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Greely's Cove
Book by Gideon, John
- GenresHorror
422 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
February 9, 2016
Good old fashioned horror and what a great little read with some super memorable characters. An ancient evil "The Giver of Dreams" has taken up residence in Greely's Cove and it's growing stronger, maturing through it's cycle of hunger and feeding, moving with practiced diligence toward's its goal..reproduction. Along the way The Giver of Dream is collecting and devouring the residents of Greely's Cove...can it be stopped...can this evil in the form of Dr Adrian Craslowe be destroyed only time and a hero in the form of Carl Trosper hold the key.
Carl has returned to Greely's Cove on the unfortunate death of his wife Lorna, to look after his son Jeremy who unknown to him has been recruited and is under the evil spell of Craslowe....enter the players: Hannie Hazelford an eccentric old witch who fights the evil with her own special magical powers, Robbie Sparhawk, a forensic psychic who is present in Greely's Cove to help solve the mystery of the disappearing residents.
The real star of this story however is Mitch Nistler ex con and assistant embalmer. Mitch has very few social skills, a rather bad drinking problem and very little luck with the ladies until one evening he decides that this luck must change and he will have the love of a beautiful woman..even if this woman is dead! "After wrapping Lorna Trosper's beautiful body in a clean sheet, he moved one of the massive black hearses out of the garage and drove his burbling, rust-cratered El Camino into its place. He then gently laid the body into the cargo bed of the half-car, half pick-up truck and covered it with a sheet of plastic to protect it from the rain. Back to its place went the hearse. The mortuary went dark as he shut off the last light. The garage door rattled closed, and Mitch Nistler, feeling both weary and exultant, drove away into the black night, bound for home with his woman"....and one night in the not too distant future Mitch arrives home somewhat drunk knowing that he has a beautiful woman somewhat dead, all alone and to himself in his home...and the unspeakable happens!
Mitch is also involved with the unsavoury Corley "the cannibal" Strecker and as the story progresses and Mitch's life spirals out of control we begin to see and understand the fate that "The Giver of Dreams" has in store for Mitch. Mitch is a wonderful sad, comic character which gives a real touch of class to this horrific yet highly enjoyable tale of growing evil. Will good overcome evil and will Carl finally reunited with his lost son Jeremy, all is set to be revealed in this good old fashioned horror story told with immense descriptive power by Mr Gideon. I cannot understand why horror books of such brilliance are out of print..thank goodness for the power of the web..and we can still all with a few clicks find and enjoy such exciting reads as Greely's Cove.
Carl has returned to Greely's Cove on the unfortunate death of his wife Lorna, to look after his son Jeremy who unknown to him has been recruited and is under the evil spell of Craslowe....enter the players: Hannie Hazelford an eccentric old witch who fights the evil with her own special magical powers, Robbie Sparhawk, a forensic psychic who is present in Greely's Cove to help solve the mystery of the disappearing residents.
The real star of this story however is Mitch Nistler ex con and assistant embalmer. Mitch has very few social skills, a rather bad drinking problem and very little luck with the ladies until one evening he decides that this luck must change and he will have the love of a beautiful woman..even if this woman is dead! "After wrapping Lorna Trosper's beautiful body in a clean sheet, he moved one of the massive black hearses out of the garage and drove his burbling, rust-cratered El Camino into its place. He then gently laid the body into the cargo bed of the half-car, half pick-up truck and covered it with a sheet of plastic to protect it from the rain. Back to its place went the hearse. The mortuary went dark as he shut off the last light. The garage door rattled closed, and Mitch Nistler, feeling both weary and exultant, drove away into the black night, bound for home with his woman"....and one night in the not too distant future Mitch arrives home somewhat drunk knowing that he has a beautiful woman somewhat dead, all alone and to himself in his home...and the unspeakable happens!
Mitch is also involved with the unsavoury Corley "the cannibal" Strecker and as the story progresses and Mitch's life spirals out of control we begin to see and understand the fate that "The Giver of Dreams" has in store for Mitch. Mitch is a wonderful sad, comic character which gives a real touch of class to this horrific yet highly enjoyable tale of growing evil. Will good overcome evil and will Carl finally reunited with his lost son Jeremy, all is set to be revealed in this good old fashioned horror story told with immense descriptive power by Mr Gideon. I cannot understand why horror books of such brilliance are out of print..thank goodness for the power of the web..and we can still all with a few clicks find and enjoy such exciting reads as Greely's Cove.
