New Column -- Del Toro/Hogan, Koontz and Connolly

My latest science fiction/fantasy column is up at SFGate.com. Finally.

The theme is summer reads, and the books include "The Strain," "Relentless" and "The Lovers."

Guess which two I liked.

Review -- "Madame Xanadu: Disenchanted"

I didn't pick up the first issue of the new Vertigo on-going series "Madame Xanadu" when it appeared, for a number of reasons. To start with, I've stopped buying monthly comics, the habit having become both expensive and frustrating. Then there's the fact that Madame Xanadu, as a character, didn't hold much fascination over me. Finally, Issue One was set in the sylvan forests surrounding Camelot and I'm rarely in the mood for anything druidic in comics. So I took a pass.

But if the new collection of the first 10 issues is a reliable indicator, "Madame Xanadu" has much to recommend it. Written by Matt Wagner of "Grendel" and "Sandman Mystery Theater," with art by Amy Reeder Hadley, the story follows the enchantress formerly known as Nimue as she travels across the centuries from Britain to the court of Kubla Khan to Paris before the revolution to the U.S. in the Thirties. She crosses paths with Marco Polo, Marie Antoinette, Jack the Ripper and other assorted historical figures, but her chief companion/adversary is none other than the enigmatic Phantom Stranger. Again and again, Madame Xanadu and Ol' Blank Eyes spar about free will versus determinism. She feels a need to help people avoid disaster. He's all for leaving destiny undisturbed.

What's nice about "Madame Xanadu" is that it's the kind of Vertigo book you don't see much anymore. It's adult in tone, yet thoroughly connected to the DC Universe, allowing for cameos by such fan favorites as the Demon Etrigan, the magician Zatara in his prime, and Neil Gaiman's version of Death. Wagner keeps the action lively, and Hadley's art is expressive and bouyant.

I'm not sure "Madame Xanadu" is sufficient to entice me back to the monthly comics. But I definitely look forward to the next collection.

Review -- "The Nobody"

DC Comics has a couple of minor characters who appear bandage-swathed in nearly all of their adventures — Rebis, the hermaphroditic energy being from Grant Morrison’s weird and wonderful run on “Doom Patrol,” and The Unknown Soldier, originally from “Our Army at War.” It’s a cool, if disconcerting, look.

Neither of those characters, unfortunately, appears in the new Vertigo hardcover written and illustrated by Jeff Lemire, creator of the “Essex County Trilogy.” Rather, the enigmatic protagonist calls himself “Griffen,” a name familiar to readers of H.G. Wells or, more likely, Alan Moore.

When Griffen, sporting bizarre goggles and wrapped from head to toe in weird bandages, arrives in the small town of Large Mouth, he evokes immediate suspicion. After he takes up residence in a run-down motel, a young waitress named Vickie tries to befriend him and gradually learns about the events that drove Griffen into seclusion. Meanwhile, a series of crimes ratchets up the level of distrust and paranoia among the locals.

Lemire’s scruffy black, white and blue artwork isn’t to my taste, and although I appreciate his feel for a tourist town in the thick of winter, I found the plot of “The Nobody” rather slow, pedestrian and predictable. I’ve seen the “caterpillar into butterfly” metaphor employed to greater effect elsewhere, and I wish there was more beneath Griffen’s bandages than, well, what I expected to be there.

If I had not received a review copy, I would begrudge the $19.99 cover price of “The Nobody.” If DC ever wants to do a new hardcover devoted to Rebis, though, I’ll be flinging cash at them.

Hi-Def Printing: What It's Good For

After a lot of preparation, the San Francisco Chronicle has officially begun printing on new, state-of-art presses based in Fremont, CA. Some of the advantages were immediately obvious -- more color at higher resolution; fewer wrinkles; a smaller, more convenient width. Other changes will roll out over the coming months -- heatset glossies, different ad configurations, innovative marketing products. I've spent a lot of time over the past few months working on the marketing campaign announcing "Chronicle HD," as it's called.


