Scary Books

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey.

The book begins in 2007, when an author visits the director of some sort of facility to drop off a copy of a book that the director helped the author to research having to do with the town's history. The director gives the author a set of notebooks found under the bed of the town's resident oddball, recently deceased. The director calmly tells the author that the man claimed to have been born in 1876, making him 131 years old, and that the notebooks appear to be some sort of journal or diary that may be of interest to the author. Because the director is unable to locate any family for the man, he offers to lend the notebooks to the author. After putting off reading them for some long time, the author finally begins and is entranced. The book, proper, is the purported transcription of the notebooks, word for word. Told from the perspective of Will Henry, a boy of 12 when his parents die in a fire and he is taken in by the odd, wealthy Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, for whom his father both worked, and who inadvertently caused his death. A monstrumologist. Taking place in the late 1880's, the civil war is a relatively recent event. Will is treated harshly by the doctor,  but is nonetheless devoted to him - a result of his grief over his father, who worshipped the doctor. The doctor, in turn, treats Will the way his own father treated him, in spite of his obvious pain over that fact. The obvious monsters in the book, Anthropophagi, are made more real by reference to their mention by ancient greeks and Shakespeare, among others, but are less real than the human monsters Yancey carefully creates, layer upon layer. The obsessed father of Warthrop who kept a man imprisoned in an insane asylum to ensure word of his monster experiment would not get out, the director of the asylum who provided patients to feed the monsters, and the microscopic worms that drove his father to light himself on fire to drive them out, dragging his wife with him. The worms, according to the notebooks, have infected poor Will. But, opines the ever rational Warthrop, they either kill you or live in harmony and extend your life. At the end, the author returns to the grave of Will after having satisfied himself that the work is pure fiction. Poking a hole in the dirt near the grave, a small worm, as described in the notebook, clings to the end of the stick.

The cover is ghoulish, and parts, particularly a vicious murder scene and the state of the inmates of the asylum, are quite grotesque and gory. The chase to find and eradicate the monsters in the dark (where they are prone to hunt) gives plenty of fright. I chose this book for its reviews and its cover. I enjoyed the setting (nearby Swampscott and Dedham, Massachusetts play a role) and the, "could this have happened?" tone, as well as the poignant story of an orphan boy doing his best to survive. I look forward to part two, The Curse of the Wendigo.





Rikers High by Paul Volponi.

In the category of scary because true, Rickers High tells the story of Martin Stokes, imprisoned on Rikers Island, a jail in New York, two weeks before his seventeenth birthday. Martin spends some five months awaiting trial on a petty charge - steering (telling an undercover cop where to buy drugs) - and narrates the daily struggle to stay alive behind bars. After being sliced across the face with a razor blade when he is chained to an inmate in a fight with another, Martin is moved to a part of the jail where the teens go to school.

An author's note at the start makes clear that the details are based upon the author's six years spent teaching at Rikers. So far, this promises to be true as the details and voice of Martin convey both the fears and attitude necessary to survive behind bars. Having worked as a criminal defense attorney for fifteen years, I am fascinated, appalled, and saddened by the book. But I had to read it.



Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers.

The story of Maurice Anderson, Reese, locked up in a juvenile detention facility for stealing prescription pads for a neighborhood drug dealer. Reese's mom is a drug addict, his father has abandoned the family for drugs and the street and Reese stole the pads to get money to help feed his sister and he. Alone in juve, where the other inmates goad each other to fight and dread the possibility of being sent to adult prison, Reese gets a chance when he is sent to work at a nursing home. He struggles with his anger and his despair about what awaits him on the streets when he returns. He forges an unlikely relationship with an elderly racist who has also been through hard times during his childhood in Java. In addition to the violence behind bars, and the slim chances Reese has to survive his surroundings, what chilled me the most was the ease with which the police manage to manipulate him in an attempt to pin a new charge on him.