August 27, 2020
So, I wasn’t that enthused with this one for about the first half, but after things picked up in the second half, I enjoyed it a little more. I think (and so did my buddy read partners) that the characters were just not that interesting for most of it. It was hard to get interested in what might happen to them. But ultimately, there was a little mystery, and a little twist in the end that were a little redeeming. I’m a little curious what the end was supposed to mean as well. I don’t think I’d go with more than 3/5 stars here, but still glad to have read it.
September 1, 2020
You ever buy books just for the cover? But tell yourself you're not really buying it just for the cover, that you're planning on reading it one day, truly you are, because it's got such a gorgeously hideous cover so the story inside must be pretty good? Then a couple of cool people from HA decide to do a buddy read, because they have the same book with the really cool cover, and you join in, because it means you get to look at the cover everyday, as well as read the scary story held within. And by about, say, less than halfway through you realise that you'd actually just like to keep the cover closed on the boring tedious characters within the pages, but you continue to slog through because you keep thinking..."surely with that cover the book's going to get better..."?
But it doesn't get any better than that cover?
The 2 stars are for the cover art, because there are just not enough flesh-eaten ghouls on horror books these days.
But it doesn't get any better than that cover?
The 2 stars are for the cover art, because there are just not enough flesh-eaten ghouls on horror books these days.
December 30, 2023
"You're not telling me that you believe all that claptrap, are you, Carl? For God's sake, this is 1986, not 1186. The Dark Ages are gone! Monsters are out and computers are in."
AN EPIC MASTERPIECE OF MODERN HORROR, reads the cover. But who are those words attributed to? Stephen King, maybe? We know that guy blurbs far more than it's possible for any single human being to read. But no- upon closer inspection, I realized not only that it was just the publisher's claim rather than a blurb, but that there weren't any blurbs at all- not on the front or back cover, nor even inside. Interesting. Publishers can get excessive with blurbs and they generally don't mean anything to me anyway; but I'm used to them, and so the discovery of their absence (which I made about 100 pages in) caused Gideon (whom I'm pretty sure I'd only ever heard of from a Jack Tripper review, and whose real name turns out to be Lonn Hoklin, born in 1946 in Billings, Montana- that's about all I can find out about him from a Google search) to seem even more mysterious to me. Beyond that, though, the absence struck me as more charming than inauspicious. Additionally, I have to say that I love the way this particular Paperback from Hell looks. The 1991 Signet edition, anyway, offers the above-pictured eerie cover art- an old spooky house shrouded in fog, evocative of the story's Pacific Northwest setting- while the back cover features white lettering against a black background, the synopsis trailing off with an obligatory ominous ellipsis. And if it sounds like I'm spending a lot of time on the aesthetics, it's because I experience a rush of nostalgia with books that look like this; if it looked instead as glossy and antiseptic as most paperbacks do today, I doubt I'd have given it a chance.
The back cover also references 'Salem's Lot, which might have been what gave me the impression that this was going to be a slow-burn. The setup involving a successful 30-something guy who heads back to his small hometown across the Puget Sound from Seattle was familiar enough to put me in mind of a west-coast version of King's vampire tale as well, even if Gideon's protagonist Carl is a political consultant rather than (like most of King's protagonists) a writer. Naturally enough he's returned home to try to take care of his son after the mysterious death of his ex-wife, and naturally enough the town has recently been beset by a string of inexplicable disappearances. But I'm kind of finicky and particular when it comes to horror, and initially the story still moved too quickly for me. Or maybe I should say that Gideon presented the horror too overtly. Like I said, I'm particular, and one thing I'm particular about is that I tend to prefer what a friend of mine calls a whiff of the supernatural. I need to be initiated gradually. For some reason I've always been able to accept vampires, maybe because a part of me believes they really are out there, but I struggle with re-animated corpses who, for example, snap their fingers and make all the locks on a car engage, just like that, or who slam doors shut with their mind. Actually, when Gideon has a police chief merely recount these events to another character as dark rumors sweeping the town- opaque rumors to the effect that the families of those who've disappeared have started to receive "visitors" in the middle of the night- it's pretty fucking creepy. But when he gave us ringside seats for these events relatively early on, he lost me a little. I almost always prefer not to see the monster, at least for a good long while, and it seemed to me that Gideon was shortchanging some of his creepiest ideas by pushing them out into the open too early.