For the purposes of this blog, though, I want to publicly state how pleased I was with the first Hi-Def Sunday edition. My article about recent comics and comix was the cover story in Books and ran as a double-page spread, illustrated with color panels by Jason, Darwyn Cooke, David Mazzucchelli and others. And it looked gorgeous! The colors were accurate, the registration was correct, the pictures "popped." For the first time in five or six years, I made an effort to track down hard copies. The archived Web page doesn't do it justice.


I'm not about to make any prognostications about the long-term health of the newspaper printing business. But in terms of my column, I'm really happy with this new development.

Books You Oughta Read -- The Ditto List

During the Eighties and Nineties, Stephen Greenleaf wrote a series of well-regarded mysteries featuring P.I. John Marshall Tanner. There were 14 in all, beginning with 1979's "Grave Error" and finishing up with "Ellipsis" in 2000. Many volumes were set in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, including one of the best, "Beyond Blame," whose climax occurs just a few blocks from where I sit now -- in Berkeley's People's Park.

Greenleaf is unusual in that he voluntarily retired the Tanner series and didn't feel the need to keep pushing them out in the face of diminishing sales. He discusses his reasons in this interesting interview from MysteryFile.

My favorite Greenleaf, however isn't one of the Tanners; it's a stand-alone, mainstream novel entitled "The Ditto List," published in 1986. It's not exactly a "legal thrilller," as these things have come to be known in the post-Grisham era, but rather the story of a down-on-his-luck attorney attempting to re-discover his purpose in life.

My, that doesn't sound appealing, does it? Let's try again: "The Ditto List" is the story of D.T. Jones, a divorce lawyer still in love with his ex-wife, who does the best he can for his female clients, even though he can barely make payroll. He tries to protect them from serial abusers and cold-blooded misogynists while trying to sort out his own problems with creditors, staff and former colleagues.

Greenleaf works hard to keep the proceedings from beginning too grim. D.T. is handy with a wisecrack, but there are a number of plot complications that require him to dig beyond his usual glib responses.

The best part of the book, the thing has brought me back to it more than once, is its penultimate chapter. It's a thing of beauty, as cleverly constructed as "Walt Catches Cold," the pivotal chapter in John Irving's "The World According to Garp." It's a courtroom scene, of course, with D.T. facing down a doctor who has abandoned his wife, now nearly crippled by MS. Everything -- theme, plot, characterization -- snaps together in a totally unexpected, totally satisfying way in that chapter. Sometimes I take the paperback edition of "The Ditto List" from the shelf just to re-read those 16 pages, they're that funny, pungent and compelling.

Unfortunately, the final chapter of "The Ditto List" is more than a little hokey, a rom-com fantasy ending that doesn't live up to what's gone before. But, hey, what are you going to do? If you like lawyer novels and want something different from the usual super-serious, "conspiracy in every corner" claptrap, seek out "The Ditto List."

Books I'm Not Reading -- Hylozoic

The books continue to stack up, but Rudy Rucker's "Hylozoic" isn't one of them. Why? I'm not really sure. I never received an ARC or a finished copy of the latest from the author of "Postsingular," "Mathematicians in Love" and "Frek and the Elixir."

Books reach me at The Chronicle via two streams. Many come directly addressed to me and wind up in my personal mailbox. Others are addressed just generally to The Chronicle and get shuttled down to the basement, where the Books editor sorts them by month or category. Anything that looks vaguely "sciencie fictiony" ends up on my shelf.

What's weird is that Tor, the publisher of "Hylozoic," is pretty good about sending material directly to me. But some stuff just seems to fall through the cracks. Such was the case with "Hylozoic." It didn't even appear in the basement.

Not that I was likely to read the novel, anyway. I'm a big fan of Rucker, having reviewed his work at least as far back as "The Hollow Earth." But there's a lot of other books that need my attention. And "Hylozoic" is a sequel to "Postsingular," another book I haven't read, and that might mean double the work. And if I have to go to all the trouble of picking up the phone or writing an e-mail to get a copy...

Oh, well. Rudy's a prolific fellow. I'm sure there will be other opportunities for me to write about him. In the meantime, here's a swell review of "Hylozoic" from io9.

