Don't Come Knocking On My Door; I Don't Want to See Your Fangs No More

Don't Come Knocking on My Door; I Don't Wanna See Your Fangs No More

05/14/2005

Zinger, Steve. Ray McMickle and the Kentucky Vampire Clan. Authorhouse, 2004. 210 p.

Steve Zinger's novella, Ray McMickle and The Kentucky Vampire Clan, gives new meaning to the lyrics "American woman, please stay away-ay."

Roy Stanich, a down-on-his-luck Canadian, decides to make a new life in the United States, and for no known reason save the sound of its name, chooses Meridian, Mississippi as the city where he will achieve this rebirth. He takes a Greyhound headed for the Deep South, but on the way there gets sidetracked in the so-small-it-isn't-even-on-a-map town of Lebanon, Kentucky, just in time for the annual Wooley Worm Festival. Unfortunately for Roy, he fails to heed the prophetic words of his Greyhound "riding partner," a modern day hobo he refers to only as Smelly Jesus. Roy makes the mistake of remaining in Lebanon after dark. It doesn't take long for Roy—or the reader, for that matter—to figure out that this old Kentucky home is inhabited by ghosts and vampires.

Obviously, Ray McMickle is what is normally called a "fun read." Also in its favor is the novella's format. Because it is a print-on-demand piece, and is relatively short, space is not at a premium (so much in the publication word happens because of space and not editorial quality, sadly). The text is (GASP!) double-spaced, so for those of us with poor eyesight, due to years of avid reading and / or too much web surfing, this is a godsend. But these reasons alone are not enough to recommend this book.

The problem is there is very little in the way of fascinating local color, breathless description, heady philosophy, unexpected surprises, irony, or even deep, raw emotion to recommend this novel. You will find, as we say in the South (and perhaps elsewhere), a shit-load of Southern dialect, executed fairly well, and more than one novel's fair share of Southern stereotypes. All you need read are the first few lines of dialogue spoken by Deputy Kuthrow (whose favorite moniker seems to be the word "boy") to realize that Roy has found himself in one of those towns where there are more bodies under the jailhouse than inside of it. But I have always considered stereotypes to be a rather weak form of characterization, even when they are used for effect and are consciously created by an author. It takes a little more time and effort to invest every character with a complex, believable personality, but veracity is what makes a novel readable. After all, if we can't identify with any character in a book, we're going to have a tendency to want to close it and move on to the next book on our To-Read list.

Ray McMickle is certainly a gritty, often visceral, and at times comically grotesque novella. It imagines the Deep South in much the same way as sexploitation and gore-fest director Herschell Gordon Lewis's wonderfully campy 2,000 Maniacs (1964), which gave a new—and more horrifying—twist to the "South’s gonna rise again" mindset. In places like Lebanon, "Yankee" strangers are not only unwelcome, but will find themselves in mortal (or, as in this case, immortal) danger, simply because they took the wrong turn. If you do get anything out of Zinger's tale, it would be a sense of the loneliness and desolation that are typical of the literary (and sometimes the real) Deep South. However, this kind of thing has been done better thousands of times, as in Mitch Cullen's Tideland or Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms, both of which were reviewed by Necropsy in our first ever issue.

This is not to say there aren't readers out there who will enjoy what the July 2004 issue of The Meat Socket calls "...a poignant story about destiny and individuality.... a fun, sexually charged vampire story." If you want a quick and dirty vampire read with just enough suspense to keep you going, you may find this story rather satisfying. If you want anything more than that, such as believable characters, nicely done description, and emotional investment in characters, you may want to pick up Zinger's The Sab (reviewed in this issue) instead.