But a funny thing happened after I'd put this aside for a few months around the page 150 mark, and then went back to it. For one thing, as I got deeper into the story, I found myself enjoying the varied and ridiculous characters Gideon had populated Greely's Cove with. We've got an ex-con named Cannibal who forces an old jail crony to help him sell crack in downtown Seattle (for a brief few chapters it almost feels like it's going to turn into a crime novel), said crony trying to adjust to this dramatic life change while also (apparently) being . There's also a wheelchair-bound psychic with a southern accent and a loyal pooch, a centuries-old witch who needs to get naked in front of visitors to effectively utilize her scrying mirror, an ostensibly helpful psychologist who only accepts patients at the creepy-ass manor he lives in on the edge of town, and a pretty-clearly EVIL little kid who makes a habit of creepily showing up in people's houses in the wee hours of the night. If that isn't frightening enough, he inexplicably speaks with a British accent. Carl by contrast is a solid Everyman in the King mold, and helps the story keep one or two toes in something resembling plausibility. I liked his wife's sister Lindsay too, and his rapport with his old friend Renzy, who apparently just lives on a yacht and spends most of his time absently tying and untying sailor's knots.
For another thing, I started to appreciate the story's rainy maritime atmosphere, the strong sense of place. Having just been to Seattle for the first time this past year, I was able to visualize a few of the locations Gideon was talking about- that could've been me buying crack on 4th and Pike- even if most of the action does take place on the other side of the Sound. I also discovered, pleasantly, that Gideon actually hadn't used up all his creepiest ideas early on, and that he had some pretty chilling surprises in store as the novel ramped up.
It's an uneven book, for sure, but I ended up digging it a lot, and I think I'll read another of Gideon's. It helped that he has a good sense of pacing and suspense, an obvious fondness for the subject matter, and that an undercurrent of dark humor throughout suggested he wasn't taking all of this 100% deathly seriously. That allowed me in turn to just enjoy the escalatingly wild ride. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd wager that most of the readers slowly making their way through the Paperbacks from Hell would rank this in the upper half of those books.
December 9, 2007
Anyone who loves horror should put this book on his or her "must-read" list! Haunting, chilling, and just downright scary, Greely's Cove will keep you in its grip from its shocking beginning to its climatic ending.
John Gideon, who is apparently better known for his vampire novels, penned a well-written, edge-of-your seat book with this one back in the early 1990s.
Greely's Cove is out of print, but you should be able to easily find it at a used bookstore or online.
Happy reading!
John Gideon, who is apparently better known for his vampire novels, penned a well-written, edge-of-your seat book with this one back in the early 1990s.
Greely's Cove is out of print, but you should be able to easily find it at a used bookstore or online.
Happy reading!
November 25, 2019
Greely's Cove! The Horror bestseller that never was!
Man. Lots of thoughts and feelings here, so many it's hard to disseminate. I just closed the book, and I'm a whirlwind of STUFF. I'll do my best to convey...
SO. Greely's Cove is incredibly uneven at it's worst, fantastic horror writing at its best and it oscillates between the two WILDLY. That's the best way I can describe it. It's packaged as vague, sterile horror with its 422 dense pages sandwiched between the blandest cover art one can imagine. But that's probably exactly what some "editor-in-chief" type ordered circa 1991, when this thing finally got published. I feel almost present at the planning meetings for the book, which was clearly written years before it's release onto the unforgiving and uninterested masses...
" We haven't had a horror best seller in a while and sales are down... horror's always been a sure thing...what have we got?"
"OH LOOK! GREELY'S COVE! let's just tuck it in a Stephen King lookalike, soundalike cover and market it as some subdued thriller! We will call it a masterpiece! And a masterpiece it'll be!"
"Who wrote this thing though...Lonn Hoklin!? That's no horror maestro's name. Lets come up with something more brooding...something biblical perhaps...Got it! John Gideon?! And he shall be our bread annnnnnd butter! We will have movies and TV deals and cross merchandise! It'll be great!"
So on and so forth. And readers disagreed, because Greely's Cove came and went, those movies and shows never materialized, and "Gideon" wrote two other novels before settling back into his day job, neither of which to be remembered again and fading into the standard obscurity abyss of midlist horror writers circa the late 80s-early 90s.
Frankly, it's all a damn shame. That it was marketed this way, that Greely's Cove met this fate and all those movie/tv deals never happened. Because, by-and-large, this is one to be consumed and enjoyed by both horror fans and the masses alike.
