For this final Friday of 2018 Barry Ergang is here to put a wrap on it. Make sure you check out the full FFB list over at Patti’s blog.
FEAR AND TREMBLING
(1989) by Robert Bloch
Reviewed by Barry
Ergang
I was 13 or14 when I
discovered Robert Bloch, which was when Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” based on
Bloch’s novelistic and—to my mind—Hitchcock’s cinematic masterpiece, was
released. There’s no need to detail the circumstances here, but I read the
entire second half of Bloch’s novel (prior to seeing the movie) in a room
nearly pitch-black save for the lamp in the corner alongside the couch on which
I sat. I became a fan from that point on, and over many years have read my
share of Bloch’s novels and, especially, short fiction. Fear and Trembling is among the many collections of his latter
works. To begin:—
The narrator, visiting
Paris, is not there in search of adventure. But an evening’s stroll results in
his being accosted by a bunch of young boys. When they finally leave him alone
and run off, he discovers they’ve lifted his wallet. He subsequently learns
they’re known as “The Yougoslaves,” victims of human trafficking who have been
trained by adult masters to commit these kinds of crimes. The wallet contains an
item far more valuable to its owner than money or credit cards, so when it
becomes apparent the police will do nothing, he sets out on his own to recover
it—but with drastic results for whom?
Hilary Kane knows London
intimately. “Over the years he strolled the pavements, reading the city
sentence by sentence until every line was familiar; he’d learned London by
heart.” On this particular day when he, strolling with his friend Lester Woods,
comes upon an antique store that shouldn’t be where it is, he’s compelled to
enter and examine its wares, among them an apparent medical kit Kane is
determined to have regardless of cost. Woods subsequently learns that Kane is a
student of the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and that the original owner of the
kit might have been the Whitechapel slayer. Neither can foresee what becomes “A
Most Unusual Murder.”
“What unnatural life had
festered and flourished here in the black bosom of earth?” Such is the question
that disturbs the nameless narrator, who has sailed from New York to Cornwall,
England, to visit his old friend Malcolm Kent. Both men are fascinated by
legends and folklore. Malcolm tells him of a discovery he’s made that proves
ancient Egyptians visited England. Soon both men make the descent deep into the
earth where they encounter “The Brood of Bubastis.”
Only a few minutes after starting his writing
job at the film studio, Joe Considine finds himself unemployed thanks to script
prohibitions from the Anti-Amusement League. At the unemployment office he
meets the lovely Sandy Simpson, to whom he offers a ride to what will soon
become his new home. On the way, an accident that luckily isn’t fatal results
in them meeting the friendly alien Drool, whose mission is to conquer Earth. Considine,
once he discovers Drool’s extraordinary talent, has a much better way for him
to realize his conquest. Far from the kind of story that aptly suits the title
of this collection, “Groovyland”—which was first published in 1969—is a comical
sci-fi tale loaded with punning and cultural prescience.
A film fan since childhood,
Dale ultimately comes to teach film history at the university level. When he
decides to lease an out-of-the-way cottage in the Hollywood Hills the realtor
refers to as “the Chaney house,” he and his girlfriend Debbie have a
falling-out, Debbie wanting to share a more fashionable new condo with him. But
the idea of living in a home possibly
once occupied by silent film star Lon Chaney, whom Dale reveres and intends to
write about, is irresistible. The nightmarish aspects of the move begin when he
comes upon “The Chaney Legacy,” a makeup kit that’s much more than it first
seems.
More poignant than horrifying
is “Floral Tribute.” Until he was six, when he was taken away from Grandma and
placed in an orphanage until he went into military service, Ed previously lived
with her in the house directly behind the cemetery. It’s now twenty years later
and Ed, hospitalized with a war wound, is desperately trying to recall this nearly
forgotten time of his childhood when he receives a letter from Grandma. Once
he’s received his medical discharge, it’s time to go home to find out if
so-called figments are indeed figments or realities.
