The Return of Count Electric [Paperback]

William Browning Spencer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vampire - the Masquerade | Publication Date: January 4, 1998

In the title story--which tells of a letter from the past that sends a middle-aged man in search of a diabolical engine of death and the identity of a legendary murderer--and other stories, William Browning Spencer demonstrates a wildly imaginative, non-stop narrative skill in the tradition of Roald Dahl and John Collier .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Offbeat plots and characterizations strengthen a collection of 11 tales featuring the usual bunch of loners, sociopaths and psychotics who have spread hints of menace and violence through countless modern short stories. Spencer ( Maybe I'll Call Anna ) adroitly mixes humor with the macabre to intensify the horror in pieces like the title story, which chronicles the re-emergence of the narrator's psychotic alter-ego, who electrocutes his victims. Black humor also comes into play in "The Wedding Photographer in Crisis," whose protagonist forces the groom to go through with the ceremony at gunpoint, and in "Haunted by the Horror King," which shows a writer driven to madness by the success of Stephen King. Spencer likes to give a nod to other writers: "Snow" is a modern version of Somerset Maugham's "Rain;" the eerie "A Child's Christmas in Florida" is like nothing Dylan Thomas would have imagined. "Looking Out for Eleanor," the collection's best story, takes a noirish journey through Texas and Florida as two narrators strive to protect the childish, amoral title character. In style and content, these tales hark back to such recently rediscovered '50s existentialist classics as Charles Willeford's Miami Blues .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

A first collection of 11 short stories, many with a Rod Serling-like twist, together with an introduction by Spencer (Maybe I'll Call Anna, 199) that laments the present-tense minimalist state of the literary short story. ``The Return of Count Electric'' is about a narrator who searches in his father's house for a death machine, thinking his father is a serial murderer; instead, he discovers that he himself is the murderer and, once he remembers, begins again his career of crime. ``The Wedding Photographer in Crisis'' concerns a Bill Murray kind of guy who forces a groom to go through with the wedding and films the bride topless. Spencer's antic side is more effective than his Twilight Zone stories: ``The Entomologists at Obala,'' for example, is a biting satire about two naturalists battling it out in a South American rain forest over whose endangered species is the more important--one shoots wasps, and the other takes spiders hostage. ``Looking Out For Eleanor,'' at near novella-length, uses multiple voices and a complex social tapestry to tell the blackly humorous saga of a social worker obsessed with rescuing an attractive client by following her and her seedy boyfriends to Florida. Stories that mostly manage to be otherworldly and strange without turning into horror fiction or mere trots. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing (January 4, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565048717
• ISBN-13: 978-1565048713
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,501,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Return" is electrifying short storytelling, November 24, 2008

By 

Thom Phelps (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Return of Count Electric (Hardcover)

William Browning Spencer doesn't lean toward the uncomfortably creepy, he swims in it. His otherworldly humor, with wit so dry you'll need a Gatorade afterward, at once makes you laugh while making you want to pull the sheets up to your nose. As you journey through "The Return of Count Electric" you'll find a 1990's weirdness that is timeless.

With novels like Resume With Monsters and Zod Wallop, Spencer is often called today's H.P. Lovecraft, and with good reason. He succeeds at Lovecraftian storytelling like none of his peers.

His short stories are frighteningly fun and funnily frightening. Check out the Romeo and Juliet retelling in "Entomologists at Obala." And if you should come by the limited edition print of his more recent short story collection, The Ocean and All Its Devices, get it. It shows that Spencer is just as adept at weaving cyber punk tales as he is at leading you through Lovecraftian mountains of madness.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Consistantly great until the end, June 20, 1999

By 

Shane Tiernan (St. Petersburg, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Return of Count Electric (Paperback)

This guy is really funny and dark at the same time. His style flows and is really easy to read. I don't usually like stuff that's this 'normal' but I plan on reading everything this guy has. By normal I don't mean boring I mean there were no 'fantastic' elements in it like magic or monsters, just people and situations. I thought almost all the stories were very original but the last two were definitely the worst. I think I will like his novels even more than his short stories.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A lukewarm collection, April 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Return of Count Electric (Paperback)

From these short stories I got the feeling that William Spencer is good game for taking the place of Ira Levin in popular fiction: Great premises, underdeveloped plot and characters, and plain jane prose.

The man CAN write, I'll admit to that. He drops ingenuous metaphors and literary references. But the stories hardly feel as a whole, just some witty tidbits tied together in a bundle.

Frankly, Spencer sets the trap for himself with his introuction, where he analyzes the state of short fiction as a playground for writers, where stories are used as prose exercises of preciousist writing, with little fun in the tale to tell. He admits by the end that some of his own stories can be held for having the same (un)qualities... but it seems they had a lot more of it than he expected.

So, this is my scorecard:

"The Entomologists at Obala" is, arguably, the most enjoyable of this stories. A minimalist reworking of Romeo and Juliet, with young lovers fighing through family feuds over exotic insect and aracnid species.

"Looking out for Eleanor" is a psychological suspense story, and the lenghtiest story in the book. That may be key to its success, for it allows the characters to develop their traits and the plot to move at a pleasurable pace.

Spencer adds three literary exercises in character description through metaphor: "The Wedding Photographer in Crisis", "Pep Talk" and "Snow". They may need to be read more than once to sink in, because they somehow feel flat.

There are also three tales I could envision featured in "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", exercises in twist ending: "Haunted by the Horror King", "The Return of Count Electric" and "Best Man". Sadly, by the time the twist came I was expecting it, and failed to shock me.

Lastly, there are "Graven Images", "A Child's Christmas in Florida" and "Daughter Doom", tales where several elements are left intentionally obscure, and which I found to be the most disappointing from the whole lot.

As I said, Spencer can write, and this book may keep you entertained as you read it. But you shouldn't be surprised if, like me, you finish it feeling nothing really happend while you were at it.