Greely's Cove tells a small-town horror tale, with great expertise, great characters and plenty of engaging interpersonal conflict:
Carl Trosper, a successful businessman, leaves his political post in D.C. to return to his hometown of Greely's Cove, after his wife commits suicide, leaving his severely delayed son, Jeremy, an orphan. Upon his return, however, he finds that his son is no longer delayed, but now a brilliant prodigy, under the care of a therapist, Hadrian Carlowe.
People in the town are disappearing, leaving behind nothing but a wretched stench and some slime. Apparitions of their former self start to return and terrorize the community, but there's much worse at play here. And Carl is dead center of it all.
The majority of the book, it straddles the "bestseller" fence, focused on quiet, atmospheric horror and the lives of the characters involves. This is interspersed with the occasional gross-out, disturbing sequence to keep it saddled in the Horror seat, until it finally loses its shit in the last 50 pages or so, pulling out every stop it can and becoming a straight up goopfest. Not quite gorefest, because the body count is fairly low, but lots of slime and atrocity done in the name of The Giver of Dreams, one of many antagonists.
This book has it all, sorcerers, witches, evil kids, ghosts, zombies, zombie pregnancy, mad doctors, winged scaly monsters, necrophilia, psychics, magic, a splash of body horror and a particularly nasty ritual involving drinking a paste made from vomited-up newborns. Yeah, you've gotta read that one to believe it, and I'm almost sure I'm missing something...Which is all great, messed up horror for the horror fan!
It's just incredibly mismatched with the slowburn, atmospheric horror of the first 250 pages or so. It's as though there was an argument of which book "Gideon" was writing, and everyone arguing won. The biggest shortcoming is that it seems to be trying to be everything to everyone. And the standard issue of it "couldabeenahundredpagesshorter" that plagued these things...
Anyway, I could totally picture this as a miniseries or tv show, and think it would translate pretty well. I had a good deal of fun with this book, and, at the very least, was never bored once. I just wish it could have picked a more succinct direction, and stuck with it!
To that end, I've already ordered Gideon's other two titles, so I liked it plenty. Worth a read for sure!
Man. Lots of thoughts and feelings here, so many it's hard to disseminate. I just closed the book, and I'm a whirlwind of STUFF. I'll do my best to convey...
SO. Greely's Cove is incredibly uneven at it's worst, fantastic horror writing at its best and it oscillates between the two WILDLY. That's the best way I can describe it. It's packaged as vague, sterile horror with its 422 dense pages sandwiched between the blandest cover art one can imagine. But that's probably exactly what some "editor-in-chief" type ordered circa 1991, when this thing finally got published. I feel almost present at the planning meetings for the book, which was clearly written years before it's release onto the unforgiving and uninterested masses...
" We haven't had a horror best seller in a while and sales are down... horror's always been a sure thing...what have we got?"
"OH LOOK! GREELY'S COVE! let's just tuck it in a Stephen King lookalike, soundalike cover and market it as some subdued thriller! We will call it a masterpiece! And a masterpiece it'll be!"
"Who wrote this thing though...Lonn Hoklin!? That's no horror maestro's name. Lets come up with something more brooding...something biblical perhaps...Got it! John Gideon?! And he shall be our bread annnnnnd butter! We will have movies and TV deals and cross merchandise! It'll be great!"
So on and so forth. And readers disagreed, because Greely's Cove came and went, those movies and shows never materialized, and "Gideon" wrote two other novels before settling back into his day job, neither of which to be remembered again and fading into the standard obscurity abyss of midlist horror writers circa the late 80s-early 90s.
Frankly, it's all a damn shame. That it was marketed this way, that Greely's Cove met this fate and all those movie/tv deals never happened. Because, by-and-large, this is one to be consumed and enjoyed by both horror fans and the masses alike.
Greely's Cove tells a small-town horror tale, with great expertise, great characters and plenty of engaging interpersonal conflict:
Carl Trosper, a successful businessman, leaves his political post in D.C. to return to his hometown of Greely's Cove, after his wife commits suicide, leaving his severely delayed son, Jeremy, an orphan. Upon his return, however, he finds that his son is no longer delayed, but now a brilliant prodigy, under the care of a therapist, Hadrian Carlowe.
People in the town are disappearing, leaving behind nothing but a wretched stench and some slime. Apparitions of their former self start to return and terrorize the community, but there's much worse at play here. And Carl is dead center of it all.
The majority of the book, it straddles the "bestseller" fence, focused on quiet, atmospheric horror and the lives of the characters involves. This is interspersed with the occasional gross-out, disturbing sequence to keep it saddled in the Horror seat, until it finally loses its shit in the last 50 pages or so, pulling out every stop it can and becoming a straight up goopfest. Not quite gorefest, because the body count is fairly low, but lots of slime and atrocity done in the name of The Giver of Dreams, one of many antagonists.