Books You Oughta Read -- Stone City

I’ve been making an attempt to clear some space in the house, which — surprise! — has necessitated moving lots of books around. One upside of the process is re-discovering titles, often in paperback, that I liked enough to keep around for up to 15 years or more. In general, they’re not huge best-sellers or even critically well regarded. They’re just good books that hit my critical sweet spot once upon a time.

Over the next little while, I plan to write about some of them, under the rubric Books You Oughta Read. I don’t actually plan to re-read these books, at least not immediately, so my comments should taken as semi-informed, if not 100 percent reliable.

First up — “Stone City” by Mitchell Smith!

I have not read all of his work, but the bulk of Mitchell Smith’s output can be described as — uncompromising. Mr. Smith does not screw around. If he sets up a premise and a theme, he is going to follow them to the bitter, bitter end.

Case in point, 1990’s “Stone City,” easily the best prison novel I’ve ever read. (A small field, admittedly.) Set in a hellish state penitentiary, it focuses on ex-college professor Charles Bauman as he attempts to find a serial killer preying on his fellow inmates. Bauman is what’s known as too smart for his own good, and the narrative of “Stone City” concerns his continuing education as he moves through the various social strata in the prison and tries to solve a mystery while keeping himself -- and his family on the outside -- alive. Caught in a mesh of conflicting agendas, he mixes with black, Hispanic and Aryan gangs, lone psychopaths and transvestite punks.The narrative tension never slackens, and Bauman's complexities and foibles are explored with bleak, unflinching eye.

“Stone City” was published seven years before Tom Fontana’s “Oz.,” the hour-long prison drama on HBO. The novel's originality may seem obscured at this point, but I'd never read anything like it when I picked up the paperback in 1991. I don't know how Mitchell researched the book, but every aspect of it feels real, sometimes terrifyingly so. (Mitchell's bio notes that he worked in Intelligence in Cold War Berlin; I wish he had tackled a novel of espionage.)

The ending of “Stone City” is genuinely shocking, and it pisses off a lot of readers. But I find it absolutely apt, as would anyone else with an appreciation for classical tragedy, I suspect.

There's not a whole lot of information about Smith available on the Web. This profile from the Seattle Times is particularly informative, though. As for his other novels, "Karma" and "Reprisal" are the two that stand out among those I've read, but they don't match the intensity or craft of "Stone City." I regret not at least sampling his final work, the science fictional "Snowfall Trilogy."

“Stone City” is out of print, which is a shame. If you see a used copy, grab it.

In a Stoppard Frame of Mind

I'm way behind on my Tom Stoppard blogging chores. Apologies.

The Duke of York Theatre's revival of "Arcadia," running through September 12, has been well received. It was reviewed in the Telegraph, in the Oxford Times, in the New York Times, in the Times Online and on Reuters.

Stoppard's son Ed talks about appearing in the London revival.

"Arcadia" was also recently produced at the Folger Theatre.

Meanwhile, the Independent asks whether "Arcadia" is the greatest play of our age.

Sam Mendes' Bridge Project, having returned to England, paired Stoppard's adaptation of "The Cherry Orchard" with Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale."

Finally, program the "Rock 'n' Roll" playlist onto your iPod.

Books I'm Not Reading -- The City and the City

Way back in 2007, I instituted a feature on this blog that has since fallen into silence: Books I'm Not Reading. Nobody else seems to be covering this hot topic, so I believe it's time for another installment!

As a reviewer, I receive dozens of books each month that I can't/won't/shouldn't read. It doesn't mean that they're bad books, necessarily, just that there are only so many hours in the day, so much space in the newspaper and who over the age of 13 really, really needs to read the latest GI Joe novelization, even if it is written by Max Allan Collins? So nine-tenths of the books I get wind up in Postal Service containers down in The Chronicle basement and never receive any kind of mention from me at all, not even in casual conversation. Books I'm Not Reading therefore sheds light on some of the recent releases that, for one reason or another, get short shrift from me.

Sometimes it all comes down to bad timing. I was, for example, all prepared to read and review "The City and the City," the latest from China Mieville, author of "The Scar" and "Un Lun Dun." But I made the tactical error of trying to do so while on jury duty.

