Customer Reviews

The Pines (Leisure Fiction)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

THE PINES
Robert Dunbar
Delirium Books (2006)
$50.00
(Note: This is the author's unabridged edition of the original Leisure edition from 1989)

The end of the 80s saw the implosion of horror as a power in the market place, with the exception of the heavy hitters, like King, Rice, and Koontz. At one point in 1989 there were no less than 45 new horror titles in less than a month from various publishers and imprints hitting the sagging shelves. There were copycats of copycats, and the market was glutted with the bad to worse that horror fiction had to offer.
One book that made it under the closing flap of the 'death of horror' pronouncement from the all-knowing gurus of NYC Publisher's Row was Robert Dunbar's THE PINES (1989 Leisure). It's slow, tense buildup of how four people come together on a dark and windblown night to confront the terror known as The Jersey Devil. Sounds like a simple enough setup, right? Well, yes and no, because Dunbar did it with such power that it defied its own simplicity. And even during this final desperate onslaught of horror regurgitation, THE PINES caused many to sit up and take notice. The book was dark, bleak, and maybe one of the twenty best books to come out of that explosive period in horror fiction.
But it wasn't without its flaws.
Pages of scenes had been cut, and characters subtracted, for the sake of word count.
Now Dunbar, with the fine folks at Delirium Books, has done what he's always wanted to do with THE PINES: He's given us the book as it was originally intended in all its profundity. The missing pages have been added back in; storylines have been properly ripened for the book's final chapters.
Simply put, THE PINES is the demented lovechild of Faulkner and King.
With its tableau of honest characters, full of depth, flaws, and the need for redemption, an unswerving buildup of terror that defies logic, and Dunbar's deft descriptive powers that makes the New Jersey Pine Barrens come to life, this is the way great horror should be written. There is an underlying Southern Gothic sensibility to Dunbar's horror, one that speaks volumes about the nature of violence, and the casual way in which it ensnares good people and warps them. There are no missteps in THE PINES. The editing is managed with such masterly skill that the author is able to pull together divergent storylines into a heady brew, and by book's end one feels the sweat and terror dripping from the page. I was in awe at how much storytelling he was able to do in short bursts, and how he was able to make you feel the grit and despair of the people who call The Pine Barrens home, The Pineys.
For those who do not know, there's a reason why THE PINES comes off with such power. Robert Dunbar is one of the world's leading authorities on the legend of The Jersey Devil. He's appeared in dozens of cable documentaries and done interviews for several magazines on the subject. His background in the field of amateur cryptozoology and Jersey mythos makes him uniquely suited to give the story a backbone of believability, and he holds nothing back in this unabridged version. So for those of you who have read the original version, take that and times ten with this Delirium Books edition.
Word is Dunbar has a sequel coming down the pike: THE SHORES, also from Delirium Books. And I hear it is even more horrifying than THE PINES.
And let me give a quick kudos to the cover artist, Mike Bohatch, for he has truly captured the black and uneasy sense of THE PINES story with his artwork. I would buy a framed print of that cover, folks. Very nice, indeed, Mike. Good job.

--Nickolas Cook.

If you like your scare-fare fast and heart-pounding, take a detour into THE PINES, where the legendary monster, the Jersey Devil, hunts for prey in the dark and mysterious Pine Barrens of New Jersey. For some reason, campers are drawn to blighted netherworld of the Pineys--as the region is called by the locals--and their camping trips don't always end pleasantly. Grisly deaths occur regularly in the weird woodlands, deaths that the backwater Piney dwellers ascribe to the beast, the Jersey Devil. Young Matthew, a strange little boy, and his mother Althena live out in those woods, and when Althena's good-for-nothing boyfriend--who also happens to be a police sheriff--is murdered, Althena joins with her boyfriend's partner to help solve the case. The killer might be wild dogs, it might be a serial killer. Or it might be something else. This is a finely wrought and engaging horror thriller that takes the reader into the Pine Barrens for a roller coaster horror experience that is structured around a legendary beast that many people--including the author--believe truly exists. When you've finished reading this novel, TombRats, I'll bet you'll be a believer, too!

This horror novel has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years. In it, Robert Dunbar tackles the legend of the Jersey Devil -- the supposedly satanic half-man, half-beast that has terrorized residents of southern New Jersey since the 18th century. Dunbar takes this legend, along with its Pine-Barrens setting, and runs with it. The story revolves around a widowed young woman, her troubled son, her co-workers in a rural ambulance unit, and her cop boyfriend. I don't want to give away anything, but I will say that Dunbar's re-working of the old legend is very imaginative and at times truly scary. For example, he has a scene involving several young couples camping in the Pine Barrens that does a terrific job of playing on fears that anyone who has ever been alone in the woods at night has had.

UPDATE: Don't be frightened away by the handfull of negative reviews posted here. This book is not hard to follow, but the care with which it is constructed may not be apparent on first reading. I appreciated it even more the second time through.

The Pines is a story that takes place in the heart of the NJ Pinelands and is about the NJ Devil. It grabs you at the first page and keeps you riveted until the very last sentence. The violence, sex & gore are plentiful so I would not recommend this for the squeamish. It is one of the best horror tales I've ever read and I have re-read it at least a dozen times. If you like the writing style of Laymon or Edward Lee, you will love this book.

