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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing Take on Possession as Only Lee Could Accomplish!, August 10, 2004
This review is from: Messenger (Hardcover)
Dodd was working as a package sorter for a Florida post office when he received the package. The package that contained death. Shortly thereafter, Dodd, known to most as a friendly neighborhood postal worker, went on a vicious killing spree.
Ten years later, similar events begin to occur in the quite and friendly neighborhood of Danelleton. Marlene, a well-known postal carrier, enters the post office and opens fire on all those inside, leaving no survivors, shortly after killing her husband and child. Carlton, yet another long-time postal service employee, leaves one day to deliver a package to a private girls Catholic school, only to slaughter and crucify a nun and several students. All of these crimes seem connected via a strange bell and star symbol left in blood at each crime scene. Are the people of Danelleton suffering from some strange psychosis, are they part of some satanic cult, or is there more going on than meets the eye?
Jane Ryan, the Station Manager of the newly re-opened Danelleton West Branch Post Office, and her cohort and love interest police Chief Steve Higgins, are in a race against time to save themselves and the rest of the dainty town from the unwelcome visitor.
A mysterious man named Dhevic has seen this all before, and he intends to do something about it. Whose side is he on, and what knowledge does he have of the occurrences?
The Messenger has a message to deliver from Lucifer, and the inhabitants of Danelleton are his unknowing and unwilling servants. Using a force similar to possession, The Messenger infests the minds of those he chooses and convinces them to serve his purpose, which they do almost without fail.
Edward Lee proves yet again that he is the undisputed master of the extreme horror novel. This novel, like his others, is sprinkled with gruesome depictions and vivid imagery, as is his trademark. Indeed, Lee leaves little to the imagination. Yet that is why we readers keep coming back for more! Though this novel is more sedate than some of his previous works, it should still delight the gore-hounds in addition to fans of more mellow horror.
If you have read "City Infernal" and "Infernal Angel," you will already be familiar with many of the descriptions and creatures within various snippets throughout the book, as Lee clearly draws from his previously established visions of Hell. However, this particular book draws slightly less from such imagined imagery. Instead, "The Messenger" plays out more like a thriller novel with a supernatural or parapsychological twist. Of course, with Lee the twist is always a noteworthy one that is very worth the time and money, even if a bit predictable.
I highly recommend this, and any of Lee's other incredible novels to those who have the stomach for them! This book, in its hardcover format, is limited to 450 signed and numbered copies, so pick yours up now!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful But Fails in Some Details, August 26, 2004
It is a pleasure to Edward Lee's books coming out frequently. Unfortunately this one, while a fascinating subject, makes many blunders that destroy the overall work.
In this book we get glimpses of a traditional Hell, as opposed to those in the Infernal books. A small town is hit by a wave of violence as various postal employees go on individual rampages. The postmaster is worried and central to the story as is her new romantic interest, the chief of police.
What we have is that various people fall under the control of the Devil's messenger (the evil counterpart to Gabriel). Each victim commits atrocities at the physical and psychical direction of the Messenger.
Sex and violence play a big part in this story and the reader is gripped with a need to know what happens next right up to the last page. A very clever story from a true master of horror.
But what of the blunders? Well here are a few. A couple has sex after the woman's kids retire for the night. They go at it again a few nights later in the living room and spend the night there naked. No mention of kids this time. The setting is a small town that is described as very quiet and almost totally crime free (the worst being an occasion T-Ping of a tree) but later we learn that the town has an abundance of strip clubs and local prostitutes (huh?). Anyway, these problems and others will get to some readers but be ignored by others. The atmosphere of the book is so thick as to help obscure many of the flaws (like no Federal involvement).