This book has it all, sorcerers, witches, evil kids, ghosts, zombies, zombie pregnancy, mad doctors, winged scaly monsters, necrophilia, psychics, magic, a splash of body horror and a particularly nasty ritual involving drinking a paste made from vomited-up newborns. Yeah, you've gotta read that one to believe it, and I'm almost sure I'm missing something...Which is all great, messed up horror for the horror fan!
It's just incredibly mismatched with the slowburn, atmospheric horror of the first 250 pages or so. It's as though there was an argument of which book "Gideon" was writing, and everyone arguing won. The biggest shortcoming is that it seems to be trying to be everything to everyone. And the standard issue of it "couldabeenahundredpagesshorter" that plagued these things...
Anyway, I could totally picture this as a miniseries or tv show, and think it would translate pretty well. I had a good deal of fun with this book, and, at the very least, was never bored once. I just wish it could have picked a more succinct direction, and stuck with it!
To that end, I've already ordered Gideon's other two titles, so I liked it plenty. Worth a read for sure!
September 2, 2020
Sometimes you find some real surprises with paper backs from hell! Greely's cove, published in 1991, takes place in a small town west of Seattle around 1986. Yeah, small town horror really exploded after King's 'Salem's Lot; something of a sub-genre within the broader horror genre. Greely's Cove contains many horror tropes, but does then very well. This is really a plot driven novel, and as such, the characters do not stand out that particularly, but they are not horribly wooden either.
Like many of its small town brethren, something evil has come to Greely's cove, and a small rag-tag group eventually comes together to fight it. The story kicks off after a horrible suicide, where a woman kills herself in her car, leaving her young son (13). Her ex, now living in D.C., flies out to take care of the funeral and son. Turns out, he (Carl Trosper) is from Greely's Cove, but left for the big city long ago, divorcing his wife, in part due to their son's unusual mental illness-- she (the suicide) wanted to care for him while he wanted him institutionalized. The son, however, in the last year, went from a screaming, defecating monster to seemingly a normal boy, thanks to a new doctor in town.
Now all is not right in Greely's Cove, as Carl soon finds out. Hooking up with some old friends (one of which is now the town sheriff), he finds out that people have been disappearing without a trace for months; it seems once a month, someone just vanishes without a trace. Carl encounters this first hand as the daughter of the hotel's proprietor disappears soon after he arrives. Carl resolves to move to Greely's Cove to make a home with his 'cured' son and that is when the novel really takes off...
I really enjoyed the unfolding of the plot, with its nuanced twists and turns, but more, I really liked the sense of dread that Gideon creates. Greely's Cove is a very atmospheric novel and the dark, rainy and gloomy narrative serves well to create both tension and angst. It seems always to be rainy and cold in town, which is par for the course in the Pacific Northwest in winter, but Gideon really plays this up, including the unusual dead flora and fauna surrounding the mansion on the hill where the villain lives.
All and all, there is nothing really new and novel in Greely's Cove, but Gideon makes great use of horror tropes to tell a very good story. I give Gideon kudos for this, for while this may seem 'old hat' today, it was written over 30 years ago before these tropes became cliches. Also, a very sedate cover for a paper back from hell. While I was not very fond of the ending, I really liked the story. 4 ghoulish stars.
Like many of its small town brethren, something evil has come to Greely's cove, and a small rag-tag group eventually comes together to fight it. The story kicks off after a horrible suicide, where a woman kills herself in her car, leaving her young son (13). Her ex, now living in D.C., flies out to take care of the funeral and son. Turns out, he (Carl Trosper) is from Greely's Cove, but left for the big city long ago, divorcing his wife, in part due to their son's unusual mental illness-- she (the suicide) wanted to care for him while he wanted him institutionalized. The son, however, in the last year, went from a screaming, defecating monster to seemingly a normal boy, thanks to a new doctor in town.
Now all is not right in Greely's Cove, as Carl soon finds out. Hooking up with some old friends (one of which is now the town sheriff), he finds out that people have been disappearing without a trace for months; it seems once a month, someone just vanishes without a trace. Carl encounters this first hand as the daughter of the hotel's proprietor disappears soon after he arrives. Carl resolves to move to Greely's Cove to make a home with his 'cured' son and that is when the novel really takes off...
