Night Man

I'm a guy from Holland and in the early nineties I got my first exposure to the horrorgenre via countless horrormovies on videotape and my local comicbook store which imported FANGORIA magazine.I have to mention both in this review. First because FANGORIA wasn't that flattering in it's review of this book and second 'cause THE NIGHT MAN just feels to me like a lot of the horrorvideos from that time (think the Freddy Krueger and Jason films and more obscure gems like THE HITCHER and MAD JAKE).I have to disagree with FANGORIA though (sorry Dave Kuehls). I admit THE NIGHT MAN has a somewhat average setting and there is some moralising (I read somewhere Jeter used to work with troubled youths himself) but the parts with the fantom avenger and his black car are just so cool and everything just ties up real good in the end.The plot is simple (An abused kid has his revenge on those who pestered him, and his life somehow gets entangled with that of an aspiring writer slash nightguard) but there's enough horror in the parts with the abandoned drive-inn and (once again) the avenger to keep a horror buff like me interested. It's also a fairly short read which I finished in a day (another pluspoint in my book).I haven't read Jeters other books (The rumor is DARK SEEKER and SOUL EATER are better) but this is entertaining in it's own right.It's just too bad Jeter abandoned the horrorgenre to become a franchise writer for the likes of STAR TREK (yuck!).

Jeter, known now for novelisations of Star Trek stuff and for his Philip K. Dick ties, wrote some pretty good horror novels. DARK SEEKER is another one. This book, written while Jeter was working nights at some sort of juvenile correctional facility, deals with both child abuse and adult male violence in a reasonably thought-provoking and sympathetic way. It encapsulates many of Jeter's obsessive concerns -- child abuse, troubled men uncertain of their identities, and so forth -- and may -- I don't know -- include some bits of autobiography (since one of his protagonists in the novel is working at a job identical to the one Jeter was doing at the time). See my review of DARK SEEKER for more on Jeter, and my notes on MANTIS for a bit of a warning -- Jeter can fall in love with the violence he depicts, and may not be healthy reading... I actually thought his horror novels were much more interesting and unique than his forays into SF, though they're out of print now and the observation may be irrelevant...

This book was the excellent tale of a young boy who was kicked around his whole life and then in one instant vengence was his. THE VENGENCE OF THE NIGHT MAN!!! An emotionally-provocative story very well written.