Up Goes the Curtain - a Penny Parrish book

I picked up this book at Atlanta Vintage Books when we went through Atlanta this past summer going up to Kentucky to visit my Dad.  Having done community theater, I have grown rather fond of reading stories about the theater (such as the Mary Perkins, On Stage newspaper strips, the Carol Page theater stories, Terry Carvel's Theater Caravan, and the Backstagers series for young adults).  So, when I saw this cover, I did not hesitate to buy the book.  I have heard the author, Janet Lambert, mentioned in various book groups to which I belong, but I've never actually owned or read any of her books.  I had always assumed her books were simply young adult romance stories, but this book definitely proves me wrong.  This story was clearly based on Lambert's own experiences, both on Broadway as an actress and as an Army wife (both of these elements playing a large part of this story).  And what surprised me even more is that this book, while having a stand-alone story, is actually part of a series - the fourth book in a series of novels about Penny Parrish (with three prior books being published in 1941, 1942, and 1943 respectively, and two more after this book being published in 1947 and 1950).  Knowing this, I'm more than likely going to track down the other books in the series to see how the character evolves over the course of the decade in which the books were published.  (NOTE - Lambert also wrote series about Tippy Parrish, who is Penny's younger sister, as well as other characters, suich as Parri MacDonald, Candy Kane, Dria Meredith, etc.)

 

Up Goes the Curtain actually contains two separate stories, although Lambert does intertwine them a bit. The book opens with Penny excited about her part in an upcoming Broadway play (her background sounds very similar to that of Carol Page - spent a summer in a stock company training, went to New York, and finally lands a part in a play (p. 10), and, just like Carol Page, she makes a vow that not matter what, she will succeed, so she does not have to return home (p. 12)).  But, since the rehearsals do not begin for three weeks, Penny decides to visit her family, who are staying at Fort Knox, Kentucky where her father and brother are stationed, which begins the mystery that surrounds a young woman named Marcia McMain (what is with the alliteration in names?  Penny Parrish?  Marcia McMain?), who is being escorted to Fort Knox by Terry Hayes, a young man that had previously shown an interest in Penny. Penny is somewhat taken aback by Terry's attitude towards her, but it slowly begins to dawn on her that since Terry is serving in the military, perhaps the woman was a job - perhaps he was actually keeping tabs on her because she was a spy!  (What she does not know, but what the reader does learn thanks to a point-of-view switch to Penny's brother and his wife, who are fully aware of the situation, is that the woman is indeed a spy, and it is Terry's job to flush her out in the open!)  Of course, a lot of miscommunications ensue as the family tries to convince Penny to stay out of it, but Penny is determined to prove her theory - and, of course, she ultimately does through a fateful night at a movie theater when she witnesses the exchange of a note between the woman and a young serviceman.  Penny is able to get a hold of that note, and its contents end up giving the Army everything they need to capture the woman and her accomplice, as well as to foil the damage these spies intended to do.

 

The second half of the book features Penny's return to New York with her sister-in-law (whose name just happens to be Carrol), where they stay at the lavish multi-bedroom apartment Carrol had inherited from her family.  A young woman by the name of Letty, whose husband also happens to be in the military and fighting overseas, joins them in the house, keeping Carrol company while Penny begins her rehearsals and eventually opens the show.  And, in yet another similarity with the Carol Page series, Penny ends up having difficulties with a stage manager who seemingly dislikes her, going out of his way to make things difficult for her - but she eventually learns the truth behind his gruff attitude, and the two develop a friendship of sorts.  In addition (like Carol Page), she happens to personally know the big-name actress who is headlining the play, and because of that, the other actors try to get in her good graces - all except one actor, Miltern Wilde (what a name!), who makes every effort to upstage Penny in every scene they share.  Penny's courage grow, however, to the point where she turns the tables on him one night when he purposefully steps on her toe, causing it to bleed, and she steals the scene from him, getting a thunderous ovation (p. 157) that leads to her gaining his respect.

 

The book ends on a rather sad note, with Penny receiving news that a young man she knows was shot down in a plane over Germany, and it is uncertain whether he survived or not.  There is also uncertainty regarding her growing friendship with the stage manager, and no resolution whatsoever about her feelings for Terry Hayes.  Instead, the book ends with Penny putting on her makeup for another performance of the play, sighing to herself, "It doesn't matter about me - the show must go on" (p. 189).  That ending alone is enough to make me want to hunt down the next book in the series to see where Penny goes from here. 

