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Post by andydecker on Sept 25, 2023 8:04:08 GMT
Douglas Clegg – Goat Dance (Pocket Books, 1989, 422 pages)  Cover: Jim Warren
Cover found on the net. Thanks to the original scanner.
What secrets lie within the ancient place known as the Goat Dance? A Haunted Lake . . . Seven-year-old Teddy Amory should have died that winter's day on Clear Lake, when she fell through the ice while skating with her older brother, Jake. But something got inside her that day . . . something terrifying . . .
Douglas Clegg published this horror novel in 1989 and became one of the last successful American horror writers before the market collapsed and changed into niche and small press publishing. He published about 27 or so novels and some collections up to the 2020s, did a few pseudonymous books, had a forgettable movie made out one of them and got often praised by his colleagues. He also is mentioned as the first writer to publish a new work ( Naomi, 1989) in serial instalments via email, which I remember subscribing. This first novel is very Kingesque. You have the small town village with its dirty secrets and an evil from the past, a lot of characters and some graphic set-pieces. At first it affords some concentration. Constantly changing viewpoints, loads of different characters, backflash's both of years and days, the same scenes told by different characters and so on. This make it a fast read and is often inspired, but it takes some work to keep track of who has done what when. All the sound and fury can't disguise that the plot is small-town horror 101. Our hero "Cup" Coffey, a disgraced teacher who has just lost his job because he hit a trouble-maker in class returns to his home after being summoned by a mysterious call of the girl he loved as a sixteen-year old, but which happens to be dead. Some old entity is wreaking havoc for revenge and just because, raising the cannibalistic dead. But despite the cliched characters the writer shows a lot of promising skill in writing and maintaining suspense, and the ending is surprisingly gory after the slow start. |
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