I really enjoyed the unfolding of the plot, with its nuanced twists and turns, but more, I really liked the sense of dread that Gideon creates. Greely's Cove is a very atmospheric novel and the dark, rainy and gloomy narrative serves well to create both tension and angst. It seems always to be rainy and cold in town, which is par for the course in the Pacific Northwest in winter, but Gideon really plays this up, including the unusual dead flora and fauna surrounding the mansion on the hill where the villain lives.
All and all, there is nothing really new and novel in Greely's Cove, but Gideon makes great use of horror tropes to tell a very good story. I give Gideon kudos for this, for while this may seem 'old hat' today, it was written over 30 years ago before these tropes became cliches. Also, a very sedate cover for a paper back from hell. While I was not very fond of the ending, I really liked the story. 4 ghoulish stars.
January 3, 2014
In Greely's Cove
a web was wove
by magic means,
and forces of old.
Evil ones, actions bold.
Taking those who give in freely.
This is the cost to live in Greely.
by Nikki
I really enjoyed this read of a couple who had a child with disabilities which caused the family to split up due to a difference in opinion on how and where the child should be raised. The mother commits suicide, which is strange, and the father jumps at the chance to be back in his son's life. All is not soccer games and fishing, for the handicapped boy he left is now an intellectual man. His recovery is due to the mysterious Dr. Craslowe whose methods are different than you normal therapist's.
That's not the only thing going on in Greely's Cove. People have come up missing with only vomit and a slimy residue that leaves a horrible stench behind. It doesn't take long for the horrors to begin and truly, they are horrors.
I really felt sorry for a character named Mitch who seems to have never had a chance.
The pacing of the story was a little unbalanced halfway through, but the read was so interesting, it was slightly over-looked. The qualm I had with this read was a character named Hannie. Her magical mumbo-jumbo kinda took away from the creep factor and she had a habit of explaining things that the story itself should have shown. I will most likely pick up one of his other reads, as there aren't many. A good read~
a web was wove
by magic means,
and forces of old.
Evil ones, actions bold.
Taking those who give in freely.
This is the cost to live in Greely.
by Nikki
I really enjoyed this read of a couple who had a child with disabilities which caused the family to split up due to a difference in opinion on how and where the child should be raised. The mother commits suicide, which is strange, and the father jumps at the chance to be back in his son's life. All is not soccer games and fishing, for the handicapped boy he left is now an intellectual man. His recovery is due to the mysterious Dr. Craslowe whose methods are different than you normal therapist's.
That's not the only thing going on in Greely's Cove. People have come up missing with only vomit and a slimy residue that leaves a horrible stench behind. It doesn't take long for the horrors to begin and truly, they are horrors.
I really felt sorry for a character named Mitch who seems to have never had a chance.
The pacing of the story was a little unbalanced halfway through, but the read was so interesting, it was slightly over-looked. The qualm I had with this read was a character named Hannie. Her magical mumbo-jumbo kinda took away from the creep factor and she had a habit of explaining things that the story itself should have shown. I will most likely pick up one of his other reads, as there aren't many. A good read~
May 8, 2016
In this debut horror novel from John Gideon, an ancient evil plagues the citizens of Greely's Cove, but as townspeople begin to vanish inexplicably, most seem to think it's the work of a serial killer, until family members claim to have been visited by the missing in the dead of night. And police chief feels helpless to solve the mystery.
Meanwhile, prominent DC political consultant, Carl Trosper, returns to Greely's Cove after his ex-wife suddenly commits suicide...and to repair his relationship with his troubled teenage, Jeremy. But seems to have been cured of his mental afflictions, thanks to therapy methods by the eccentric Hadrian Craslowe, who lives in the crumbling old manse called Whiteleather Place.
British expatriate and elderly shopkeeper, Hannie Hazelford, claims to know more than she's letting on. And she knows the horrors that have been terrorizing the people of Greely's Cove, but can she rally forces together, including a forensics psychic hired by the police chief, to thwart the darkness threatening to consume them all?
Needless to say, I really dug this book, and Gideon's writing, a whole lot. Published over 20 plus years ago, this horror novel resonates as a throwback to the horror heyday but also has shades of what's new and fresh today. And there's a definite Lovecraftian feel to it, as well.
Highly recommended!
Meanwhile, prominent DC political consultant, Carl Trosper, returns to Greely's Cove after his ex-wife suddenly commits suicide...and to repair his relationship with his troubled teenage, Jeremy. But seems to have been cured of his mental afflictions, thanks to therapy methods by the eccentric Hadrian Craslowe, who lives in the crumbling old manse called Whiteleather Place.