I am not all that familiar with the Jersey Devil legend... other legends have always taken the forefront in my research and reading. But I am aware of the Jersey Devil who haunts the Pine Barrens. Dunbar's novel "The Pines" takes the old tale and adds a new spin on it. The concept is interesting, engaging and filled with quite a few victims who end up all but inside out.

The Short Summary: We follow Athena, Steve, Doris, Matty, and just about everyone else who lives in a small town as people start dying in the woods. The main characters are the operators of the beat up ambulance and the police. Of course there are quite a few other locals... they bicker, fight, and eventually try to figure out what is killing all of these people in such violent ways.

So there is woods, a monster, inbred people, and lots of others for the monster to eat... why am I not raving about this book and demanding that you go buy it? The presentation. Much of this book is written in dialogue, which I never thought I would have an issue with... but we meet characters when they start speaking and they are very rarely described. Often many people will be talking for quite some time before they are named, then you have to go back and re-read the conversation to put it into context. Apart from what you pick up in the conversations and the characters' internal dialogue... very little of the story is explained. The characters all have very similar speech patterns, opinions, and attitudes which makes it even harder to pick out who is talking until they are named. Also they react in their speaking to things we aren't told are going on. It felt very much like I was back in theater class and reading a play with all of the blocking left out.

In the end, I really didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters, and with the frustration of always trying to figure out who was saying what and the constant switching back and forth from scene to scene as well as the large cast of people (though the total number wasn't all that high, the percentage of characters that added nothing to the forward progression of the story was very high), I had a difficult time convincing myself to read this one all the way to the end.

I know that the ending of this book was touted as brilliant, and it being "shocking" but to be honest... I wasn't all that shocked, I pretty much knew what was going on before the book was half way over. I know that there is a severe lack of horror material on the Jersey Devil... but I really didn't feel that as a horror book, this really stood up to some of the other options that are out there for readers to consume. I won't say that I hated it... but I just really didn't enjoy the style, which is sad because I thought the idea really had merit.

This book was a good read, but I have to admit it left me feeling a little dirty afterwards. You don't really like anyone, and for me that is very important. You need to want them to live for the horror to work when they die.

However, the scenery is, if anything, too detailed, and the attacks come from a source I should have predicted earlier, but couldn't. I enjoyed the reveal.

The Pines by Robert Dunbar was an entertaining read, and the first novel I've read by the author.
I found it well written, but slow to start and populated by unlikeable characters. It picked up around the half-way mark, and finished well enough. I'll most likely read more by Robert Dunbar.

So many levels of horror in this book. I kept hearing the banjo from "Deliverance" while reading it.
Hopeless lives in a hopeless society gets scared by horrible killings in the pine forrests surrounding them. Heartbreaking horror book if there ever was one!
Now I will hurry up and buy the other Robert Dunbar book that I can get for my Kindle. Can't wait, he's a great writer, and if it's just half as good as this one my money will be very well spend :)

"Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging, in a night full of the hot smells of decay." With these words, Robert Dunbar's novel The Pines transports readers to a place of terror, a forbidden realm somewhere deep within the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a nether world bordered by familiar landscape, yet harsh and alien as an unknown planet.

The Pine Barrens encompass approximately one-hundred million acres, twenty percent of the entire state. The soil, once part of the ocean floor, is too poor to support normal vegetation. The trees are tortured and grotesque, and the inhabitants, possibly descendants of Revolutionary War deserters and criminals, are as twisted and warped as the pines.

The story surrounds Athena Lee Monroe and her young son, Matthew, who live in the ramshackle old house left them by Athena's late husband. Matthew is a troubled child, emotionally disturbed and slightly retarded, yet with an uncanny ability to predict the future. He communicates with a secret friend, an entity his mother believes is only a projection of his own unstable imagination.

Athena feels an unnatural coldness toward her strange son. She leaves him in the care of his simple-minded aunt Pam while she is away on her job with the local ambulance service, and Pam becomes a sort of substitute mother, forming a bond with the boy his mother cannot do.

When a rash of killings sweep the area, wild dogs are blamed for the slaughter, yet Athena suspects otherwise. When her no good lover, the local sheriff, falls victim, Athena and the deputy set out to find the real culprit. They embark on an investigation that becomes increasingly more bizarre and terrifying at every turn.

The story is skillfully plotted, engaging the reader from the beginning and drawing upon the primal fear every human has of the unknown. Suspense builds to an almost unbearable peak as The Pines propels the reader toward its breathtaking conclusion.

Originally published as a mass-market paperback by Dorchester Publishing (Leisure Books) over a decade ago, the new edition includes the complete unabridged text.

Robert Dunbar, whose fiction and articles have appeared in over one-hundred publications, is a playwright as well as novelist and has written and produced work for both television and radio.

With The Pines, he charts a new course in contemporary horror, bringing to life a monster from the myths of American folklore. The Pines is a terrifying excursion into a nightmare world I found impossible to forget. Highly recommended.

Dunbar presents an original and memorable version of the Jersey Devil in his novel THE PINES. I was hooked from the very first page! Dunbar's wit, masterful prose and talent for inventing dark fiction at its best is evident in this brilliant novel. Dunbar stands above many other modern horror authors. He writes like a lengendary author of the past; one who does not forsake quality for the sake of cheap thrills. The genre needs more like him. I look forward to more of Dunbar's fiction.