Messenger Makes This Reviewer Go Postal

By June Pulliam

01/17/2005

Edward Lee. Messenger.  New York: Leisure, 2004. 337 p

Okay, I didn't really go postal. That was just a little bit of hyperbole from me. I mean, you try to come up with original titles for reviews several times a year.

However, I was deeply disappointed with Edward Lee's newest novel. My job requires that I read a lot of horror, so I can't believe I am actually saying this, but Messenger contained entirely too much mindless violence. Bear with me here. I'll let you know what I believe is the difference between mindless and thoughtful violence. But worse still, Messenger had potential, and hinted at a complex plot, but by the time it got going, I stopped caring.

Dannellton is an idyllic small town on the Florida beach--low crime rate, affordable real estate, no harsh winters. But the peace is shattered when several seemingly mild mannered residents go on bloody killing sprees. If these people don't seem to be acting like their usual selves, that's because they're possessed by the Messenger, a minion of Satan who is able to do his master's work on earth now that he is in possession of an important talisman. Appropriately enough, several of these people who suddenly and inexplicably snap are postal workers. Also, violence by letter carriers isn't unknown to Dannellton. A score of years earlier, another postal worker left a very special message for a neighborhood boy: his mother's severed head.

After about fifty gruesome killings, we begin to understand a bit about the Messenger, who he works for, where he's from, why he is able to come to Earth now. Wa-a-ay back when, in fact, millennia ago, monks were able to make mental contact with inmates of Hell. As a result, several bell ringers were forged that would allow the Messenger can use to ring his special bell and call fourth the faithful.

But the ringers to the bells had been confiscated by the Vatican and kept in lockdown, but of course, these things have a way of getting loose. Of course, the Messenger needs the ringers, so he possesses unsuspecting humans, causing them to commit mayhem, thus delivering his "message" until he can get his infernal hands on at least one of these ringers. At this point in the novel, Lee attempts to link the plot to universe established in two of his previous works, City Infernal and Infernal Angel, both excellent novels that detail Hell as a diabolical parallel dimension. City Infernal is particularly memorable for its story about Satan's attempts to manipulate the arcane rules of the universe in order to end time and bring about his own reign on earth and put me in mind of an unfunny Dogma. But alas, Messenger didn't contain enough of this universe to make Lee's plot sufficiently compelling. Lots of blood and gore aren't enough to make a novel interesting. This is what I mean, in fact, when I state that Messenger is full of senseless violence. The carnage just gets really boring after a while.

And I have one further bone to pick with Messenger, or more specifically, with Lee's representation of female characters. All of his female characters are lithe, middle-aged hardbodies with breasts that defy gravity in spite of their maturity. And there seems to be a direct correlation between how much Lee's female characters are sexualized in stereotypical ways and how much they'll suffer at the hands of their middle aged and average looking tormenters. Interestingly enough, Lee's human male characters rarely have their physical appearance described. Do you see where I'm going with this? Did we learn nothing in the 1970s? I've no problem with erotic horror. In fact, one of my favorite novels of all time, Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse, blends graphic sex with equally graphic violence while skillfully representing a continuum of erotic sensibilities.

Messenger didn't make me go as postal as some of the characters in the novel did. However, I was very annoyed by its mediocre storytelling and sexist characterization. Frankly, I expected more from the author of City Infernal.