around.  One person tells him that his name is Johnny McBride and that the police are looking for him.  Our stranger may not know who he is but he’s fairly sure that he’s not Johnny McBride.  But yet everyone in town insists that he is.  When the police try to check his fingerprints, they discover that he has no fingerprints!  Apparently, he lost them at the same time that he lost his memory….

That’s the set up for Mickey Spillane’s 1951 novel, The Long Wait.  I won’t spoil the rest of it because 1) this book is full of shocking twists, 2) none of them make much sense, but 3) they’re all so over-the-top and ludicrous that you can’t help but love them.  Reading The Long Wait, one gets the feeling that Spillane made up the plot as he went along and it’s hard not to admire his dedication to sticking with the story, no matter how weird and, to be quite frank, ridiculous things got.

This is not one of Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels.  Hammer is not in this book.  If anything, our amnesiac hero is even more violent and brutal than Hammer because the hero of The Long Wait literally has nothing to live for.  Hammer at least had an office and a life that he could return to after killing all the bad guys.  The hero of The Long Wait may not know who he is but he still knows that’s he’s pretty angry with a lot of people.

Violent, melodramatic, and at times thoroughly gratuitous, The Long Wait is an entertainingly absurd book.  I read it in a hotel room and I recommend you do the same.

(Check out last week’s book here!)

 

 

A Book For The Weekend (6/20/25)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow, I thought as I read Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, was there anyone Howard Hughes didn’t have sex with?

Actually, I  imagine there was.  Charles Higham’s 1993 biography, which I found in a used bookstore in Pensacola, is full of all sorts of “scandalous” details about Howard Hughes’s life and the decadent Golden Age of Hollywood but it’s not always convincing.  Hughes, who was the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, was undoubtedly an eccentric and I have no doubt that he treated a lot people badly but the book itself tends put a lot of faith in gossip and rumors.  As such, we get the established stories of Hughes bringing his control freak tendencies to Hollywood and having affairs with Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner mixed with stories about Hughes’s being involved with the Watergate break-in and also carrying on clandestine affairs with everyone from Errol Flynn to Tyrone Power, Jr.  The book goes as far as to suggest Hughes died of AIDs, using an evidence the word of a doctor who didn’t examine Hughes but who did apparently read a list of symptoms that Hughes was rumored to have during his final days.  That’s really the way that Higham approaches the majority of Hughes’s life.  The established facts are mixed with rumor and speculation on the part of the author.  It’s not always convincing but then again, since when does gossip have to be believable?

In short, the book is trashy but readable.  It’s one of those books that one should probably read with a healthy sense of skepticism but, at the same time, one can appreciate the sheer number of personalities that Higham manages to weave into his narrative.  Hughes goes from aviation to Hollywood to politics and he meets everyone who was anyone.  It’s a history nerd’s dream.

Four Books To Read This Weekend (6/13/25)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Friday the 13th!  I am currently packing for a two-week vacation that will start on Sunday.  I’ll be bringing along several books with me.  I am very much a believer in “the beach read.”  If you’re going to be relaxing on the beach, it’s important to not only have the perfect bikini but also to have a good book to read.  A book can be used to shield your eyes from the sun.  A book can give you an excuse not to talk to someone.  A book can make you look smart and that’s always a good thing.   Never underestimate the importance of the beach read!

First published in 2024, Ask Not: The Kennedys and Thee Women They Destroyed is beach read for gossip-lovers who are also into politics and history.  Written by Maureen Callahan, Ask Not looks at the lives of the women who had the misfortune to know the members of the Kennedy family.  Using the death of Carolyn Bessette as a framing device, Callahan examines the lives of Jackie Onassis, Mary Jo Kopechne, Joan Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Martha Moxley, and several others.  Callahan doesn’t just look at the famous victims of the Kennedy men. One of the best chapters deals with a young woman who was left paralyzed by Joseph P. Kennedy III’s reckless driving, someone whose name may not be nationally-known but who will never forgotten by those who loved her.  The tragic death of the ex-wife of RFK Jr., who committed suicide after he left her and then tried to annul their marriage, is also examined.  Callahan writes that she has no personal animus against the Kennedys.  I’m not sure that I buy that but still, her book is a fascinating look at both the arrogance of power and the way that the Kennedys were protected, for decades, by a sympathetic and compliant media.  The book reminds us that Chappaquiddick was not a Kennedy tragedy.  Instead, it was a Kopechne tragedy.  Of the many who have written about Chappaquiddick, Callahan is one of the few to actually show any interest in who Mary Jo Kopechne was and who she could have gone on to been if she hadn’t been abandoned to drown that night.  If just for that, this book deserves to be read.

If you’re a Degrassi fan, you simply have to read 2022’s The Mother Of All Degrassi.  Linda Schuyler’s memoir charts her life and shows how she went from being an 8th grade teacher to co-creating the most important thing to ever come out of Canada.  Schuyler includes all the behind-the-scenes details that you could possibly want but, even more importantly, her personal story is an inspiring and a heartfelt one.

Speaking of memoirs by television producers, 2016’s Truth Is A Total Defense: My Fifty Years In Television is Steven Bochco’s somewhat self-aggrandizing memoir.  It’s nowhere near as well-written as Linda Schuyler’s memoir but if you’re looking for gossip, this is a good book to go with.  Bochco, who passed away in 2018, was known for creating hit shows and pissing off the networks.  This memoir spends a lot of time on the people who Bochco did not like.  It makes for a fun read, if not a particularly enlightening one.

Finally, no vacation is complete with a true crime book to read.  If you want to read one that will truly leave you angry, I recommend Philip Weiss’s American Taboo, which examines the 1975 murder of Peace Corp volunteer Deborah Gardner and how the crime was covered up by both the Peace Corp and the government.  Not only was Gardner’s name smeared but the killer was never punished for his deeds.  True crime is a genre that has produced a lot of bad books but it’s produced some good and important ones as well.  American Taboo is one of the best.

Of course, the whole fun of traveling is seeing what you discover.  I’ll be bringing books with me but I’ll also be leaving plenty of room for any trashy paperbacks I come across on the way!  I’ll let you know what I find.