British expatriate and elderly shopkeeper, Hannie Hazelford, claims to know more than she's letting on. And she knows the horrors that have been terrorizing the people of Greely's Cove, but can she rally forces together, including a forensics psychic hired by the police chief, to thwart the darkness threatening to consume them all?
Needless to say, I really dug this book, and Gideon's writing, a whole lot. Published over 20 plus years ago, this horror novel resonates as a throwback to the horror heyday but also has shades of what's new and fresh today. And there's a definite Lovecraftian feel to it, as well.
Highly recommended!
February 18, 2023
Oof well I'm not sure what to say.. not in a bad way. There's just a lot going on, its got warlocks, good witches, a demon, living dead(not really zombies but kinda are in a way), a psychic, possession, and just some really morbid stuff in it like uh.. dang I kiiiiiiiiiiinda don't wanna get into it but rugh but some dude has sex with a corpse.. the corpse then has a baby.. oh and guess what? THAT CORPSE STILL GOT THE SOUL ATTACHED TO IT. come to find out I do in fact have a limit to what I wanna read. oh and infant death.. THERE'S A LOT OKAY! also HOLY HELL THIS BOOK HAAAAAAAAAAAAATES THIS DUDE MITCH NISTLER.
Expect some gross stuff. but I liked it. or parts of it. I just really like the cover
idk if this book is on Most Disturbing Books list or not but if it is it needs to be higher.
#5 is Fahrenheit 451 lol wat? no that list is weak put this at like #3.
i'd give it a 3.5
Expect some gross stuff. but I liked it. or parts of it. I just really like the cover
idk if this book is on Most Disturbing Books list or not but if it is it needs to be higher.
#5 is Fahrenheit 451 lol wat? no that list is weak put this at like #3.
i'd give it a 3.5
June 18, 2021
And who would believe this book is 30 years old!!! This was 'The Bestselling Classic of Horror' that never made that title!! I will never go back home to Seattle and not think of these characters ever again!
Check out my video review from my Youtube Channel; AreYouIntoHorror here:
https://youtu.be/ZAFOXt-yrHM
'Greely's Cove' has got to be one of the most intense, and greatest unknown classics ever!! And to think that i have never picked it up before now!!! John Gideon's debut novel is just as the front cover says.....An Epic Masterpiece of Modern HORROR!! This book had it all; a scary and supposedly haunted mansion on the edge of the Seattle sea port, witches, demons, scary kids, gore, dead people coming back to visit their loved ones.....you name it this book had it! And it was done flawlessly.
The small seaside town of Greely's Cove Washington is just outside of Seattle, and harbors centuries old secrets.....secrets not spoken about. In the huge and scary as hell mansion called Whiteleather Place there lives a dr. of psychology by the name of Hadrian Craslowe. 12 year old severely autistic teenager Jeremy Trosper has demons.....demons of the mind, and it seems that Dr. Craslowe has miraculously cured him in just a week! Yes, Jeremy is almost of a genius mindstate....he can draw and watercolor, and carry on coversations like a college grad of european lit. And days after this recovery his mother; Lorna Trosper commits suicide, leaving her ex husband Carl and father of Jeremy to leave his New York practice to come to Greely's Cove and retrieve his son, and to make up for the last 5 years of not being a father to his boy.
Upon arriving in town....Carl notices the fog that only is around the mansion and only comes in at night, but he notices a weird feeling in the way the people 'welcome' him to town, knowing all there is to know about Lorna's suicide and Jeremy's miracle cure. How? He meets Jeremy's 'keeper' at the time until his arrival, the mysterious Dr. Hadrian Craslowe, and meets his son for the first time since his cure......now a very intelligent young man. Lindsay Morelan, sister of Lorna and Jeremy's aunt is going to fight tooth and nail against Carl to get custody of her nephew, because she feels only she can give him want he needs....she is so wrong and she is soon to discover that.
Town eccentric resident Hannie Hazleford warns Carl to stay away from Craslowe, warnings that speak of weird beliefs, and spells and plans, and symbols that Carl has only read about in childrens scary books.....is she a Witch? Chief of Police Stu Bromton tells Carl to retrieve Jeremy and leave town before all hell breaks loose. What are these warnings that Jeremy is receiving from everyone? What and why are local townspeople coming up gruesomely murdered or disappearing? And why has Lorna's freshly dead body come up missing from the local morgue? And who is the lifeless female body in the back of morticians' assistant Mitch Nistlers car, and where is he taking her?
