As part of our Countdown to Hallowe’en, our SFFWorld Horror expert, Randy M., gives us his take on a relatively new Horror novel. This is a descendant of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Horror at Red Rock, reviewed by Randy HERE.
For H. P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings
… Being inside now, seeing this place truly, was like learning another world existed within – or alongside – the world he’d always known. Worse, all this time he’d been too ignorant to realize it. The idea troubled him like a pinched nerve.
Charles Thomas Tester is, among other things, a low-level dealer in rare objects living in Harlem and a young man who knows a few things; for instance, when travelling on the subway carrying a guitar case makes you less visible to white people; also, don’t try to read The Supreme Alphabet, and when you sell it to Ma Att minus its final page, she will be angered. But $200 is good money in 1920s Harlem and it helps support his blind father. Sometimes Tester’s guitar case even holds a guitar, though he is not an adept player. Still, knowing a few chords allows him to con people out of money, which leads to meeting Robert Suydam.
Robert Suydam also has interests in the occult, his scholarship escalating with his investments into ancient tomes of forgotten lore. Rumors about him have reached the police and they are following him when he hears Tester playing guitar and he invites Tester to his house to play for his guests the following evening. Once Suydam moves on, Tester meets Thomas Malone.
Thomas Malone, police detective, knows Brooklyn, he has a feel for the Red Hook district, so he knows something is changing, something is coming and he has suspicions about Suydam. Malone also has a sensitivity for the outré, his reading and interests leaning in that direction, so what he feels nags at him. Almost before events start he is investigating, trying to find the source of his unease, impatient with the lack of insight of his ham-handed partner. Why would Suydam stop and talk to a young black guitar player? What is Suydam up to and is he involved with recent disappearances and kidnappings?
Tester’s interactions with Suydam are confusing because Suydam seems not quite of this world and seems to sense something about him, but his interaction with Malone is more disconcerting because Malone sees Tester in a manner unlike other cops, as an individual, though not in a positive way.
If LaValle doesn’t attain the level of cosmic awe Lovecraft strove for, neither did Lovecraft much of the time. What LaValle achieves, and which I would guess was his primary goal, is a sharp sketch of a time and place, overlaying the Lovecraftian cosmic view with a more realistic portrayal of being a Black man in 1920s New York City, contrasting Lovecraft’s attitude toward Red Hook and New York City with the perspective of an inhabitant contemporary with Lovecraft and more aware of street-level politics. The social attitudes on display are all too plausible: Police distrust of Black men and distrust of police by the Black community, and a casual recourse to violence to solve even small problems.
That said, LaValle doesn’t preach, he illustrates the effects on an individual and on a community of institutional racism and unchecked violence, and he portrays the inherent racism of the time so that it resonates with the unfortunate chords still sounded in recent news. And in the course of his story he shows Tester recognizing in the power Suydam seeks an opportunity for himself so as events between Suydam and Malone take their course, hidden from their sight by their low expectations, Tester begins to see a path for himself.
Other Lovecraft inspired novels:
The Mist by Stephen King
We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory
The Croning by Laird Barron
