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Night Film by Marisha Pessl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this novel, but with a few hefty caveats. An intoxicating mix of detective fiction, borderline supernatural horror, and cinephilia, with homages to directors from Hitchcock to Kubrick to Argento (who, like the enigmatic filmmaker of the novel, Cordova, once utilized a closeup of his own eye in one of his earlier films), Pessl’s NIGHT FILM lies just on the outskirts of brilliant. The plot held me tight as it peeled back its onion-like layers to reveal more and more of the mysterious Ashley Cordova and her filmmaker father, despite a handful of dry spots in the lengthy narrative. I found most of the characters fascinating, and the use of multimedia aspects, such as reprinted pages from fictional websites and magazines, added an enjoyable illusion of verisimilitude.

Unfortunately, one of the big drawbacks of the novel is that our point-of-view narrator, investigative journalist Scott McGrath, is not especially colorful or even all that bright (twenty-something drug dealer Hopper, who assists in his investigation, turns out to be a far better detective than McGrath). He’s driven by an obsession with Cordova that is simultaneously not explained well enough to the reader and not big enough to be such a driving factor in his life’s work. Worse, he’s a deadbeat divorced dad right out of central casting who constantly puts his work before his obligation as a father to an adorable moppet, alternately abandoning her or putting her in danger, which is something we’ve seen so many times it’s already a painful cliche. The novel is told in first person, which leaves us stuck for 600 pages in the mind of the least interesting character.

Although Pessl knows how to turn a phrase on occasion and can sometimes conjure exactly the right word to transform a good description into a perfect one, I found myself mostly unimpressed with her prose. She has what I found to be an unfortunate and annoying habit of forcing italicized words into almost every sentence, as if she doesn’t trust to reader to understand by context which word should be emphasized. It makes for bumpy reading.

Luckily, I found the novel strong enough to overcome both those caveats, and I do recommend it for fans of smart, brainy thrillers. There’s an ambiguity to the tale that might turn off some readers, but I found it pleasing. After all, as Cordova himself says, it’s not the truth that matters, it’s the stories we tell each other, and the stories we tell ourselves.

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Yesterday I turned 47 — um, I mean I had my ninth annual 39th birthday. It came on a weekend this year, so I pretty much started celebrating Friday night and didn’t stop until Sunday night. Celebrating doesn’t mean what it used to, of course. Once upon a time it meant staying out all night drinking with friends. These days, it’s pizza for dinner and a shot of whiskey.

Anyway, my lovely wife gave me these two books as gifts:

I wonder if she’s trying to tell me something?

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Mark Matthews, whose new novel is All Smoke Rises. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Ten year old Lilly is the victim of a terrible house fire and a wretched family. Her father is an addict with mental illness, her mother was murdered and then buried across the street, and her uncle got her addicted to heroin.

Lilly’s tragic story has been told in the book All Smoke Rises, and it may be true, for the author has broken into your house, and placed Lilly’s body on your kitchen counter. He demands you read the manuscript, before cutting his own wrists and bleeding out on your floor.

Now you have decisions to make, for her body may not be dead, and her family is coming for her.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Mark Matthews:

I don’t write horror to scare others, I write it because I am the one who is scared. When I write, my life of quiet desperation instead becomes an audible cosmic scream.

The scariest part of All Smoke Rises, and its companion story, Milk-Blood, is that all of it is true.

All of it.

That doesn’t mean that there’s an actual ten year old girl who still hears the voice of her mother who was murdered, dismembered, and then buried in a shallow grave across the street.

Who became addicted to heroin when her uncle felt it would ease her suffering.

Who discovers that her true father is a schizophrenic, homeless man who had injected his dad’s ashes into his veins when he was craving his next fix.

Just because these things didn’t happen, doesn’t mean they aren’t true.

The urban decay, where abandoned, burnt-out houses stick out like a mouthful of jagged teeth. The isolation of being stuck in this dark bubble alongside the most despairing creatures the universe has to offer. The poverty where children get their best meals from school breakfasts. Addicts who crave heroin in their body the way a vampire craves blood. This stuff clearly exists.

The inspiration for writing these books came from my own work as a substance abuse therapist. For nearly 20 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of addicts. Before this time, I harrowed in my own addiction. I woke up each day and my daily efforts were how to get high and get by. By the grace of the old Gods and the new, I now have 23 years clean and sober, but I have come to understand the immense power addiction has over the human soul.