 

While I had a bit of disappointment in the fact that entire book was not focused on the theater, I did rather enjoy that spy/mystery part in the first half of the book.  The second half that did feature the theater - well, I wish we could have gotten an entire book on that, so the reader could get more fleshed out characters and feel more of the drama and tension among the cast.  As it is, we only get touches upon each of the characters, and I, as the reader, do not really know enough about them, nor spend enough time with them, to really care about how they interact with Penny and how she treats them.  I will be curious to see if any of the other books in the series follow Penny's acting career.  Definitely not a bad read, and one that has me curious enough to read more.

 

RATING:  7 large cokes with lots of ice out of 10 for an unexpected combination of war, spies, theater, and drama - like getting two books for the price of one! 

To the Dark Tower - a Magnum Gothic original

This is another one of those Gothic novels that I picked up because of the cover - in this case, it has a very slight resemblance to the Rudy Nappi cover of the Nancy Drew book, The Sign of the Twisted Candles.  Both books have a single candle prominently displayed on the cover, with the head of a woman next to the candle, and when I saw this book at the used bookstore, my mind immediately went to the Nancy Drew book, so I bought it.  It has been sitting on my shelf for several years, so I figured it was about time I read it.  The back cover blurb cries out "Witch Cult!" and goes on to give a brief synopsis of the story awaiting the reader inside.  Knowing how most Gothic novels of the '60s and '70s often hinted at supernatural tales (but by the end reveal it to be merely a pretense used by a vile villain to achieve his or her goals), I anticipated the same here.  Boy, was I wrong!

 

To the Dark Tower is a somewhat lengthy novel for a Gothic that is not labeled as "Queen-Size" or "Empress Size."  At 187 pages in length, it provides the author with plenty of space to flesh out his story and characters - and yes, I said "his" story.  Lyda Belknap Long is actually a pseudonym for American writer Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994), whose writing includes horror, fantasy, science fiction, and Gothic novels, as well as comic books and non-fiction.  "Lyda" is the name of Long's wife, and so he used her name for his Gothic novels (which is funny, because this particular book has a dedication at the front that reads, "To the untiring help and teachings of my husband, Frank Belknap Long."  I was surprised to learn Long wrote scripts for DC Comics, including stories with Congo Bill and the original Green Lantern, as well as scripts for Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel stories (later known as Shazam!).  When I learned that Long was also a close friend of H.P. Lovecraft, the nature of this story made a lot more sense.

 

When the back cover says "Witch Cult!," it really means it.  The opening Prelude, which is an impressive 18-pages long, does not even introduce readers to the main character.  Instead, we follow a young man named Willie who witnesses a ceremony deep in the Kentucky woods, watching in horror as a young woman is sacrificed to some unseen good.  When he tries to escape, hoping to find salvation in the nearby house of Dr. Wilfred Allen, he is stopped when a robed stranger steps out and leaves an object on the front door of the doctor's house - an object that the doctor finds and with great anxiety throws it into the woods.  Willie finds the object, which is a doll in the likeness of the doctor's female friend, Joan; but the doll has needles sticking into it, and before Willie can do anything about it, he is chased, ultimately meeting his untimely end.

 

Long then jumps to our main character, Joan Lambert, who is driving her car along the desolate backwoods Kentucky road, trying anxiously not to allow her fear to overwhelm her.  An archeologist, Joan has just returned from Spain, where she found some ancient cave writings that revealed a witch cult that existed centuries ago - and her exploration of those caves released an unholy, unseen terror that has followed her across the ocean to Kentucky!  She hopes Dr. Allen can help her get these terrors under control, but the sudden appearance of a man in a monk robe standing in the middle of the road causes her to swerve up an embankment.  What follows is a rather lengthy story of dark horror that wavers between the real and the imaginary.  Are Joan's fears grounded in reality, or are they all really just in her head?  Dr. Allen has invited a group of specialists to his secluded home in the hopes of helping Joan.  But when Willie's body turns up, and a young couple on their honeymoon wind up dead in their car at the bottom of a gully, it is clear there is more going on here than imaginary fears.

 

I do give Long credit for making the cult very real.  The deaths of Willie and the young couple (as well as another couple who stop to help them) are rather brutal and unexpected, making the book all that much darker.  What has me confused, however, is the title and the cover to the book.  To the Dark Tower would seem to hint that there is some tower of a great mansion involved in the story somehow - even the cover has painted a dark mansion in the background, behind Joan's floating head.  Yet, nowhere in the story is there any tower (not even mentioned in passing!), nor is there any house that would resemble the one on the cover.  In fact, there is also no candle used anywhere in the story!  The tale is set in the modern time, with motor vehicles, electricity, and such, so there is no need for any candles.  So, this begs the question - what prompted the title and the cover art?  I'm aware that many publisher used (and re-used!) cover art for their Gothic novels that had no real relation to the story inside; they simply wanted covers that would attract those who were hooked on the Gothic craze that had taken over store bookshelves everywhere.  But the title?  It has no connection whatsoever to the story, so one is left to wonder why...