Back in May, I spent about a week trundling back and forth to the Superior Court in Hayward, worried that I would be stuck on a jury for up to a month. Traveling by bus and BART and being forced to sit for hours with nothing better to do, I did manage to whip through two science fiction/fantasy thrillers in quick succession, "Fragment" by Warren Fahy and "The Lovers" by John Connolly. But "The City and the City" was a different story.

While nominally a murder mystery, Mieville's book has a fantastical element that requires a good deal of special attention on the part of the reader. In an off-hand Tweet, I referred to it as "Gorky Park as written by Italo Calvino," and that's not far off. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to have the patience for "The City..." while on jury duty. Somehow, I kept losing my thread of concentration.

Eventually, the defendant in my trial took a plea, and I was released from my duties. But even then, I wasn't able to finish Mieville's novel. The Books editor at The Chronicle wanted me to review "The Strain" by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan in my next column, plus read 18+ graphic novels for a special feature on comics. And even though I kept a bookmark at around page 150 of "The City and the City," I never got back to it.

Maybe I will later this summer. I feel kind of bad, because I was intrigued by what I read, and I've certainly heard lots of good things about the novel. But I'm pretty sure I've lost the necessary momentum. Sorry, China.

What I've Been Up to Since March

The past four months have not been particularly happy nor productive. No need to go into details. Those who know me can extrapolate why.

But having reached and passed the year's midpoint, it's probably time to reconnoiter and post links to some of the things I did manage to accomplish. So --

I did a couple of stand-alone crime fiction reviews for The Chronicle, Walter Mosley's "The Long Fall" and "The Way Home" by George Pelecanos. I liked both books, well enough.

Due to a shortage of editorial space and other factors, my science fiction column has appeared more irregularly than usual. However, in April, I covered horror/supernatural/urban fantasy novels by S.G. Browne ("Breathers"), Will Elliott ("The Pilo Family Circus") and Patricia Briggs ("Bone Crossed"). Later that month, I reviewed two YA post-apocalyptic novels, "Bones of Faerie" by Janni Lee Simner and Carrie Ryan's "The Forest of Hands and Teeth." In my most recent column, from back in May, the books selected were Michael Marshall's "Bad Things," Chris Roberson's "End of the Century," "The Best of Gene Wolfe," and the re-issue of Robert Silverberg's "Dying Inside."

I have at least two stories planned for July -- a big, double-spread review of recent comics/graphic novels in hardcover and trade editions and the return of my column, featuring work by Dean Koontz, John Connolly and others.

Stoppard Catch-up

By most accounts, it looks as if Sam Mendes' production of Stoppard's adaptation of "The Cherry Orchard" was a success. (It ends tomorrow, by the way.) Here's a review from New York Magazine to refresh your memory.

Newsweek ran an interview with the playwright, but it was James Mustich at the Barnes & Noble Review who scored the most illuminating conversation with Stoppard this season.

Of course, there are plenty of other plays in the Stoppard repertoire. "Travesties" is set to open at the Sydney Opera House on March 9. For those unfamiliar with the play's literary and historical background, Jonathan Biggins provides a decent summary in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Rock 'n' Roll" continues to roll out at various venues around the Globe. Productions are planned in Chicago and the Twin Cities. Right now it's playing in Manchester, UK.

Meanwhile, "The Real Thing" is playing at the Salisbury Playhouse in Salisbury, UK.

Bob Crowley, the five-time Tony Award winner, will receive the 2009 Robert L. B. Tobin Award For Lifetime Achievement In Theatrical Design at the TDF/Irene Sharaff awards on March 27 in New York City. Crowley designed the Lincoln Center production of "The Coast of Utopia."

Finally, Stoppard's son Barny has opened a healthy fast-food restaurant.

Photo credit: Jonathan Biggins as Henry Carr in the STC's Travesties.
Photo: Sandy Nicholson

Review: "Drood" by Dan Simmons

I had a lot of trouble with "Drood," the latest novel from the highly versatile Dan Simmons. For starters, it's nearly 800 pages and the narrative sags badly in the middle. Then there's the fact that its narrator, semi-forgotten novelist Wilkie Collins, is the least reliable biographer this side of Charles Kinbote, so it takes considerable work out what's really happening in the story. Finally, if you're not already steeped in Dickensian lore and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," you'll miss some of the twists that Simmons sets up.

