Customer Reviews

Just Before Dark

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Jack MacLane wrote 5 horror novels in the 80's/90's. Amazon has only four of them listed. The fifth (and worst) was called "Keeper of the Beast" and featured a kid on the cover imprisoned in a jail made of those letter blocks that kids play with. I barely remember that one, only that it wasn't as good. Bear in mind I read them years ago, when I was in middle school, so I can't speak for the quality of writing.

Except for "Blood Dreams." I forgot to read it "back then," wanted to savor it for later. I read it a couple of years ago and found the writing style to be pretty simplistic. By no means literature, or even great literary genre fiction, it was still a fast paced interesting story about dreams that build up to a strange finale.

"Just Before Dark" was about the best of them. It centered around a junk yard which was actually a front for the mob. Some creepy things started killing people, the mob was killing people... some accountant worked in a trailer in the middle of it all. Strange story.

"Rest In Peace" was a pretty scary book about a house next to a graveyard and the weirdness that surrounds it. Zebra was good about slapping a cover onto a book that had nothing to do with the story, and this was a good example. The cover made it look like a vampire book, but was more like a cross between Jack Ketchum's "Off Season" and Richard Laymon's "The Woods Are Dark." I read this at my grandparents' house and had trouble sleeping.

"Goodnight Moom" was a great horror book for a thirteen/fourteen year old, but I don't know if I'd like it much now. Father beats kid and abuses mother, locks kid in basement, kid turns into a homicidal maniac and goes on a killing spree. The father has to track him down... good fun night time reading.

Jack MacLane is actually the pen name of western writer Bill Crider, and is reportedly a friend of Joe Lansdale. Funny how I discovered him years before Lansdale, who is now my favorite writer. Perhaps MacLane even paved the way to my discovering greats like Lansdale, Ketchum, Laymon, and for that I thank him and will always enjoy the memory of his books. I am, however, afraid to go back and reread them, as I am afraid to go back and rewatch "Howard the Duck."