Book Review: ‘DESPERATE SOULS’ by Greg Lamberson

Greg Lamberson categorizes his police procedural / crime thriller / horror hybrid as “action horror” in his opening acknowledgments to Desperate Souls (Medallion Press), the followup to the first book in The Jake Helman Files – Personal Demons (review here). The edge-of-your-seat action sequences mixed with frightening supernatural plot lines certainly make that an apt characterization for the sake of brevity, but Desperate Souls is a more sophisticated genre-bending novel than that branding might suggest. Desperate Souls is a modern hard-boiled crime fiction tale turned completely on its head.

The Jake Helman Files follow the criminal investigations of our titular hero Jake Helman, which through their solving lead to supernatural revelations. Lamberson infuses horror into the conventional detective tale, making this a novel that will appeal to – and surprise – fans of detective, thriller, and horror fiction alike. His venturous bending of the hard-boiled tradition breathes new life into an American literary pastime. Desperate Souls is a strong followup to Personal Demons continuing the momentum of the first book. If you haven’t read Personal Demons, beware of spoilers beyond this point!

When we left off in Personal Demons, Jake had defeated Nicholas Tower and Kira Thorn, but lost his estranged wife Sheryl to the serial killer Cipher in the process. Now, less than a year later, widower Jake tries to put the pieces of his life back together, setting up shop as a private detective in lower Manhattan in a building he shares with a psychic, Miss Laurel. When a woman comes to him for help claiming that her dead grandson is out on the corner dealing the deadly new drug Black Magic, Jake must face brutal criminals to defeat the latest threat to his city. A skeptical Jake quickly realizes that the complexity of this case may require the help of Miss Laurel as he struggles to unlock the mysteries of voodoo magic.

As was typical of the dime store novels that influenced it, Desperate Souls concerns itself with familiar socio-economical issues that trouble the denizens of the modern urban environment; the product of corporate greed and corruption, a city crippled by economic recession, imprisoned by warring gangs, and facing a new drug called Black Magic – a drug that literally turns its users into zombies. These are not the shuffling, flesh-eating variety, but more accurately termed zonbies, the Creole word for the undead that are resurrected to serve the nefarious purposes of a bokor sorcerer or sorceress. While Lamberson’s New York City resembles the grittiness found in a traditional crime fiction setting, it is distorted with far darker evils typically associated with the horror genre.

Jake takes on cases worthy of occult detective John Constantine, but has the characteristics that even hard-boiled fiction forefather Raymond Chandler would approve of. Chandler lamented, in the Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, that Hollywood had yet to make the perfect detective movie because of their preoccupation with love stories that always found the protagonist falling for a woman. He also opined that “the real distinction of the detective’s personality is that, as a detective, he falls for nobody.” He further explains, “He is the avenging justice, the bringer of order out of chaos (Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler pg. 93).” Jake Helman is that heroic archetype and is, by his very nature, an unbeatable foe to the criminals of New York City. As a hard-boiled hero, Jake Helman often puts himself in grave physical danger to bring a criminal to justice and solve a case. As Herbert Ruhm explains in The Hard-boiled Detective, the hard-boiled investigator “survives because it is in his nature to survive.” Like a John McClane type hero (Die Hard 1988), Jake can be beaten, stabbed, shot, and pummeled – but he won’t stop, and he can’t be stopped, until he finishes the job.

As with Lamberson’s previous efforts, his subjects are well researched. In The Frenzy Way he blended fiction with real folklore to give his werewolf mythos historical weight and believability. Similarly in Desperate Souls, the details related to Louisiana voodoo and its migration to New York City is meticulously thought out. Lamberson cleverly set up a chain of events in Personal Demons, and like endless rows of forking dominoes, the toppling of one affects the next, connecting these events in an intricate pattern, snippets of which are revealed in each novel. His elaborate pre-planning makes the reading experience even more exciting as the reader connects the dots in Lamberson’s expansive world.

The Jake Helman Files provide some of the most fun you’ll have reading and Desperate Souls is proof that Lamberson has plenty of tricks up his sleeve to keep us entertained. The subsequent entries in the series are among my most anticipated releases and I look forward to seeing the saga unfold. What kind of bad guys will Helman face next? What criminal plot will threaten his city? And will he be able to stop it? If the first two books are any indication, this is a collection that will appeal to a wide audience of thrill seekers, horror hounds, and crime procedural enthusiasts. There is suspenseful action, head-scratching mysteries, and frightening supernatural horrors. Desperate Souls has elements of a few genres all masterfully pieced together. You can get both books at Medallion Press or at Amazon for about 15 bones for the pair. The third and forth book, Cosmic Forces and Tortured Spirits, already have release dates for October 2011 and 2012, so luckily we can reunite with our unstoppable hero very soon.

Check out all things Greg Lamberson at his website Slime Guy.