HELLSTONE by Steven Spruill

Look for Nessie ... but don't messy!

Ancient horrors meet the modern technothriller in HELLSTONE! Author Steven Spruill did loads of research on Nessie and crafts his own unique version of the monster, something much more surprising and horrifying than a surviving plesiosaur. Unfortunately the story is dogged by jittery pacing, tiresome thriller antics, and a hard man protagonist with a maudlin backstory. It's way better than Konvitz's Monster, but that's damning with faint praise.

We open with an evocative historical prologue and then settle in for some two fisted filler in the present day, before we can finally get back to the loch. But then things get jumpy and we haven't been out on the water for two seconds when the horror strikes! We go back and forth for a while and learn about pagan cults and corrupt authorities, while a bloodless cast of scientists stick around awaiting their inevitable dispatch. The monster hangs around too, more present than in Konvitz's garbage story but still frustratingly ephemeral. The thought and care Spruill puts into his creature is appreciated, but it's almost lost in the padded storytelling.

Spruill's historical vignettes of foreign invaders running afoul of the beast are the best parts of the story, and it's too bad the present day action seems so rote and drawn out. When a supporting character blows their brains out from the horror, the effect is null except to note that another plot thread has been cleaned up. Eventually everything ties up neatly and we're left dissatisfied, having slogged through a 300 page thriller with little to show for it.

Spruill's bibliography impresses even if the total package cannot. Hellstone earns a 2/4 for some swings and roundabouts.

Playboy Press, 1981

THE OGDEN ENIGMA by Gene Snyder

It's been waiting a million years ... to scare you to death! It's got the government so panicked they've locked it away for thirty years in a hangar, tucked away in a far corner of the sinister Dugway Proving Grounds with orders to shoot to kill anyone who tries to get inside. But something's happening now, there are lights in the sky and death on the ground, and soon the whole world will understand THE OGDEN ENIGMA!

I'll quote a previous entry featuring this book's maps for some background on Ogden, Utah: "Before Roswell entered the popular imagination (and after an infamous VX gas leak that killed nearly 4,000 sheep) this was a likely location for Hangar 18 or similar skulduggery." Author Gene Snyder plays coy and writes his novel as based on a "true" personal experience, identical to the opening action where a mysterious student tells writer/professor Ted Lawrence a whale of a tale about that hangar outside Ogden. It's a cute meta structure as Lawrence and his sexy editor Cathy Seward workshop a novel based on their unfolding story.

Some of the cloak and dagger action feels like filler and the climax comes in a bullrush during the final 20 pages, but Snyder manages a tidy tale in just over 300 pages. The enigma is something from out there, and it's been here with us since the dawn of history. Our sick Cold War psychopolitics can only kill or coverup, stacking lie upon lie for fear of submission to truth.

For a solid conspiracy thriller, Snyder's The Ogden Enigma earns three mystery hangars out of four:

Playboy Press, 1980

COVER UPDATES: THE WAVE

Beautiful looking cover showcasing The Wave by Christopher Hyde. Courtesy Playboy Paperbacks, 1981 (original pub. 1979).

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Dugway Proving Ground

Before Roswell entered the popular imagination (and after an infamous VX gas leak that killed nearly 4,000 sheep) this was a likely location for Hangar 18 or similar skulduggery. From The Ogden Enigma by Gene Snyder. Courtesy Playboy Press, 1980.

THE HUNTERS by Burt Wetanson and Thomas Hoobler

Tidy little thriller whose modest aims aren't at all reflected in its hyperbolic ad copy. Far from some proto-Predator hack and slash, this is another spin on The Most Dangerous Game, with a crew of almost-human ETs mounting a very civilized big game hunt to rural Montana. The only problem, of course, is that we're the game. The Hunters get as much characterization as the cast of stock 70s humans and while they're a nasty bunch, the authors draw the two groups closer and closer together as the line between prey and predators blurs. 

The moral? We're them, they're us.

A 2/4 rating for this book that was owned by Cathy and Dick.

Playboy Press, 1979

ALIEN by George H. Leonard

After a month's hiatus POTG returns with a new category: UFO fiction! Here's a cheerfully sleazy offering from author George H. Leonard, who also wrote one of the all-time great works (and titles) of UFO fiction/nonfiction, Somebody Else Is On The Moon, which claimed mysterious megalithic structures were visible in NASA lunar photographs ... This thriller is far more down to earth but still carries our bewildered protagonist on a crash course trek through three decades of UFO hunting, with lots of namedropping and references to the Falcon Lake, Manitoba encounter of 1967, South American UFOs, and Californian Contactees among others. 

Leonard is canny enough to work it all into an original configuration rather than simply recycle Bluebook/disclosure conspiracies, though there's plenty of globetrotting and some CIA/KGB skulduggery. It's all competently written and the ending is as satisfying as any of these UFO/mystery novels can be, so many of which fail to stick the landing after spending 200-300 pages crafting their Ufological setting.

A 1981 reprint of the novel changed the title to Alien Quest, to differentiate it from a certain film which had come out in 1979.

3/4

Playboy Press, 1977