Ultimately, though, it's a captivating and innovative historical thriller. Not quite up to the standards of Simmons' arctic horror novel "The Terror," but still audacious and impressive in its execution.

Read my review from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Review: Air: Letters from Lost Countries by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Peker

DC Comics did G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Peker's new on-going series a serious disservice when it previewed "Air" in its other books from the Vertigo line. The disjointed pages excerpted from the first issue did little to convey the charm of this tale of air travel through the not-so-friendly skies. Now the first five issues of "Air" have been collected in "Letter from Lost Countries," and it's an introductory volume well worth picking up.

When acrophobic flight attendant Blythe becomes intrigued with Zayn, a mysterious male traveler of indeterminate national origin, she helps set in motion a violent on-board incident that culminates with her and the stranger jumping from the plane with only one parachute between them. After Blythe recovers from her minor injuries, Zayn leaves on a mission to Bangladesh, only to disappear in another presumed air crash. A letter with a return address from Narimar, a country that appears on no map, gives Blythe hope that, with the help of two co-workers, she can rescue her lover, wherever he is.

Wilson and Peker are the team behind the Vertigo black-and-white hardcover "Cairo," and they seem to be developing a comfortable groove for their first monthly series. Blythe is a good antidote to the usual Vertigo heroine. She's complicated but not kooky, she's a genuine adult, not an angsty teenager, and she seems free of the usual daddy and mommy issues. The antagonists are little over-the-top and too on-the-mark in their dialogue, not to mention too fond of explaining their nefarious plans exactly where they can be overheard. At the ends of the fourth issues, though, Wilson and Peker stage a reveal that pushes the premise of "Air" in a promising and unexpected new direction.

I'm not sure I'll become a regular reader of "Air," but I'm sufficiently impressed by "Letter from Lost Countries" to keep that possibility open.

Review: Datlow, Berry and Sterling

This week's Sunday Chronicle includes my regular science fiction/fantasy column. The featured books are Ellen Datlow's "Poe" anthology, "The Manual of Detection," a first novel by Jedediah Berry and "The Caryatids" by Bruce Sterling.

All three are worth your time, with Sterling's novel as the stand-out. "The Caryatids" feels very much in tune with the tenor of these awful, uncertain times, but it also manages to provide a ray of hard-won hope.

Now I start reading for my April 5 column. Suggestions welcome!

Oscar Fever, Chills and Vague Nausea

I'm usually pretty excited in Oscar Season, but not this year. My friendly neighborhood video store isn't being very friendly, having discontinued its annual Academy Awards contest. Times are tough all over, I guess, but without the prospect of winning an armload of free credits, I'm not mustering much enthusiasm.

I've actually seen three out of the five Best Picture nominees, so I'm better informed than usual. But I don't feel a personal stake in any of them, and I find the conventional wisdom about who will win to closely match my own guesswork.

Best Supporting Actress -- Penelope Cruz. Woody Allen has an excellent track record for directing the women who take home this award, so she gets my vote. Viola Davis is pretty amazing in "Doubt," but I think that voting block will be split.

Best Supporting Actor -- Heath Ledger. I think he'd be the top contender even without having met a tragically early death.

Best Actor -- Sean Penn. I'm not a big Penn fan, but I thought he was truly outstanding in "Milk." I'm even less of a Mickey Rourke enthusiast, so while I wish him and his freaky chihuahuas well, I'm not rooting for him.

Best Actress -- Kate Winslet. You couldn't pay me enough to sit through "The Reader," but everybody seems to like Winslet on general principles and feel it's past time she got an Oscar.

Best Director -- Danny Boyle. "Slumdog Millionaire" won me over against my better judgment, and it took a sure and inventive hand to pull that off.

Best Picture -- Slumdog Millionaire. See above.

Yeah, no surprises or dazzling insights there. But I've at least made my choices known.

