Peter Straub is a name that has often been linked with Stephen King as he has collaborated on two novels with him, Talisman and The Black House which happen to be some of my all time favourite books and also how I came to know Straub’s works and discover an extremely underrated (in my opinion) author.
I’ve read almost everything he has ever written and have enjoyed them all immensely so picking a top five was very difficult indeed but here they are.
Ghost Story
A properly eerie story that I read aeons ago; perhaps it’s not the easiest of books to begin with but the jagged jangled beginning gels together into a tremendously absorbing story filled with the requisite twists and turns and a pleasantly unexpected finale. This was the first Straub solo novel I read and I have to say I fell into the cadence of his writing style very quickly indeed.
The Hellfire Club
Oh my, this is an absolutely brilliant book, I mean really really good, so good that I think I’ve read it 8 times in all. The antagonist is called Dick Dart for goodness sake! Family run Chancel House publishers is facing ruin, and now Nora Chancel has been kidnapped; with no one and nowhere to turn it’s down to Nora to free herself and the answers may just lie in the very book that has ruined her family’s business.
I need to read this again.
Shadowland
Classic Straub; a really choppy confusing beginning that leads you inexorably into the horrors of what he has planned for you before you reach the last page. This was a bus journey read when I had an hour’s commute each way to work and I think I read it in 4 journeys and several missed stops! it centres on the classic battle between youthful innocence and an ancient evil. Lots of supernatural elements and a plot line that keeps you turning those pages even if you are late for work.
Sorry Mr Chikermane.
Koko
War is strange and the things it does to people can often be even stranger. The word KOKO is found scrawled across the playing cards that has been found in the mouths of several murder victims in Vietnam. Fast forward to New York and four Vietnam vets are faced with the prospect that whatever was in Vietnam has followed them to America.
I remember thinking, I’ve got this, I know who the killer is. I didn’t have a clue!
Mystery
This one was a little different to what I’d come to expect from Straub, the supernatural elements weren’t there and this is a good solid story about the horrific beings that are people. Ten year old Tom is a budding investigator and he is fascinated by a murder that occurred in the 1920s. Unfortunately for him, the people he is investigating, do not want to be investigated.
This book bordered on being that awful pretend word – unputdownable.
These are my top five Peter Straub novels but I cannot let this blog go by without recommending two of my all time favourite novels, the Stephen King, Peter Straub collaborations of The Talisman and Black House.
In Talisman I was introduced to one of my all time favourite characters in Wolf, a young werewolf who is the antithesis of all other literary werewolves and who if I could, would be the one magical creature I would bring to life.
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Oh damn I love this author, I need to get Koko, I don’t think I have read this, great books all!!