First, a confession. I am not very familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I read some of his stories in my younger days and saw some of the 60s horror movies adapted from them. But I don’t remember many details other than names like Cthulhu and the Necronomicon. I am more familiar with Joe Lansdale, one of today’s most versatile mystery, horror, Western, and science fiction writers. Lansdale’s latest story collection, In the Mad Mountains, comprises “Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft,” according to its subtitle. The book may be inspired by Lovecraft, but the stories take advantage of all the author’s areas of expertise and his sense of humor in an often creepy and always entertaining collection.
In the Mad Mountains contains eight stories, most of them novelette length. The stories vary widely in tone, setting, and style. Six of these stories have been published in other collections and anthologies since 2009. Those anthologies often had specific themes, which accounts for the unique themes of the tales initially included in those anthologies. The author provides a brief introduction to each story that often makes the story easier to follow. Most people would classify all of them as horror stories. Certain specific horror themes I recognized from
my limited knowledge of Lovecraft’s work are common to most stories. The best way to describe the collection is to detail each story briefly.
“The Bleeding Shadow” is southern Noir from the 1950s (with fantasy horror elements) that reminded me of something Walter Moseley might have written. The narrator is an unlicensed private investigator (in an era when blacks couldn’t get licenses) who is hired by an ex-flame to find her musician brother, Tootie. The only clue to his whereabouts is a demo jazz record Tootie sent her. When the narrator plays the record, the music is unearthly. When he tracks down Tootie, he learns why.
“Dread Island” is the author’s unofficial horror sequel to Huckleberry Finn. Huck narrates, and other familiar Mark Twain characters like Tom Sawyer and Jim put in an appearance. In the story, Huck and Jim’s search for the missing Tom leads them to the titular island in the middle of the Mississippi River. There, they discover Uncle Remus’s characters come to life, like Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. Huck also learns that the island has trapped many unwary travelers over the years, including passengers on wrecked steamships and even Amelia Earhart. Also putting in an appearance that is far less welcome than Earhart is a demonic creature from another dimension that Huck calls “Cut Through You.”
If “Dread Island” is a tribute to Mark Twain, “The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning” is what the author calls a “Poe pastiche.” This story was written to imitate Poe’s detective works featuring C. Auguste Dupin. Here, Dupin and his companion, the story’s narrator, investigate a mysterious warehouse fire in which the lightning that caused the fire appeared to originate in the building and rise to the sky. One significant character in the story bears a fantastic similarity to Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Dupin uses a rare copy of the Necronomicon to solve the case.
“The Tall Grass” is the book’s shortest story and one of the creepiest. The narrator is a passenger on a train that abruptly stops in the middle of the night in a field with, you guessed it, very tall prairie grass. The train seems abandoned except for the conductor, who advises the narrator to stay on board. There wouldn’t be much of a story had the narrator done so. He disobeys the conductor, gets lost in the grass, and encounters something bizarre. The images in this story stayed with me longer than any others from “In the Mad Mountains.”
“The Case of the Stalking Shadow” stars Dana Roberts, one of the author’s series characters. As an adult, Dana is a “supernormal investigator.” This story details how she acquired that interest. In “Shadow,” a teenage Dana spent the summer at a friend’s house, along with some younger children. One day, they decided to play hide-and-seek in the nearby woods, which had a bad reputation. Not surprisingly, the game didn’t go well for Dana, and she found herself chased by a strange creature. She returned to the site years later to discover something even stranger. This story reprises a familiar theme in these tales: characters encountering portals between dimensions through which some very disquieting creatures pass.
“The Crawling Sky” is a Western featuring another Lansdale series character, the Reverend Jebidiah Mercer. He’s a frontier demon hunter, whose latest mission takes him to see a squatter who moved into a vacant house with the idea of turning it into a farm. The home includes a dry well filled with stones dumped there by a previous resident. When the squatter removed the stones, he learned, to his regret, what they covered. The Reverend must get the thing from the well back where it belongs. This story contains a hilarious introduction in which the Reverend persuades one of the townsfolk to fix him dinner, only to discover that horsemeat steak is on the menu. That revelation was scarier for me than the rest of the story, although the Reverend enjoyed the meal.
“Starlight, Star Bright” doesn’t feel like any of the other stories in the collection. A woman finds a piece of glass that she’s convinced contains something otherworldly. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it has a mystical feel to it. This one is very much a matter of taste, and it was my least favorite in the collection.
The author ends with the second-longest story in the book, the titular, “In the Mad Mountains.” It has some of the same elements as “Dread Island,” but in a much harsher setting. A lifeboat containing a group of shipwreck survivors washes up on an arctic coastline. The survivors discover the wreckage of other ships and planes nearby, some of them over a century old. Although they can fish and scavenge the wrecks’ galleys for supplies, they realize they will eventually need to reach civilization. This is the gloomiest story in the book, and the explanation of the landscape on which they landed is the most bizarre.
If readers didn’t already know the authorship of these stories, most would probably believe that eight different authors wrote them. Joe Lansdale adapts a separate tone for each one that captures the bot the story’s spirit and my understanding of Lovecraft lore. Many stories feature portals to other worlds or places where the usual laws of space and time don’t work. Lansdale mixes humor, setting, and horror well. I liked the Twain and Poe tributes best because of the bold and successful attempts to match his famous predecessors’ style and incorporate typical Lovecraft elements. In the Mad Mountains is enjoyable for Lansdale and Lovecraft fans alike.
NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.
In this clip, the author discusses another recent book at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore:
Read other reviews of In the Mad Mountains:
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies.
Lansdale has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others.
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