Review: Tom Piccirilli's "The Coldest Mile"

One of the drawbacks of being a reviewer is that you have to make a lot of snap decisions just to keep up with the tide of material that washes over you. I get literally hundreds of ARCs and finished copies every year, and it's a little frightening to realize how arbitrary my methods for selecting the 30-35 titles for review really are.

For one thing, I very rarely review mass-market paperback originals, and usually only if there's a local connection. (Currently, a lot of urban fantasies with covers depicting well-toned, bare-midriffed young women wielding edged weapons go directly into the rejects bin. Sorry.) And sometimes I later regret not holding onto these books for my own reading pleasure. Case in point: the novels of Tom Piccirilli.

I know I received copies of his horror novels "The Midnight Road" and "The Dead Letters." But I didn't hang onto them, and now I'm kicking myself. Because I read his Edgar-nominated crime novel, "The Cold Spot," last year, and I immediately wanted more. Luckily, the sequel, "The Coldest Mile," is now available.

The new book picks up pretty much where the earlier volume left off, with wheelman Chase at loose ends after the death of his wife and his act of vengeance against her killers. He takes a job as a chauffeur for a Mob family, trying to figure out how he can rip them off and then be on his way to hunt down Jonah, the grandfather who raised him and betrayed him.

Chase wants to find his grandfather in order to protect Jonah's two-year-old daughter, whom he doesn't want to be raised by a sociopath. Chase's quest takes him to Florida, where he falls in with various small-time hoods, all the while girding himself a confrontation he's not at all sure he will survive.

"The Coldest Mile" can probably be enjoyed on its own, but you need to have read "The Cold Spot" to get its full effect. And it's pretty damn powerful. Chase and Jonah are great characters, the plotting works smoothly and Piccirilli both pays tribute to the likes of Goodis, Thompson and Stark and gives them a fair run for their money.

It's likely that Piccirilli isn't done with these characters, so this has the feel of a middle book in a trilogy. Whatever happens, I won't make the mistake of overlooking any more of Piccirilli's books that come my way.

Review: Joe Hill's "Gunpowder"

I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've read by Joe Hill, starting with his novel, "Heart-Shaped Box," and continuing on through his collection of short fiction, "20th Century Ghosts," and the first volume of his on-going comics project, "Locke & Key."

Now comes a new, 26,000-word novella, "Gunpowder," published in various editions by PS Publishing. It's set on a planet being terraformed by a gang of young psychics under the tutelage of a lone teacher/mother figure. The boys squabble among themselves and scapegoat Charley, the only one who doesn't seem to have The Talent. Everything works well enough until a starship arrives and sends down an emissary with new orders for the kids.

To the best of my knowledge, this is Hill's first published foray into outright science fiction, and he does a good job of setting up the premise and delineating the shifting allegiances within this cohort of young mutants. My problem with "Gunpower" lies in its climatic confrontation. Hill doesn't precisely fall back on cliche, but it's clear too soon that the narrative is going to head toward its expected conclusion. The details are unguessable, but the overall shape of the showdown between the children and the interloper is too predictable.

Is it worth the money and effort to track down this hardcover edition? Depends on how fervent a fan you are. Hill has the potential to be prolific. Wait a few years, and perhaps "Gunpowder" will be part of a larger collection.

Review: "House of Mystery: Room & Boredom"

I've mentioned before that I seem to be closing in on my final days as purchaser of monthly comics. Two more issues of "100 Bullets," and I'm done, I think.

For a long while, I stuck with Bill Willingham's "Fables," but even its clever take on folklore and fairy tales couldn't keep me reading past Issue 75. Now Willingham and Matthew Sturges are collaborating on a monthly series, "House of Mystery," with art by Luca Rossi and various guest contributors, and the first five issues have been collected in a new trade.

One of DC's longest-running series, the original "The House of Mystery," an anthology of short horror stories hosted by homicidal "caretaker" Cain, was open for business from 1951 through 1983, most notably under the editorships of Joe Orlando and Karen Berger. (Its counterpart, the House of Secrets, was home to Cain's hapless brother/victim Abel.) Alan Moore put a new spin on the concept in his "Swamp Thing" saga, and Neil Gaiman gave Cain and Abel the spotlight in a few episodes of "Sandman."