 

I did like the fact the story was set in Kentucky, my home state.  I wish Long had narrowed down a location within the state, even if it was simply to have the characters drive through a specific area or mention a nearby town.  Instead, Long keeps it vague, simply keeping it in a small town with plenty of wooded area.  Even his references to Joan's time spent in Spain does not narrow down the location to any particular area of that country.   There are, however, a few names in the book that caught my eye.  When Joan meets the specialists at Dr. Allen's house, the men's names (which I'm guessing were arbitrarily chosen by the author) brought a smile to my face.  The first is John Claymore (p. 132), whose last name is also the name of a city used by Mildred Wirt Benson in her Madge Sterling series, her Penny Parker series, and a few other of her books.  The second is Joseph Moulton (p. 133), whose last name was the middle name of the creator of Wonder Woman (William Moulton Marston).  The third is Helen Traven (p. 133), whose last name is shared by novelist B. Traven, which was a pen name of an unidentified activist who authored a number of books between the 1920s and 1960s.  It is doubtful Long pulled those names from those particular places, but it is a fun coincidence.

 

The story is very heavy on exposition and very light on dialogue, which is one aspect that I did not enjoy.  The majority of the book focused on Joan's fears of the unseen terror that seemed to lurk just out of sight, always following her, always leading her to wonder if death might not be a better option than living the rest of her life with this fear overpowering her.  Long stays inside Joan's mind, with her obsessive fear completely taking her over, and after a while, you (as the reader) wish the author would ground the book in some level of reality with conversations and interaction with other people.  However, finding out after I finished reading the book that Long was friends with Lovecraft, it gave me a new point-of-view with the story, and I think I can appreciate his writing style a little more.

 

This is far from your typical Gothic novel of that era.  If you are expecting a story of a young, innocent woman being whisked away to a foreboding mansion with two men vying for her affection with dark secrets surrounding them at all every turn - this is not one of those stories.  But, if you want something a bit different, a bit darker, and a bit morbid, then this one is for you.

 

RATING:  8 peculiarly shaped musical instruments out of 10 for giving readers a completely different side of the Gothic tale. 

 

Grendel, Kentucky - an Upshot Comics mini-series

Having been born and raised in Kentucky (Louisville, to be exact), I have a soft-spot when it comes to stories set in my home state.Whether it be Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers or Jane Pellew in Kentucky or Unsettled Things, or any number of other books, I can't help but pick them up.  So when I saw this new comic book series from the indy publisher AWA Studios (Upshot), Grendel, Kentucky, I knew right away that I had to have it.  As usual with mini-series, I wait until all of the issues have been published and are in my hands before I read it so that I don't have to wait month-to-month to see what happens - I can read the entire story in one sitting.  I'm honestly not sure what I expected, because quite frankly, I didn't read too much into the premise of the comic when I picked it up - the title enough was what sold it for me.  But after reading the 4-issue mini-series, all I can say is - WOW!

 

Grendel, Kentucky is touted as being a modern-day retelling of the 'Beowulf" tale, but that means little to me - I've never read 'Beowulf.' So, from page 1 of this story, everything in it was totally new to me.  Written by Jeff McComsey and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards tell the Southern Gothic / horror tale of a small town in Kentucky that has made a deal with a devil - quite literally.  Only, Clyde Wallace tries to break that deal, and it costs him his life.  That one death sets off a chain of events that brings his prodigal daughter, Marnie, back to Grendel, Kentucky (along with her gang of biker women) and reunites her with her brother Denny and her cantankerous grandfather Randall "Pap" Wallace.  By the end of the first issue, readers learn that Clyde Wallace was not killed by a bear - and each member of the Wallace family knows it.  But what they plan to do about it is what this story is really about.

 

McComsey and Edwards build the story in a very thematic manner, with the backstory being told little by little, and the secret that Marnie has been keeping nearly all her life finally coming out just before the grand finale.  There are plenty of gruesome fight scenes, some horrific deaths, some touching scenes, and some hard-hitting, violent scenes of vengeance.  I absolutely love the relationship between Marnie and her brother, Denny, as well as her entire girl-gang biker group.  And while the setting is the backwoods of Kentucky, McComsey does not give us the standard stereotypes.  Marnie is the strong, Sigourney Weaver-type who is not afraid to face down the monster that scared her as a child - both in order to protect her home and to seek vengeance for everything the demon has taken from her.  I honestly wouldn't mind seeing more stories with her, although these four issues tell a complete story and I would not want anything to lessen the impact of this tale.

