SAVAGE MEMBRANE

Introducing Cal McDonald, a 21st century Sam Spade who specializes in macabre cases

By Chris Wyatt     June 26, 2002

Steve Niles is destined for literary distinction. If you don't read comics, you may not have heard his name before, but you're going to hear it a lot in the future. Niles will be the next cult horror novelist. SAVAGE MEMBRANE proves that.

SAVAGE MEMBRANE centers on Cal McDonald. Since birth, Cal has somehow been a magnet for the weird, the grotesque and the Lovecraftian. Ghouls, creeps and all manner of undead walk the Earth continuously, taking part in our human communities, but our disbelieving eyes overlook them. Cal, for some reason, sees them allwhich leads him to a drug problem much bigger than Holmes' seven percent solution.

After being forced out of the police for drug use, Cal tries to make it on his own a private eye. Ex-friends on the force call Cal in as a consultant when cases seem to involve the supernatural. One such call comes when unexplained deaths start to mount. Autopsies on the victims can find only one health problem...but it's a biggieupon opening the skull, the victim's brains are completely missing. Somehow people's brains are being removed without their heads being in any way damaged.

Niles take the story through its paces without once breaking the continuity of the excellent tone that he establishes. I know what you're thinking: SF authors have been co-opting "film noir" tropes for years. We've seen alien private eyes, near future private eyes, far future private eyes, time traveling private eyes, cat private eyes, we've even seen other horror private eyes...but nonetheless, Niles really brings a unique quality to the concept. And that quality is the textured, believable narrative voice that he establishes.

Is it a perfect novel? No. The solution to the crime is telegraphed a little bit, and sometimes Niles gets a little too into his gleeful descriptions of the gore. Also, Cal (like a comic book super hero) keeps on going and going, even after taking a truly unbelievable amount of physical punishment. Plus, there's a seemingly meaningless scene where a cop beats Cal in the station house. The scene feels like a mysterious set up that will be explained later, yet it never is.

Another minor, minor note. The book isn't copy edited very well. There are small punctuation errors in the text. That, however, is not Niles fault, and the casual reader is unlikely to notice or care.

All of the flaws of the book, though, can be more than forgiven if you're willing to gear up and take a wonderful pulp horror ride with a smart, sarcastic, cynical PI.

Up to now, Niles has been best known for writing comics. The author has done runs on SPAWN, SAM AND TWITCH and HELLSPAWN. I suppose a decade ago no one would really have expected a comics writer to wind up doing series novels, let alone good serious novels... But Neal Gaiman broke down that barrier with books like SMOKE AND MIRRORS and AMERICAN GODS. Now Steve Niles is carrying the torch onward.

This book can be unhesitatingly recommended to any and all horror fans. While there are no references to "the Mythos", the book's tone especially recommends itself to Lovecraft fans.

The novel will also be of interest to most mystery readers, with the caveat that it gets gorier than the average Chandler or Hammett.

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