The Black Train
by Edward Lee
List Price:
Our Price: $4.55
You Save: $3.44 (43%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.83 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Edward LeeEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-11
ISBN: 0843962275
Number of pages: 340
Publisher: Leisure Books
Book Reviews of The Black Train
Book Review: ". . . looking down at a naked woman dead for days, spread-eagled on a blood-caked bed. A large axe had been . . ."
Summary: 2 Stars
Small-time celebrity, and beer expert, Justin Collier has just had his tv show canceled. To complete his new book on brews he has travelled to the small obscure tourist town of Gast, Tennessee because he has read of a wondrous beer that was written about by local historian J. G. Sute on Sute's blog and Collier is hoping this will be the beer that he can close his book on
To write this chapter he will need a place to stay, and so he checks into the Branch Landing Inn, or, formerly the Gast House. He meets the strange Butler family of Helen and her kids, the silent Lottie, and the beefcake handyman Jiff. It's here that strange things start to happen. Collier starts to hear the voices of children, sees two very odd girls and their dog in the nearby woods, and starts to experience, as everybody that stays in the Inn does, an uncontrollable sense of hypersexuality. He also starts having nightmares, again, something that he will eventually find out everybody in the hotel experiences.
As he investigates the beer that he needs for his book he becomes fascinated by the town's unsavory history, as well as the history of the town's greatest, and most infamously evil citizen, Harwood Gast. Gast pretty much owned the town during the Civil War, and his obsession was to build a railway between Gast (nee Branch Landing) and the Maxon Rifle Works, with supposed hope that this will help win the upcoming war between the states.
Other alternating storylines are Collier meeting and falling in love with local brewer and bar owner Dominique, Jiff's secret life as a homosexual hooker, and the continuing flashbacks to pre-Civil War Gast so that we can observe just how evil Harwood Gast and his minions were, and just what kind of damage that they caused.
You would think that this is going to be another of Lee's prime satirical romps, filled with over-the-top violence and sex. You would think. You would think wrong. The first problem is Collier himself. Collier's constant and continuous whining starts to grate like fingernails on a chalkboard. Then there is his constant hypersexuality, I swear, by the novel's end, if I were to hear ONE MORE TIME about Collier's out of control pecker I was just gonna up and puke.
Then there is the action. There isn't any. Nothing much really happens during the first TWO HUNDRED and TWENTY pages except for some really sleazy heterosexual, homosexual and incestuous sex, with some possible bestiality involving two children. The only consciously interesting parts of the novel either happen through Sute's narration of the town's past, or through flashbacks to the town's past. However, the present day story really doesn't amount to much other than possible sexual possession. The erotic part of this erotic ghost story just isn't very erotic, and the scary parts aren't very scary. That is unless you consider sex to be mind-numbingly horrifying. If so, then this novel will be terrifying, and will work as anti-sex propaganda.
The problem with the past story of Gast, as told through flashbacks and dreams is that in the end nothing but a great deal of carnage is ever really achieved. What DID Gast ACTUALLY get from his deal-with-the-devil? I won't give it away, but if you read this novel you will know exactly what I mean.
I've been a fan of Lee's since I read his novel "The Ghoul" when it was first published; I even have his now rare "Edward Lee's Quest For Sex, Truth, And Beauty" pamphlet. So, this isn't the worst novel by Lee that I've read, that honor goes to "The Backwoods", but this dull, and terribly uneven novel comes in a close second. In the end, I'll have to agree with another reviewer here that this novel might have worked as a hundred page novella, but at three hundred and forty pages it is just way too long. Maybe it's time for Lee to stop writing horror for a while and write something else and recharge his batteries. Based on this, I think that Edward Lee could write a killer western, much like fellow horror writer Tim Curran has.
For this site I have also reviewed:
City Infernal
Infernal Angel
Monster Lake
Horror Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Horror Books
Let the Right One In: A Novelby John Ajvide Lindqvist
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2008-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Textby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1982-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Oxford Bookworms S, Stage 4)by Robert Louis Stevenson
Oxford Univ Pr (Sd); Published: 1991-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.79
Price in other shops:
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (Oxford Books of Prose)Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2001-11-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $50.00
The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)by Stephen King
Penguin Audio; Published: 2003-08-26; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $149.99
![Thinner [UNABRIDGED] Image](/images/Thinner-UNABRIDGED-0140862668-X.jpg){kind=small}
Thinner [UNABRIDGED]by Stephen King
Penguin Audio; Published: 1996-09-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
The Crow: Temple of Nightby S P. Somtow
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 1999-11-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Brains: A Zombie Memoirby Robin Becker
Eos; Published: 2010-05-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.23
Price in other shops:
The Strain LP: Book One of The Strain Trilogyby Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan
HarperLuxe; Published: 2009-06-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.45
Price in other shops:
Prince of Darknessby Barbara Michaels
HarperTorch; Published: 2005-04-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.58
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Brain Cheese Buffetby Edward Lee
Deadite Press; Published: 2010-05-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.94
Price in other shops:
Monstrosityby Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2003-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.10
Price in other shops:
Brides of the Impaler (Leisure Fiction)by Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2008-09; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Infernal Angelby Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2004-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
City Infernalby Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2003-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.68
Price in other shops:
Trolley No. 1852by Edward Lee
Deadite Press; Published: 2010-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops:
The Golem (Leisure Fiction)by Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2009-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
Flesh Gothicby Edward Lee
Leisure Books; Published: 2005-02; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.15
Price in other shops:
Carnal Surgeryby Edward Lee
Deadite Press; Published: 2011-03-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.94
Price in other shops:
Lucifer's Lotteryby Edward Lee
DP; Published: 2011-07-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.19