Black Lodge

Robert Weinberg has been nominated for the Hugo and the Balrog and is a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, as well as the recipient of a Bram Stoker Award, so it sucks that he's only written 16 full-length novels. I've enjoyed his light fantasy series (A Logical Magician and A Calculated Magic) and his classic horror The Devil's Auction is one my all-time favorites. The Black Lodge (first published in 1991) is an urban horror/occult tale that part-times as a detective story. It showcases Sid Taine as the tarot-reading shamus and introduces a supporting character that is later incarnated in a different literary format. The story starts when Taine is hired by a rich, beautiful woman (of course) to look into her husband's shady association with a sinister society called the Black Lodge. But as Taine doggedly chases down his leads, elsewhere in the city, a faceless entity known as the Dark Man is hunting down and butchering more than a few lowlife characters. Are these bloody murders connected to Taine's case? Well...yes. The tension mounts as the Dark Man gets closer and closer to possibly violently doing away with the core cast while Taine and friends attempt to make sense of the case's murkiness and also find a way to defeat their seemingly all-powerful adversaries. It all boils down to a confrontation with the entire Black Lodge in the somewhat exciting finale. But that's all I'll say about the plot. As a horror novel and for sheer entertainment value, the Black Lodge pales in comparison with the Devil's Auction, but then again, I hold the latter in very high regard. But, still, the Black Lodge doesn't lack for scary, diabolical fun. Most of the plot takes place in the cold, mean streets of Chicago and involves quite a few criminal scums-of-the-earth, thus flavoring the horror theme with a certain seedy urban element. The Dark Man is an unstoppable force of evil and, reading on, I wondered with dreadful anticipation how, or even if, the key characters will escape his relentless pursuit. The story is tautly written. Mr. Weinberg certainly knows how to amp up the suspense. He also goes into some details about the particulars of voodoo, several ancient European orders and satanism. Three characters I particularly cared for: detective Sid Taine, persistent, a tad psychic, and more to him than most of the book lets on; Papa Benjamin, a houn'gan of the voodoo Mysteres, getting on in years but dedicated to his faith (he loves Johnny Carson); and Ape Largo, ex-circus freak (smarter than he looks) and current bodyguard to the Bocar, head of a religious temple, which serves as a cover for a major drugs operation. Incidentally, in 2001, Ape Largo was resurrected in a Marvel comics mini-series titled Nightside by Mr. Weinberg, who made Largo a business partner/bodyguard of Ms. Sydney Taine in her detective agency (Sydney Taine, by the way, is the sister of our hero Sid Taine). I actually give this book 3 and a half stars. While well-written,