Lifelong loner and writer
of fantasy fiction of the darker variety, Ross is somewhat obsessed by Death with
a capital D. His sixty-fifth birthday only serves to reinforce the obsession.
When he meets Death in what may or may not be a dream, in which the sands in the
hourglass of his existence are about to run out, he reluctantly assents to a
bargain that will keep him alive: for every person that he kills—for whom he’s the “Reaper”— he’ll gain an
additional year of life. With the passage of a few years and some unintended
lives resulting in emotional setbacks, Ross seems able not only to defy but
also to destroy Death.
Thirty-year-old
psychiatrist Dr. Degradian is almost instantly smitten by twenty-year-old
Angela when she enters his office for her first appointment. Her problem? She
can’t get any sleep because of the incubus who visits her nightly and has his
way with her all night long. She insists she’s not dreaming. Degradian’s
initial efforts to help this lovely young woman who, he’s certain, is hallucinating,
do not succeed. She then consults her priest, but his exorcistic efforts lead
to other difficulties, so she returns to Degradian for help. I’ll say no more
about “The Shrink and the Mink” other than that it is, far from horrific, hilariously risqué, Bloch indulging his love
of wordplay to a degree that might have you laughing out loud as it had me more
than a few times.
Albert Kessler is a man
driven to make “A Killing in the Market.” Formerly a clerk in a Wall Street
brokerage house, he has carefully followed the successes of Lon Mariner, a man
who has made millions from shrewd investments rather than from slapdash
gambles. Kessler quits his job and, having tracked Mariner’s movements, goes to
Chicago to try to meet him “in hopes that I’d get him to cut me in on his big
deal.” He checks into the same hotel Mariner is staying in, discreetly inquires
about him to various personnel, and eventually meets him in the hotel bar. But
after Mariner leaves the bar with a tall blonde, he disappears, and suddenly
nobody Kessler has previously spoken to remembers him, nor is his name in the
hotel register.
Late-night TV talk show
host Harry Hoaker came up the hard way, but has had a very successful career
competing against the likes of Johnny Carson. What the public doesn’t know
about his secret issues needn’t be aired and, besides, it’s “The New Season.” But
as he once again faces the lights, camera and audience, and as untoward things
begin to happen he begins to glean the nature of, Harry must decide whether to
say anything about them to his viewers.
In “ETFF,” an alien who has
adopted human form promotes a ride to the World Science Fiction Convention,
thanks in part to the titular Extra-Terrestrial Fan Fund, where he/she/it
(gender never specified) creates undesired and unexpected chaos in another
comical story that proves the title of this collection is a misnomer.
The placard, which has been
posted by the bearded man named Fall on every telephone pole in Goober City,
reads Carnival of Life. The Greatest Show
on Earth. Adults Only—Fairgrounds, Tonight. When the local citizenry
arrives in droves that night, they find only one tent—and that not terribly
large. First they’re treated to verbal teases about the visuals on banners hung
on the tent’s outer canvas walls. But then they’re allowed to go inside for the
actual “Freak Show.”
The unnamed narrator is a
retired professor of criminology and sometime consultant to the police
department. When he begins to study the natures of the grisly murders, each of
which involves the severance of a victim’s body part and a key aspect of each
victim’s history, he’s certain astrology plays a part in the serial killer’s
twisted motive. His ultimate confrontation does and does not fit into the chart
of a “Horror Scope.”
Despite what I wrote in the
first paragraph and several story descriptions, it’s been a long time since
I’ve read much in the way of what Tor Books, in its cover classification of Fear and Trembling, rates as horror
fiction. I’d personally call it a collection of horror, science fiction,
fantasy, and crime fiction. Debate designations as you will—or won’t—I can
easily recommend this as good entertainment.
© 2018 Barry Ergang
Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s mystery novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, is available at Amazon and Smashwords, along with some of his other work.
Posts
