I am going to suggest Tim Powers. It’s not exactly horror, I don’t think, but I find it extremely creepy. Most of his best stuff is historical fantasy, but *Last Call *probably fits your requirements.
I don’t suppose you can read French. On the off chance you can, you might enjoy Patrick Senecal’s Sur le Seuil. Unfortunately, none of Senecal’s books has been translated. The climax was too gory for my taste, but the suspense leading up to it was much more to my liking. Set in modern times, check. Gory, check. Mystery-solving, check. (The mystery is why a Stephen-King-like horror novelist tried to kill himself and how he seems to be able to predict future tragedies). Psychological? The protagonist is a clinical psychologist, so I guess so.
Sounds good, but I’m afraid I don’t read French.
I’m making a list of all these suggestions (the ones I can read, anyway!) and I’ll be off to the bookstore soon (or checking out what’s available on Kindle). Thanks again!
Three more to check out, really topnotch stuff: Bentley Little, John Gideon and Dan Simmons (who as well as writing SF has written a couple of horror masterworks.)
I recommend Bentley Little. Some of his stories do contain weird sexual elements though, but not all of them.
Bentley Little is an expert at the idea of economy of words. He gets his stories across in a powerful and vivid way, but without the rambling cokehead megillahs that Stephen King puts out. He uses way too many words to get his points across, and I find it kind of boring. With Bentley Little there’s none of that boredom. You can finish his stories really fast.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I love some of Stephen King’s stuff (even the long stuff–It is one of my favorites–but he wrote a lot of things that were either clunkers or just too damned long. I’m a fan of long books, but only if they need to be long. King pads a lot. Lately he’s been getting better, though–I liked Duma Key, for example. I’m looking forward to his new one coming out next month, and I hope those thousand pages are necessary (and that the story doesn’t include an author protagonist getting hit by a vehicle and having to deal with the aftermath).
For serious…I read a two or three sentence plot synopsis of The Jauntonce, on this board, and was just blown away by how clever and horrifying the idea was. Then I read the actual story by Stephen King, and it’s so boring and ponderous I don’t even want to finish it! Way to take an amazing concept and actually make it tedious and uninteresting. I almost always like the movies based on King’s work, but nearly always hate his writing.
Try Ray Bradbury’s darker short stories, particularly some of those collected in The Illustrated Man, The October Country (or Dark Carnival), or The Golden Apples of the Sun. I mean, you pretty much can’t go wrong with Bradbury if you like his style, but those three have the most macabre of his works, I think.
You were the person who recommended Hogg to me, weren’t you?
Yep, that was me. Or rather, I said it was the most effed up book I’ve yet read.
So it’s your fault! :smack:
And I’ve regretted it ever since, I promise.
I’d recommend Joe Lansdale. He’s got atmosphere down pat. An excellent writer, but not at the expense of a good story.
I’ll third F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack books. If you’re used to horror at all, they probably won’t scare you, but they are fantastic, action-packed horror. Jack is one of the best characters in contemporary fiction, sort of a fix-it hitman type guy who keeps having run ins with the supernatural. That might solve your investigation/mystery solving wants. Sounds a bit lame now that I type it out, but if there were a way for me to make you read them, I would.
Brian Keene is pretty good. Weird, gory stuff.
But for the OP’s reservations about sexual elements, I would strongly recommend Clive Barker.
Do Bentley Little’s books get less…silly? I’ve only read two of his books (The Mailman and The Walking), and stopped after that because I found it hard to shake the feeling that he was writing earnestly presented parodies of horror novels.
There’s a whole raft of writers who meet some or all of your criteria, including:
[ul]
[li]Brian Keene, best-selling author of several zombie novels and other horror-oriented stuff.[/li][li]John Skipp, best-selling splatterpunk author from the 1980s and 90s who has recently returned to the publishing game.[/li][li]Michael Shea, a living master of the form whose every story achieves or nearly achieves the status of a masterpiece.[/li][li]Jack Ketchum. Look him up. Seriously. Without delay. 'Nuff said. (But watch out for the violent sexual stuff; this might rule him out for you.)[/li][li]Clive Barker. (Obvious, I know, but absolutely essential if you haven’t yet read him.)[/li][li]Joe Lansdale. Sometimes there’s sex, other times just gore, so choose carefully. But the writing’s absolutely brilliant, both conceptually and stylistically. Plus, how can you not like a guy who wrote the story that inspired the movie BUBBA HO-TEP and is simultaneously a best-selling horror writer and a martial arts grandmaster who has been inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame?[/li][/ul]
There’s lots more. Just keep looking.
Damn, I got here too late to tell you about Jack Ketchum, or John Farris, or Bentley Little, or even Joe Lansdale! Can I second or third them, then? Because they’ve all written some great, scary stuff!
And now that I’ve vouched for those guys, let me hip you to a few more…
John Skipp and Craig Spector collaborated on a handful of brutal, pulpy novels which are a lot of fun to read – The Scream, The Cleanup (probably their best IMNAAHO), The Bridge, Light At The End, and Animals. These books are the paperback horror equivalent of thrash metal --fast, loud, hard-assed, sometimes really freaking stupid if you slow down to think, but always a blast while you’re taking the ride.
David Schow is a contemporary of theirs who has written a pile of good shit himself, but right now I can’t recall the titles of any of his works.
Michael McDowell wrote two harsh and excellent contemporary horror novels, The Amulet (a blood-soaked, Southern-fried treat that can’t be beat, right up to the last sentence!) and Cold Moon Over Babylon;but if you don’t like period stuff, give the rest of his work a pass.
John Shirley is way better known for his sci-fic work than what he’s done in the horror field, but his novel Demons is hard to top, and so are lots of his short stories.
Slob by Rex Miller is a cool nasty piece of work too.
And last of all, let me direct you to Mr. Michael Slade – who, while nonexistent as a person(being the pseud of a two-person team of authorial thrill-vectors), is still the Ace of Spades when it comes to ultra-violent, ultra-urban, grim-grimy-gritty and hard-rockin’ slabs of paperback adrenaline. Seriously, Slade smokes!“He” writes these, well …crime-based horror novels, or horrific crime novels, or novels that work the sharp edge between the two genres until it cuts through you like a wire cheese slicer. If you read 'em in the order the first appeared, there’s a loose continuity that still adds something to the storylines, but “his” books are all good as stand alone stuff too.Caution: there* is *some pretty out-there sexual stuff scattered here and there throughout the Sladean corpus.
Well that oughtta keep you wide awake and wild-eyed for a few weeks straight. so I’ll sign off now.
Mr. Little has, IMNAAHO anyway, some really great ideas for horror novels; sadly, he can’t always follow through withn them. An exception: University. Wow, is that ever one bizarre and scary and* compelling* read once you get into it! It was the first thing by Bentley Little I ever read; I sought out more of his works pronto, thinking they would be of equally boss quality – and, oh boy was I ever disappointed!
Read University though, for sure.
re: Bentley Little - I read . . . can’t remember the name of it, but it had to do with Native Americans and artifacts or something. I totally agree with DLuxN8R-13 fantastically creepy idea. Silly, silly execution.
I’ll give University a try.
Winterhawk, if you want a good sampling, without the commitment of a novel, I’d recommend the Best New Horror anthologies (a new one comes out every year) and even more so, the Borderlands anthologies (I-III are the best, IV is ok. Skip the last one). They’re out of print, but you can get them super cheap on Amazon. Some of the best short horror stories I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot.