The Deceased

I have a corner of my bedroom where I keep a few stacks of paperback novels that I've purchased over the years, and every once in a while I dip into it. I hadn't read a horror novel in a while, and the only one I had was The Deceased, by Tom Piccirilli. The details of when, how and why I purchased this are lost to me (although as I look the book up on Amazon it's telling me I bought this in June, 2001). I think I read Piccirilli's book Hexes, and must have been encouraged enough to give another of his works a try. I really shouldn't have.

Fans (and writers) of genre fiction frequently complain that it is not taken as seriously as literary fiction, and is unfairly stigmatized. I think that's because most genre fiction is junk, and that's because fans of a particularly genre, like science fiction or horror, read several books of the type and become immune to how tortured the prose can be. When you read a novel by a good writer, and then pick up a book like this, you realize how bad it is. Piccirilli certainly hits on some key horror themes, but the execution of them is muddled.

The premise is promising: a horror writer, son a famous horror writer, returns to the secluded home where his teenage sister murdered his entire family with an ax and then killed herself. She spared him, locking him in the closet. Even more disturbing is that no one ever found the chopped off heads. Something has sparked a return, and though his agent urges him not to, he goes back. The agent's secretary has a friend who is doing her dissertation on the dead horror writer, so the two women follow, and end up in a waking nightmare, as the ghosts of the deceased are quite active and not very friendly.

Piccirilli also weaves in a couple of themes, namely incest and fetuses, as one of the women tagging along is pregnant, and the other lost a baby. It makes for a lurid story, but I'm not really sure what he is saying. The main problem I had with this book is that most of the time I had no clue what was going on. He is poor in setting the scene so that the reader understands who is doing what to whom. Occasionally he hits stride, as the chapter in which we learn how and why the sister goes on an ax-wielding rampage, but these moments are not plentiful enough.

There's also some touches that are groan-inducing. Having the family's last name Maelstrom is a bit much, and just what is the turtle that is wandering around supposed to be?

This book makes me appreciate writers like Stephen King. Though he has written some pretty disposable books at least I have fairly firm grasp on what's going on. I think I'll stay away from horror novels for a while.