The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

Tunnelvision by R. Patrick Gates (Abyss). Good characterizations put this serial killer/police procedural a step above the rest. Ivy Delacroix is a bright, friendless young kid brought up by his widowed mother. He meets and befriends a lonely old woman. Bill Gage is a cop haunted by his past. And Wilbur Clayton is the end result of an abused childhood.

Down By the River by Monte Schulz (Viking) is about the repercussions to a small California town where a sixteen-year-old girl is allegedly raped by hoboes in a railyard. The police chief, a refugee from the big city, is unable to prevent a vigilante party from taking action against the transients. An old man is killed, others are wounded and one man escapes. Soon after, it’s apparent that the teenage accusers are being stalked and brutally murdered, seemingly for revenge. Published out of genre, Down By the River is far more than a serial killer novel—it is an intricate portrait of American small town life. This first novel, rich in detail and characterization, glaringly points out the difference in the quality of the prose of most horror writers as compared to that of more literary writers.

The Man Upstairs by T. L. Parkinson (Dutton) is also an impressive horror novel debut. Recently divorced Michael West moves into a small San Francisco apartment building. Soon afterward, a new neighbor moves in upstairs: a charming, handsome and self-possessed plastic surgeon named Paul Marks. Michael becomes obsessed with Paul’s sex life and his own mirror image, withdrawing more and more from the world. A young boy is found dead, a young woman is murdered, and Michael finds himself becoming confused about what is real and what is not. A profoundly disturbing novel about psychosexual obsession, control and loss of self.

Madlands by K. W. Jeter (St. Martin’s) is a hard-edged SF novel with horrific elements. It’s about an imaginary place called the Madlands—a kind of consensual reality Los Angeles, derived from archival material left after a disaster that has destroyed the real L.A. (if there is such a thing). If people stay too long they lose their pattern discrimination and their human forms are altered in disgusting and grotesque ways—breaking down into earlier life forms. Enjoyable and very Philip K. Dickian.

Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler (Henry Holt) is a crossover novel by a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories. It’s disturbing in the way real-life American racism against the Chinese (and anybody else who is different) in the 1870s is horrific. It’s an evocative, picaresque, thought-provoking and historical novel about a young Chinese timber worker who discovers a mysterious Caucasian woman in the forest. He fears she is a ghost lover meant to haunt him, and as other men and women come into contact with Sarah Canary (as he names her) she becomes whatever symbol of womanhood they wish to see. This brilliant first novel has a marvelously fantastic feel to it, along the lines of Peter Carey’s lllywacker. It opens with one mystery and ends with another. British critic John Clute calls it the “best first contact novel ever written,” which is an interesting interpretation. Highly recommended for lovers of the fantastic and good literature.

Gojiro by Mark Jacobson (Atlantic Monthly) is also not horror, despite Gojiro being the infamous movie monster Godzilla. On a remote island populated mostly by lizards, the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are felt—a monitor lizard becomes huge and smart and is immediately alienated from his fellows. A young boy in Hiroshima falls into a coma. Somehow Gojiro’s cries of loneliness are telepathically “heard,” and the boy recovers and travels two thousand miles to join his new-found friend. The novel is about their adventures on the road to Hollywood. A charming, hip, satirical science fiction debut.

Palindrome by Stuart Woods (HarperCollins) is a dark suspense novel that opens powerfully—a beautiful photographer, Liz Barwick, is admitted to a hospital after her doped-up football player husband nearly beats her to death. She divorces him and flees to an idyllic island paradise off the Georgia coast to heal her physical and psychic wounds. There she meets and becomes friends with the owners, including mysterious twin brothers who have not spoken to each other in twenty years. Various threads of the plot converge as her vengeance-bound ex-husband tracks her down and her involvement with one of the twins becomes increasingly strange. A good read despite some believability problems.

Damage by Josephine Hart (Knopf). This debut novel was published to justifiable critical acclaim. In a style as spare and cool as his emotional life, a man tells the story of his own destruction. This novel is a deeply moving, frightening psychological drama of obsession in which the refrain is “Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.” For once, the jacket blurbs do a book justice: “A passionate, elegant, ruthless story.” I was so caught up in it, I almost missed my subway stop. Read it! One of the best novels of the year published outside the genre.