Real truth would be impossible to believe, and that’s why, I feel, horror writers make up stories. It’s the only way to express truth on the deepest level. Newspaper fiction has its limits, but when reality gets intense, when we pull out the magnifying glass and let the sun shine through and make it burn, that’s when you see it for what it is. The supernatural elements in All Smoke Rises are a way to give the urban decay and addiction a face and a name.

The fact that families are out there, right now, trying to survive in these terrifying environments is, for me, the scariest part. “We are the monsters,” is how Kealan Patrick Burke puts it in the book’s introduction. Despite the dark and gruesome nature of All Smoke Rises, during the time it takes a reader to finish the book, (spoiler alert) more people will die from a heroin overdose than die in this fictional story. Truth is darker than fiction, and the best way to tell that truth, is to make up a story.

Mark Matthews: Website / Twitter / Goodreads

All Smoke Rises: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

Mark Matthews has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Michigan, and is a licensed professional counselor who has worked in mental health and substance abuse treatment for over 20 years. His novel Milk-Blood, along with its companion short story, “The Damage Done,” have been optioned for a full-length feature film. All Smoke Rises: Milk-Blood Redux is the follow up and was published on February 8th, 2016. He is the author of On the Lips of Children, from Books of the Dead Press, which was nominated as a semi-finalist for the 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. Matthews lives near Detroit with his wife and two daughters. All of his books are based on true settings. Reach him at wickedrunpress@gmail.com.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Patrick Rutigliano, whose new novella is Wind Chill. Here’s the publisher’s description:

What if you were held captive by your own family?

Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother’s death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. Obsessing him, controlling him, they now whisper the end days are finally at hand.

And he doesn’t intend to face them alone.

Emma finds herself drugged and dragged to a secluded cabin, the last refuge from a society supposedly due to collapse. Their cabin a snowbound fortress, her every move controlled, but even that isn’t enough to weather the end of the world.

Everything she knows is out of reach, lost beyond a haze of white. There is no choice but to play her father’s game while she plans her escape.

But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it’s already had a taste…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Patrick Rutigliano:

To me, the scariest part of my new novella Wind Chill is its isolated setting…or maybe just that it appeals to me.

A cabin in the remote wilderness, no matter how well equipped, probably sounds miserable to most people. I think this isn’t so much due to a loss of modern conveniences as the lack of human interaction.

People are social animals by nature. Interdependence has allowed us to survive as a species and serves as the touchstone for society. Virtually every conceivable service a person can’t provide for himself can be found via a phone book or 9-1-1. Free time is often spent going out with friends for a drink, to a party, or to be part of an audience. Live together, love together, mourn together. It’s the human way.

So, why does solitude come off sounding so…enticing?

Introversion is surely part of it (I’m a homebody, and I tend to find gatherings draining), but I think a lot of it is the quiet. Connected as we are now, our tendency for chatter has filled our world to the brim with racket: television, social media, and even the steady pulse of street noise. It’s always there–ambient sounds rattling in your skull–even if you don’t notice it. But when you do, it’s about as piercing as a jackhammer. So much so, that the thought of waking up and finding it gone feels like waking up on another planet. And with all those handy services gone, a far more dangerous one, too. But even that’s part of the draw. Because with that complex system missing, things suddenly become a lot simpler.

All the crap that’s become par for the course in modern life disappears. There’s no time card to punch or traffic jams to traverse. Instead it all boils down to living as well as you can without snuffing it. All the pressure and rewards are on you. I think there’s a freedom and simplicity there that resonates with me. And given the ongoing obsession with post-apocalyptic works in this modern age, I have a feeling I’m probably not alone.

So, I suppose the frozen wastes I wrote about hold a certain glamour for me. A siren song that makes me want to enter despite what would likely be dire consequences. I guess there’s just something to be said for choosing a road entirely of your making, even if the rest of the world never gets to see you walk it. Or if you happen to freeze to death Jack Torrance style along the way.

Patrick Rutigliano: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Amazon Author Page

Wind Chill: Amazon / Crystal Lake Publishing

Patrick Rutigliano made his way as a fry cook, cart monkey, and feral cat tamer before going into business for himself. Working as an editor and proofreader in addition to writing, his first independent release, The Untimely Deaths of Daryl Handy, hit Amazon in 2013. His first novel, Surviving the Crash, was released by Retro Rocket Press in 2014. Crystal Lake Publishing put out his newest work, Wind Chill, in January 2015. During his off time, Patrick can usually be found attempting to recreate foreign cuisine, performing the solemn duty of feline waterbed, and having spirited debates with his wife over the failings of Disney villains.