Kissing The Beehive

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Thoroughly Engrossing Mystery
Review: I've long been a fan of Jonathan Carroll's work and only recently picked up _Kissing the Beehive_. It's an excellent tale of a blocked writer (see Donald Westlake's _The Hook_) who goes back to his boyhood hometown to look into the mystery surrounding the death of a girl, whose body he discovered floating in the Hudson River. He intends to write the story of what he discovers and he ultimately discovers the secret. Along the way, we're treated to a slowly unfolding, very gripping story, including the tragic figure of a wild fan who first intrigues, then scares our protagonist. Carroll has a gift for writing some of the most poignant characters and scenes--things that really get under your skin and drag you in feet-first. I'm thinking about one memorable scene in which three of our main characters are sitting on the porch, sharing jokes and stories, and the writer-protagonist says something along the lines of "I'm very glad I have both of you in my life." I'm very glad there's an author like Jonathan Carroll in mine (too cheesy?).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Thoroughly Engrossing Mystery
Review: I've long been a fan of Jonathan Carroll's work and only recently picked up _Kissing the Beehive_. It's an excellent tale of a blocked writer (see Donald Westlake's _The Hook_) who goes back to his boyhood hometown to look into the mystery surrounding the death of a girl, whose body he discovered floating in the Hudson River. He intends to write the story of what he discovers and he ultimately discovers the secret. Along the way, we're treated to a slowly unfolding, very gripping story, including the tragic figure of a wild fan who first intrigues, then scares our protagonist. Carroll has a gift for writing some of the most poignant characters and scenes--things that really get under your skin and drag you in feet-first. I'm thinking about one memorable scene in which three of our main characters are sitting on the porch, sharing jokes and stories, and the writer-protagonist says something along the lines of "I'm very glad I have both of you in my life." I'm very glad there's an author like Jonathan Carroll in mine (too cheesy?).

Rating:
Summary: Well written, but nothing magical
Review: Jonathan Carroll's novels usually start off calm and then something magical happens to turn everything upside down. This novel, unlike his others, keeps its feet firmly on the ground and never becomes unnerving. Carroll is a terific writer and some of the lines in this book rival his best. Unfortunately, this is not an exciting story. It is the first novel that I've read by Jonathan Carroll (I have read them all and have enjoyed every one except "After Silence")that is completely predictable. Please Jonathan, return to talking animals and Los Angeles wizards! Readers, hunt out "The Land of Laughs" or "Bones of the Moon" rather than this one.

Rating:
Summary: One of Carroll's best, deals with murderous obsession
Review: Kissing the Beehive Carroll's latest foray into sinister stealth

By Bram Eisenthal

It was 1985 when I first discovered one of the horror field's greatest latter-day writers. I asked a clerk at Ottawa's House of Speculative Fiction if he could recommend someone really unusual - I had my fill of early Stephen King at the time - and he immediately whipped out a book and thrust it at me. "Land of Laughs," he said. "It's unbelievable... really different."

I had never even heard of Jonathan Carroll before and I generally knew my horror authors, so I was perturbed. How good could he be? Published in 1980 and the New York-born resident of Vienna's first novel, The Land of Laughs lived up to the clerk's billing. Highly imaginative and very frightening, it showcased the talents of a writer who excels at setting a macabre stage by allowing the horror to creep up on you v-e-r-r-r-y slowly. His tales are happy, funny and whimsical to start with, but chapter by chapter, Carroll adds sinister elements. Before you realize it, you're staring death squarely in the face. His second, Voice of Our Shadow, is even more shocking for its sinister stealth.

Kissing the Beehive is Carroll's tenth novel; one of the more recent ones, The Panic Hand, is a Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology that I highly recommend. As with the others, Beehive begins innocently enough, with a few stragglers rather than the swarm yet to come. Author Sam Bayer is in a slump, meeting with his agent in an attempt to untangle the cobwebs responsible for his terrible writer's block. His pending divorce is really creating havoc. Later, at a book signing, he meets an incredibly gorgeous fan, a California blonde named Veronica Lake. She really knows her Bayer, down to her business card, which contains an image from his novel The Tatooed City.

Bayer jogs his sluggish memory in an attempt to birth ideas. He drives to his hometown of Crane's View, visits old haunts, looks through high-school yearbooks and greets former acquaintances. The trip is the perfect panacea for his blues, as Bayer delves into an unsolved boyhood murder mystery, that of a free-spirited young woman named Pauline Ostrova. Her nude body, which had spawned so many adolescent fantasies, had been found by the young Bayer. Over the years, he had shunted the awful memory aside, but now he seizes the opportunity to gather important facts and unburden his soul.

During the excitement, unable to get her out of his thoughts, Bayer contacts Veronica Lake, they meet again and make love. He tells her about the burgeoning plot for his new novel and she is thrilled about her confidante status. Remember, she is his number one fan, like the character in Stephen King's Misery... only much more dangerous.

Bayer heads back to Crane's View, his teenaged daughter Cassandra in tow. He meets up with Frannie McCabe, childhood bad-boy turned chief of police, and brings up the Ostrova mystery. The police chief has his own take on the dossier and suspects that the town's crime boss, Gordon Cadmus, since murdered, had something to do with her demise. She had been seeing his son David, now a Hollywood film producer... and the old man as well.