Sturges and Willingham's incarnation of the House of Mystery abruptly evicts Cain for reasons unknown. The focus of the main narrative is now a young woman named Fig Keeler, who finds herself within the house and unable to leave. She's one of five permanent residents who attend to the needs of various visitors who stop in its bar, where the cost of a drink is a good story. The others seem mostly resigned to their fates, but Fig is determined to escape.

Sturges and Willingham employ a light touch with this material, introducing some genuinely creepy elements without getting all dour and angst-y (as happened with the "House of Secrets" reboot of the late 1990s). But somehow the biggest questions about where the main narrative is heading are not terribly compelling yet. The five- to six-page bar tales offer little bursts of humor or terror and hint at future connections, but they don't offer the one-two-punch ironies that characterize the best of, say, the old EC horror comics.

"House of Mystery" has potential, but it doesn't yet succeed as a serial or an anthology -- or as a unique hybrid of the two. I won't start buying the series monthly, but I'll welcome the next trade collection.

"Every Good Boy..." Revival

Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn's 1977 orchestral drama, "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour," is being revived in the National Theatre's Olivier Auditorium, starring Toby Jones and Joseph Millson. Set in Soviet Russia, "EGBDF" "contrasts the circumstances of a political prisoner and a mental patient in a Soviet insane asylum, to question the difference, if any, between free will and the freedom to conform."

The Mail Online admires the score but says "the politics have moved on." The Oxford Times finds the piece less dated: "The violence at the core of the debased political system under scrutiny is graphically revealed in a shocking display of balletic beatings-up among and around the orchestra, during which the players continue to bow and blow with vigour."

Variety says of the 65-minute piece: "the production reveals the piece as more theatrical than dramatic, more a premise than a play." The Financial Times admires the production's ambition, but deems it "a play for yesterday." The Independent is even less enthusiastic.

Nevertheless, Bloomsberg.com finds the play still chillingly relevant. And musicOMH praises it, deeming it "a timely revival of a politically acute and quirkily engaging work."

As it requires the presence of a full orchestra onstage, "EGBDF" is rarely performed, so my advice to any Stoppard fans visiting the West End is that they not pass up the chance to see this production if given the opportunity.

UPDATE: The Sunday Times weighs in, and Liz Hoggard on the Evening Standard sings the praises of short plays that inspire long friendships.

Lisa Rogak's "Haunted Heart"

I've been following the career of Stephen King for more than 30 years now, and Lisa Rogak's "Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King" (St. Martin's; 310 pages; $25.95) didn't initially strike me as something I absolutely needed to read or review. I haven't seen every story in the media about King in the last three decades, but I'm certainly well acquainted with the major turning points in his life story. Although Rogak has published more than 40 books, I wasn't familiar with her work enough to trust her immediately as an authority, as I did Douglas Winter when he published "The Art of Darkness" back in the Eighties.

I'm glad I picked up "Haunted Heart," though. It's smoothly written, respectful and non-exploitative, a straight-forward chronological biography that treads lightly when it comes to literary criticism. In addition to the usual rags-to-riches-with-a-slight-detour-through-alcohol-and-drug-abuse narrative, Rogak elicits fresh comments and anecdotes from King's mentors, friends and colleagues. She also sheds light on King's relationships with his wife and children, rounding out her portrait of an artist obsessed with the darker side but usually also focused on traditional values of family, charity and hard work.

I caught a couple of minor errors (Tom Clancy's "The Hunt of Red October" was his second book, but his first novel), some odd interpretations of King's fiction (the ending of "Thinner" is very, very far from "upbeat") and a strange omission or two (after emphasizing so heavily King's love of the Red Sox, why no mention in the main text of "Faithful," his non-fiction collaboration with Stewart O'Nan?).

In general, though, Rogak's presentation of the material gibes with what I know about her subject, and she provided sufficient new tidbits to keep me interested. I'm not sure what the audience for this book might be -- truly devoted King fans may be tired of the umpteenth retelling of how "Carrie" was rescued from the garbage pail -- but it's the kind of easy-going biography that might appeal to a high school or college student who wants to know what it's like to be one of the most influential popular writers of the past half-century.