JOE R. TAKES ON H.P.: JOE R. LANSDALE'S IN THE MAD MOUNTAINS

While ironic, it's no real surprise that in the introduction to In The Mad Mountains, a collection of Joe R. Lansdale's short work inspired by H.P. Lovecraft , he states he's not a big fan of the Cthulhu creators writing. He does compliment him in his ideas of ancient gods and creatures who occasionally peer up in the modern world. The collection shows how he takes his voice and other influences to those ideas and creates a range of unsettling tales.

The book kicks off with my personal favorite, "The Bleeding Shadows". Told in a hard boiled style, a pre World War Two black private eye, follows an old flame wanting to help her bluesman boyfriend into an old house holding an even older evil. Joe crosses Cthulhu with the legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to The Devil, telling it in an exciting punchy manner that also proves harrowing and heartfelt as well.

Two stories incorporate classic literary characters. In "Dread Island", one of his better known tales, Huck Finn and Jim attempt to rescue Tom Sawyer on a mysterious river island where a monster known as Cut-Through-You lives. Joe leans into the influence of Twain's prose style to serve up humor as well as horror. He uses Edgar Allan Poe's detective Auguste Dupin with "The Gruesome Affair Of The Electric Blue Lightning". Dupin and his chronicler deal with the a history of Grimm fairy tales and Castle Frankenstein to deal with something haunting the streets of Paris. Lansdale recently used Dupin in his novella "The Case Of The Crawling Razor" to deal with his own Cthulhu, The God Of Razors.

He also uses two of his own recurring characters from his own stories. He tells the story of how a haunting in the woods got Dana Roberts into being a paranormal investigator in "The Case Of The Stalking Shadow.". Lansdale tells it in the form of a Victorian ghost tale, We revisit the haunted Reverend Jedidiah Mercer who roams the old west fighting monsters like a spaghetti western Solomon Kane in "The Crawling Sky." He comes to the aid of a young man plagued by a wraithlike abomination. Once again Lansdale shows his skill of mix tones of humor and horror, adding a dash of pulp action.

Two of the shortest stories in the collection view Lovecraft themes at a humanist level. An old man reminisces of a train ride trip that takes him to someplace strange in "The Tall Ones". "Starlight, Eyes Bright" follows a man's descent into madness from the discovery of an odd piece of glass. Both of these tap into the Lovecraft idea of how the simple act of knowing creates fear.

The collection ends with the title story that follows a couple stranded in an icy landscape. As they struggle to survive things grow weirder and more dangerous. Joe finds a way to make this short story feel epic.

In The Mad Mountains demonstrates how an author with a strong voice can take an influence and write something all their own. Each of these tales very in tone, style, and subgenre or cross-genre as they deal with ancient evils the protagonist may physically survive, but whose psyche and soul will never recover from. Joe Lansdale's special storytelling skills allow him to care out his own territory in Lovecraft Country.