The art is dark and gritty, but so is the tale, so it works well.  Love the covers that pay homage to the old '70s movie posters!  And speaking of which, at the end of the first issue is a special treat for those who lived in Kentucky, particularly in Louisville.  McComsey and Edwards provide a one-page faux newspaper that gives an article about Clyde Wallace's death.  But that is not what I loved about it.  No, what I thoroughly enjoyed about that newspaper page were all of the movie theater ads.  It appears McComsey and/or Edwards did their research, because they included ads for ACTUAL movie theaters from back in the day - - from the Kenwood Drive-In (which was just down from where I lived!) to the New Albany Drive-In across the river, to the Preston Drive-In - plus, the South Park, Lakewood, and Parkway theaters as well! Yeah, it may be a small thing that means nothing to most people, but for this Kentucky native, that kind of attention to detail just made the entire mini-series that much more enjoyable.

This series is definitely one I would recommend for comic fans, horror fans, and Kentucky fans - a true gem!

RATING:  10 monsters up in a tree out of 10 for a horrifying tale filled with good ol' boys, tough-as-nails women, and an interesting little twist in the final two panels...

Unsettled Things - A Pameroy Mystery in Kentucky

I will be the first to admit - I have been pretty lucky in the past when I've picked up new series to read. For the most part, I have enjoyed the books, and I have gone on to continue collecting and reading the various series.  Some have been better than others, but only a very few have been so bad that I just decided to put a stop to it after finishing the first book. Unfortunately for the Pameroy Mystery series, this happens to be one of those very few cases.

Unsettled Things, which is the first Pameroy Mystery, caught my attention for two reasons - first, it featured a young protagonist who had supernatural intuition and could see and interact with ghosts; second, this first mystery is set in Kentucky, which is my home state where was born and raised. With these two things going for it, I pretty much figured I couldn't go wrong. Well, no bones about it - I was wrong!

The protagonist for the series is Lillia Pameroy - a twelve-year old girl with the knack for not only seeing ghosts, but also becoming immersed in visions of the past.  Growing up, she was made to believe it was all in her imagination.  An "imagining," she calls it.  But for the first time, she is made to believe that these imaginings are more than just in her head.  A visit with her grand aunt in the heart of Kentucky opens up a whole new world when Lillia sees a ghost, who appears to be leading her on a path that will not only put a restless spirit to rest, but also reunite long lost relatives.  With the help of newfound friend Zoe, as well as some unexplained moments with the older Miss Margaret, Lillia faces not only the truth of her own abilities, but the truth about her family and how she fits in.

All in all, the plot to the book sounds like a great mystery. Unfortunately, author Brenda Felber does not succeed with the execution.  First, and probably the worst part, is the fact that Lillia is not a likable character at all. She whines throughout the entire story, and none of her conflicts come across as real.  Maybe it's me reading this from an adult perspective, but I didn't find anything at all complex or sincere about Lillia, and I felt absolutely no empathy for her predicament. Rather, she is written more as a spoiled little brat rather than a sympathetic young girl with the ability to see ghosts and into the past.  I try and remember back to my younger days of reading, and even then, I don't see myself actually finding any redeeming qualities about Lillia that would have made me like her.  In fact, I found Zoe to be a much more fascinating and rounded-out character in the story.

Second, the mystery itself felt very second-place to the story of Lillia and her family issues.  It seems Lillia's mother previously lost a child, and Lillia was able to sense it, even as a small child.  So, that creates some tension between Lillia and her mother; and when her father drops her off at her grand-aunt's house while he takes her younger brother on a trip, it leaves Lillia feeling more left out.  And while these things might create a subtle undercurrent with most stories, they seem to always be thrown into the forefront of this book.  There is actually very little of the mystery itself in the first half of the book, and there is no real active mystery-solving until the last one-fourth of the book, which made it difficult for me to keep pushing through, wondering when the mystery would actually begin.

Finally, the constant shifts between first-person point of view and third-person point of view were a bit jarring and clunky.  The story would have been a much smoother read if Felber had simply maintained a consistent POV throughout the entire book.  I personally think the third-person point of view would have read nicely, but I'm guessing the author felt it necessary to use first-person voice in order to give readers some insight into Lillia's mind.  Unfortunately, it made the book more difficult to read.

Once the mystery starts, however, there are some good moments, such as when Lillia begins to see spirits from the past, and when she finds herself immersed in the home of one of the ghosts - for this moment reveals to her a secret connection to one of the townspeople who she and Zoe had agreed to help!  Just wish there had been more great moments like this throughout the book, as it would have made it a much better read.

I'm planning to keep this book, simply because it is set in Kentucky, so I will keep it with my other series book set in my home state - however, I won't be picking up any more books in this series, as neither the character nor the writing are enough to hold my interest.  Ah well, you win some, you lose some...

RATING:  3 servings of homemade mac and cheese out of 10 for the supernatural elements and the Kentucky setting.