| Personal Demons – A Review by Steve Vernon |
Personal Demons – A Review
by Steve Vernon
Personal Demons, the winner of the first ever Anubis Award for Horror, is a fast and fun hybrid of dark noir and light horror. A tightly written hardboiled plotline with a supernatural over wrap. It's the first novel by an American film maker written for a novel writing competition judged by the atmospheric supernatural master, T. M. Wright. The entire creation is pleasing, albeit somewhat reminiscent of Clive Barker's excellent Damnation Game.
The author, Gregory Lamberson, has an intriguing background. He's a writer/director of three "no-budget" fun shlock horror movies – "Slime City," "New York Vampire," and "Naked Fear." This background clearly shows in Personal Demons. The pacing rolls with a brisk cinematic tempo, as we are introduced to a soul-stealing serial killer called The Cypher, a missing multi-millionare magnate by the name of "Old Nick" Tower, and an ex-cop turned private detective by the name of Jake Helman. Helman's got a personal stake large enough to turn Van Helsing slime green with phallic envy. The Cypher killed Jake's one true love, Shannon Reynolds.
As a first novel, Personal Demons has its share of limitations. There's a bit too much expository dialogue for my liking. For example: "I call them Soul Searchers," (directed towards a pack of zombie/spectres searching for their lost souls) and "The Reaper is here!", (spoken to introduce a really nasty character who sounds like a mutated Karim Abdul Jabbar). And some descriptions, for instance the Reaper, is a little prosaic.
Still, the novel is a fast and entertaining read, with a few juicily grotesque scenes. The segment following Jake's first encounter with the "Soul-Searchers" ends in a startling scene that put me in mind of the chilling missed-it-by-that-much climax of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wives. I had to put the book down to catch my breath.
Personal Demons, was released as a limited, autographed hardcover in October 2004 and also as a nicely constructed trade paperback just this month. The publisher is Broken Umbrella Press. It's a fast-paced read and I'm looking forward to future books from Gregory Lamberson.
Yours in horror,
Steve Vernon