"Don't go," Luke said, "listen to me." His voice echoed in the quiet. Same had never heard three hundred people be that quiet. "I've lived a long time. I know the swamps better than any of you. You don't stand a chance against that alligator. He's too old and too tough. Nature is on his side, not yours. Take my advice, stay here where you belong. Stop now while you can. Don't you see? I can feel it. That ain't no gator you're courting. It's death."
Two gator poachers don't make it home after tangling with a 20 foot monster alligator. What's left of them sends the town of Glades, Florida into a panic and then a frenzy, as word travels and the outside world comes crashing in with rubberneckers galore and a select few men who aim to kill the beast. One of them is local boy made good Rye Whitman, now a high powered Miami real estate dealer, his own kind of apex predator. But if he's to survive the treacherous swamplands, he'll need local guide Lee Ferris. Lee made it out of Glades too ... to Vietnam. The things he did there followed him back to Glades, and he doesn't have much use for people in general. A shark like Whitman? Even less so ... Except something is drawing them together, into this doomed, mythical quest to kill the alligator, and they'll need all of Lee's bushcraft and Rye's animal cunning if they're both to survive. But after everything the everglades throws at them, they might not care.
There's strong writing here, with plenty of rich characterizations, pungent Southern melodrama, and a sense of fun that's often missing from so-called "elevated" or literary horror (dig that jello!) but Alligator also suffers from a slack middle and a monster star that's MIA for too much of the story! Katz even loads us up with a convoy of gator bait following leads Lee and Rye into the death glades, but then lets most of them off easy as they each eventually turn tail from the challenge. The bodycount is frustratingly low. Even so, you'll be carried along with Lee and Rye through an onslaught of stinging, biting insects, the burning sun, cutting sawgrass that grows 6 feet high, and always the stinking, sucking waters of the swamp - Katz does a knockout job on the setting, both the rotting shithole town and the endless, trackless green hell beyond.
Alligator must have made a big splash, because there's multiple foreign editions. The Sphere editions are co-credited to husband Paul. There's also a handsome reprint from Centipede Press which came out last year, limited to 500 copies at $125 a pop - but only $95 if you're okay with an unsigned copy!
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| Variations on a theme ... |
Shelley Katz is still writing today at her blog, and also recently edited a "crowd writing" collection of true stories from real people.
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| Our author |
The cover on the classic Dell paperback looks like it should be a stepback, but it isn't, though the scales are embossed for a cool texture effect. The full gorgeous painting is confined to the back cover.
Alligator still gets good reviews nowadays (note that this reviewer also mentions pacing issues), and its inclusion on a top ten list by David Foster Wallace may prejudice you one way or the other. Don't worry about that! For its fear-soaked atmosphere and sweaty Southern melodrama, Alligator earns a solid 3/4 stars.
Dell Publishing, 1977
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