In typical Carroll fashion, the story begins its slow spiral into madness just as Bayer and McCabe initiate their joint sleuthing. Also, something is terribly wrong with Veronica Lake. Bayer uncovers unsettling facts about her, most notably the fact she was two-time porn movie headliner Marzi Pan and a member of an infamous suicide cult. He decides not to see her any more, which first saddens and then infuriates her. Meanwhile, someone with knowledge of their unofficial Ostrova investigation is following Bayer and McCabe around, as well as videotaping unspeakable things, like the murder of David Cadmus on an L.A. street.

Lake, whom Bayer is trying to ignore, is in-his-face throughout. She slyly interacts with all his witnesses, subtly threatens his daughter and her boyfriend and, after McCabe barely survives an attempt on his life, befriends the cop. We also learn that she is a deft film technician and has been taping lots of footage, including shots of Bayer taken in a suit he had discarded years before and explicit images of them having sex.

The horror escalates when Cassandra goes missing, every father's nightmare but nothing compared to Bayer's ultimate scenario. His novel has taken the most sinister twist possible.

Jonathan Carroll is still unknown to many fans of mainstream horror literature, rather surprising in light of the stellar quality of every single one of his works. The author humbly pays homage to "Pat Conroy, Stephen King, Michael Moorcock, Paul West - Friends, Mentors, Wizards" - in the dedication, but I dare say that he has earned the right to appear right up there with them on that marquee.

In Doubleday's press release on Kissing the Beehive, King is equally complimentary, one master of the macabre to another. "A stunning novel of obsession and memory by the always amazing Jonathan Carroll. A brilliant writer - Jonathan Carroll is as scary as Hitchcock, when he isn't being as funny as Jim Carrey."

-30-

Kissing the Beehive Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday HC, 232 pgs., $31.95

Rating:
Summary: Kissing the Beehive is no Outside the Dog Museum...
Review: Kissing the Beehive is Jonathan Carroll's latest offering, and it's not really a fantasy book--or whatever genre you want it to be--but more of a thriller, though it does have Carroll's brilliantly quirky characters here.

The best of the lot is Veronica Lake (so perfectly named), who becomes the Sam Bayer's new girl--on his third divorce, burnt out from that and previous novels--and he mets her at a book signing. Their relationship is never easy, with mishaps along the way, and becomes one the centres to the book, as long as the old murder that Sam Bayer is setting out to solve so he can become overcome his writers block and write his new novel--of course, as with all old murders in sleepy towns, there is something still lurking around...

I will give no more away.

The prose is clean and perfect, but then that is what one expects from Carroll; the book isn't all that long, so the plot burns away; and the characters are well drawn, making them easily likable. One of the delights of the book is Sam's relationship with his daughter.

The one problem with the book, though, is that by the end of it, you don't really care who did the girl in so many years ago.

So there: Kissing the Beehive is no Outside the Dog Museum, but is on equal par to From the Teeth of Angels, Carroll's next best peice of work. That's in case anyone wanted it compared to other novels of his.

Rating:
Summary: Some Good Writing, But Preposterous Plot
Review: Kissing the Beehive starts well, but the storytelling deteriorates pretty quickly. It's a great premise for a book: a blocked writer goes home and finds the story of his career--a thirty-year-old murder mystery. But Carroll isn't able to sustain a credible storyline. Clues start arriving out of nowhere. His hero hooks up with an unstable woman (named Veronica Lake, if you can believe it) who seems to be an authorly creation rather than anything human or real. The denouement is clever, but it ultimately diminishes the book, since it's a little too neat. All in all, a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: rare
Review: Some who are familiar with Jonathan Carroll's books have, oddly enough,not been quite as satisfied with "Kissing the Beehive" as with his other books. They seem not to have respected or understood Carroll's desire as an artist for a direction change, which to me seems rather intolerant. For once he wanted not "only" "magic realism", but something else in "addition" - and he has the right to! After all HE is the one who writes hours and hours for us, he is the one who nourishes our senses, who creates the worlds we cannot create, the worlds we want to inhabit, the worlds we flee to. He is a artist and draws from his fantasy, HIS own unique imagination which he generously allows us to share. I was fascinated by this very book and feel honored to have been allowed access to yet another part of Carrolls vision - the ability to write a thriller which, until the end, leaves you breathless and in complete oblivion - not your typical thriller - an unearthly thriller which searches unforseeable depths and facets of human nature and human behavior. It is hard to put this book aside. Throughout, one is both intrigued and at the same time repelled by certain characters,another reason why this book is so fascinating. Beehive is a piece of Carroll's repertoire that "slightly falls out of place" (..."aus der Reihe tanzen") - One can say it is different from the others, and that is why it is so interesting. Carroll writes about what his soul longs for. I recommend this book and all of the others he has and will write. Jonathan Carroll is one of the most reliable writers around - he is always fun, smart, witty, insightful. Each of his books is rare.

Rating:
Summary: Hurrah! Carroll's best since From the Teeth of Angels
Review: This book had me captivated from the first page. Great mystery. Great characters. Good story!

One of the few authors that can leave the genre I discovered him in (fantasy/scifi) and still captivate me. The only other I can think of off the top of my head is Graham Joyce.

Carroll is great at keeping the reader off balance.

Rating:
Summary: Hurrah! Carroll's best since From the Teeth of Angels
Review: This book had me captivated from the first page. Great mystery. Great characters. Good story!

Rating:
Summary: okay
Review: This was my second Carroll book, after the fantastic Land of Laughs. It was pretty good for a while, but it got a little boring eventually and really fizzled out at the end. But I'd say it was still worth reading for his wonderful style of writing. I especially loved the interaction between Sam and his daughter in the first half of the book.