If you are a fan of Mr. Lee, you will definitely want to check this one out as it pulls no punches.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Behold the Messenger!, August 15, 2004
I am an unabashed Edward Lee fan. Although I have only read a few of his novels, the smorgasbord of unsettling violence, intense erotica, and whiplash prose make his writings enormous fun for a dedicated horror fan. The biggest problem facing a potential reader is how to acquire many of his books and short stories. Nearly all of his old mass-market efforts are out of print, many other novels and collections are available only through wallet busting small press editions, and the subject matter of a majority of his tales virtually insures much of his work will remain in obscurity. In other words, I am an Ed Lee fan insofar as my meager funds allow. It does appear a ray of hope is breaking on the horizon: Lee now writes novels for mass market powerhouse Leisure press, and a few of his earlier works are starting to reappear in slightly more affordable trade paperbacks. "Messenger" falls into the mass-market cheapie paperback category. Lee's Leisure publications unfortunately tone down the over the top violence we're used to, perhaps in an effort to appeal to a general audience incapable of accepting the sorts of atrocities outlined in "The Bighead" and "Portrait of a Psychopath as a Young Woman," two other Lee novels that wallow in depravity.
Still, watered down Ed Lee is preferable to no Lee at all. "Messenger" tells the story of a series of horrific nightmares unfolding in the town of Danelleton, Florida. It's a nice town, a town where everyone waves to everyone else. It's a town that's starting to grow into a small city, which requires the postal service to open a second mail hub in order to handle the explosion of packages, letters, and other correspondence endemic to a bustling population center. Roughly twenty years before the main events of the story, a mysterious package arrived at the Danelleton post office, a package that led directly to a killing spree of epic proportions. Now, two decades later, the horror that unfolded in Danelleton on a beautiful Florida day once again rears its ugly head. But no one makes the connection at first, not the postmaster of the new branch office, Jane Ryan, or chief of police Steve Higgins, or anyone else in town. When a pretty, mild mannered postal employee named Marlene Troy strolls into the main post office and pumps bullets into everyone she finds, warning flags start to fly. An enigmatic message Troy left behind, a sketch of a bell with a star emblem, soon appears at subsequent mass killings committed by other postal employees. What is going on?
Think cult activity. Think satanic doings. Think of Lucifer's need for a mouthpiece to the world known to certain individuals as the Messenger. It turns out a very special object of massive import to the underworld resides in the musty basement of the new branch post office, an object with the ability to turn the sane and rational into enraged, frothing at the mouth murderers capable of the most heinous of crimes. No one in Danelleton is safe from the minions of the Messenger, not the postal employees who so often fall under the scurrilous influence of this fallen angel or the citizens walking around with targets on their backs. It's up to Jane Ryan, Steve Higgins, and a mysterious figure who knows more than he is willing to let on named Alexander Dhevic to decode the crimes and figure out how to stop Hell's machinations. It won't be easy, though. The Messenger has his eye on everyone, especially Jane Ryan and her children, and what the Messenger wants he usually gets. One way or the other.
Of the Edward Lee Leisure novels--"City Infernal," "Infernal Angel," "Monstrosity," and this one--I think "Messenger" is the best one of the batch. I liked the idea of a fallen angel using postal employees to carry his unholy messages to the world. I also enjoyed several of the imaginative atrocities described in loving detail. For example, one postal worker under the spell of the Messenger pays a visit to a local Catholic girl's school to wreak some decidedly unwholesome havoc. Another minion gives a whole new meaning to the concept of barbecue. I've read more than a few novels from Ed Lee, so I know he's more than capable of describing carnage with more gusto than he shows here, but "Messenger" is still a lot of fun. The conclusion takes the reader for a ride too, with so many twists and turns that you should be highly suspicious of any reviewer who will claim--and they will, too, you just wait and see--that they saw the whole thing coming long in advance. It's disappointing to realize I shall have to wait another year or so before this writer's next mass-market paperback hits store shelves.
"Messenger" is enjoyable, but the book does have its flaws. I found it extremely hard to believe that Jane Ryan had no idea a massacre took place in Danelleton twenty years before she took the job of postmaster. Dozens of people perished at the hands of a crazed postal employee and no one knows about it? People who work for the post office don't know about it? C'mon! Totally unbelievable! Everyone knows the national media would have been all over a story like that, even back in the 1980s. Lee's explanation that the Danelleton city council hushed it up fails to provide an adequate explanation for such a huge plot hole. A few other comparable problems pop up from time to time, but such difficulties seldom interfere with the flow of the narrative. "Messenger" is a great starter book for readers interested in moving beyond King and Koontz into the darker realms of horror fiction.
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