“Breakbone”
I can’t decide if this would have been more at home in the old Manhunt magazine of the fifties or maybe as a storyline for the grimmest issue ever published of the often-banned EC Crime Comics.
Whew. This is one kick-ass story and the one-hundred-percent stuff of pure contaminated nightmare.
Bill at his cagiest.
I’m not sure that I would strike up a conversation with a man “close to seven feet tall” who looked kind of wasted and “forlorn, like a kid nobody wanted to have anything to do with.” But our narrator does because he’s not only the friendly type, he’s also charitable.
This one I can see as one of the radio shows I grew up listening to after the big war. Good actors, fine writing and absolutely spellbinding storytelling.
“Out of the Depths”
One of the most fascinating women I’ve ever encountered in crime fiction. And some of the finest dialogue Bill has ever written.
In what could have been a predictable take on traditional noir themes Bill, through the character of Shea, creates a classic story of isolation and terror.
The same can be said for Tanner, the epitome of the macho adventurer, who invites himself into her house in a Caribbean setting similar to the one in The Crimes of Jordan Wise. He is real and yet at times almost surreal. “He came tumbling out of the sea, dark and misshapen like a being that was not human. A creature from the depths...” These images open the story.
Shea must see him not only as a threat to her life but a sexual threat as well, for the subtext to this story is that of a frightened and betrayed woman who ultimately is as afraid of herself as much as she is of others.
Bill is a fine horror writer and a good deal of his crime work is tinged with horrific effects. As I said, the dialogue here is among the finest Bill has ever created. As ominous and omnipresent as Tanner is, the story is Shea’s, whose words, collectively, are a bitter confession of her entangled and failed life.
Will she be raped? Will she be murdered?
Does she even care?
A true masterpiece.
“Lines”
I don’t want to talk about this story in much detail because it is a dark and jarring journey you should take without any preparation. Let me just say that it breaks several forms and tropes in the telling and becomes by the end a kind of Dali-esque nightmare. Writers who pride themselves on being cutting-edge should study this to learn how to take a familiar situation and turn it into a true masterwork.
“Caius”
Barry Malzberg is one of the most important science fiction writers of my generation. He came into the field with serious intentions and turned those intentions into novels (and stories) as timeless as Guernica Night and Herovit’s World. Writers as important as the late Theodore Sturgeon considered him a major and lasting voice. His The Engines of the Night is a seminal collection of essays about the field.
Together Bill and Barry have produced four novels and numerous short stories in both science fiction and crime. I’ve always felt that their serial killer novel (written long before serial killers became a popular theme), The Running of Beasts, belongs on the same shelf as Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs.
I think this story speaks to a basic human need. “Why are we born to suffer and die?” is the question uppermost in the minds of all generations of Homo sapiens and doubtless the species that preceded us as well.
We’ve always responded to this question by searching for oracles. Think of the Egyptians. Think of the Mayans. Think of the American Indians. And yes, think even of the TV ministers shucking their believers out of money week in and week out. All of us, even atheists, look for oracles of one kind or another.
Bill and Barry have created the great paradox here — the oracle who is himself in need of an oracle. They touch on one man confronting in his loneliness and grief the universe his callers ask him to explain. But of course he can’t.
Quick takes on a few of the other stories:
“Confession” — A twist on James M. Cain theme, except it all goes badly in a more ironic way than even Cain imagined.
“Hooch” — Wry story about young bootlegger whose ambition to be a better writer than Dashiell Hammett gets him in trouble with his deadly companions.
“Boobytrap” — A true tour de force involving explosives both human and manufactured. Notably excellent plotting and some of the most finely drawn characters Bill has ever given us. This was the basis (though much changed) for the powerful Nameless novel of the same title.
“Angelique” — A horror story that Bill makes real through the voice of his narrator, who may or may not be mad, depending on the reader’s belief in the supernatural.
“The Storm Tunnel” — A very creepy take on childhood and going places your mom wouldn’t approve of.
“Putting the Pieces Back” — A tale that includes two of the cleverest twists Bill has ever come up with.
“Man Cave” — This has the feel of one of those true-crime shows on TV. A broken marriage so well fleshed out here it has the sorrowful bitter air of real life.
Reading these stories two or three times while preparing for this introduction I realized one important fact about Bill Pronzini’s work. That much of it, especially in the short stories and stand-alones, is ripe with a sense of Poe-esque dread.
The Steinbeck influence, as I mentioned in the preceding pages, is what grounds the stories in everyday reality. Bill is a sharp observer both of human behavior and nature. But what animates many of his characters is dread. As is the case in Poe’s best stories. Sometimes the protagonist is afraid of the person he seeks; sometimes the protagonist is afraid of himself.
In one of his two or three most important novels, A Wasteland of Strangers, virtually everybody in the book lives in dread of someone or something. They truly toil in the fields of the Lord.
The Cemetery Man
The first time I saw the Cemetery Man, I knew he wasn’t the usual kind of visitor we have at Shady Oaks. Most folks who come to visit the resting places of loved ones and friends follow one or more of the grid of interior roads so as to get as close to the gravesites as they can. This fellow parked his black sedan — a rental, I found out later — just inside the main entrance gates, opposite the administration building, and walked from there. He wasn’t dressed right for the warm Indian summer weather, either, in a long black overcoat. And he didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go.
Shady Oaks stretches over more than fifteen hillside acres just outside the Los Alegres city limits. The Catholic and Jewish cemeteries are east of the administration building, the larger, wider nondenominational and historic sections west of it. There are a couple of dozen blacktop roads that crisscross the grounds; the ten that lead uphill vertically are known to employees as Up Roads, the seven that run horizontally as Crossroads, and each one is numbered. On the west side the gravesite and outdoor crypt sections between the roads are lettered from A through Z, with A being the lowest near the entrance gates and Z far up on the brow of the hill. I’m explaining all this to give you an idea of what Shady Oaks is like and so you’ll know what I mean when I say I was working on #1 Crossroad above A Section the first time I saw the Cemetery Man.
What I was doing there was cleaning up leaves and twigs and branches that had blown down in a recent windstorm. It was a weekday afternoon in October and the grounds were mostly deserted. The work was easy enough and I was taking my time, so I noticed him as soon as he drove in and parked. He stood for a minute or so to look around, then headed on foot into A Section.