This 1991 Horror masterpiece is jam packed in all it's 422 pages (and with extremely small very close lined print!! at that) with horror, suspense, gore, and a story that you will not soon forget. This book took me forever to read due to this fact of such a small font, but it was NEVER slow or boring!
Forget Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and "Needful Things" get ready to meet the strange and horrifying residents in the town of Greely's Cove!!
Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, necrophilia, mutilation and use of a newbornt infant, and scenes of TERROR.
John Gideon is also the author of the vampire novel, (the follow up release to this one) "Kindred" and the book "Golden Eyes" all three of these have been sitting on my shelves...waiting to scare the shit out of me!
5 😱😱😱😱😱
Check out my video review from my Youtube Channel; AreYouIntoHorror here:
https://youtu.be/ZAFOXt-yrHM
'Greely's Cove' has got to be one of the most intense, and greatest unknown classics ever!! And to think that i have never picked it up before now!!! John Gideon's debut novel is just as the front cover says.....An Epic Masterpiece of Modern HORROR!! This book had it all; a scary and supposedly haunted mansion on the edge of the Seattle sea port, witches, demons, scary kids, gore, dead people coming back to visit their loved ones.....you name it this book had it! And it was done flawlessly.
The small seaside town of Greely's Cove Washington is just outside of Seattle, and harbors centuries old secrets.....secrets not spoken about. In the huge and scary as hell mansion called Whiteleather Place there lives a dr. of psychology by the name of Hadrian Craslowe. 12 year old severely autistic teenager Jeremy Trosper has demons.....demons of the mind, and it seems that Dr. Craslowe has miraculously cured him in just a week! Yes, Jeremy is almost of a genius mindstate....he can draw and watercolor, and carry on coversations like a college grad of european lit. And days after this recovery his mother; Lorna Trosper commits suicide, leaving her ex husband Carl and father of Jeremy to leave his New York practice to come to Greely's Cove and retrieve his son, and to make up for the last 5 years of not being a father to his boy.
Upon arriving in town....Carl notices the fog that only is around the mansion and only comes in at night, but he notices a weird feeling in the way the people 'welcome' him to town, knowing all there is to know about Lorna's suicide and Jeremy's miracle cure. How? He meets Jeremy's 'keeper' at the time until his arrival, the mysterious Dr. Hadrian Craslowe, and meets his son for the first time since his cure......now a very intelligent young man. Lindsay Morelan, sister of Lorna and Jeremy's aunt is going to fight tooth and nail against Carl to get custody of her nephew, because she feels only she can give him want he needs....she is so wrong and she is soon to discover that.
Town eccentric resident Hannie Hazleford warns Carl to stay away from Craslowe, warnings that speak of weird beliefs, and spells and plans, and symbols that Carl has only read about in childrens scary books.....is she a Witch? Chief of Police Stu Bromton tells Carl to retrieve Jeremy and leave town before all hell breaks loose. What are these warnings that Jeremy is receiving from everyone? What and why are local townspeople coming up gruesomely murdered or disappearing? And why has Lorna's freshly dead body come up missing from the local morgue? And who is the lifeless female body in the back of morticians' assistant Mitch Nistlers car, and where is he taking her?
This 1991 Horror masterpiece is jam packed in all it's 422 pages (and with extremely small very close lined print!! at that) with horror, suspense, gore, and a story that you will not soon forget. This book took me forever to read due to this fact of such a small font, but it was NEVER slow or boring!
Forget Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and "Needful Things" get ready to meet the strange and horrifying residents in the town of Greely's Cove!!
Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, necrophilia, mutilation and use of a newbornt infant, and scenes of TERROR.
John Gideon is also the author of the vampire novel, (the follow up release to this one) "Kindred" and the book "Golden Eyes" all three of these have been sitting on my shelves...waiting to scare the shit out of me!
5 😱😱😱😱😱
February 18, 2023
It took so long to read this book, it felt like I was a resident of Greely's Cove. It had a lot going for it. It had a lot that was out and out silly. For the most part, though, it was enjoyable.
The high points were the elderly lady who turns out to be some kind of witch. She does all this conjuring with bones and blood and urine. She dances around naked in front of her guests. She drives a souped-up Jaguar. She is boney and thin. I had her in my mind looking like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. The story, which was quite long, kept rolling. Never really snagged or slowed. Always building.
The low point was the necrophilia. The author described it a little too well for me. Pretty graphic stuff there. It was important to the plot, though. That was pretty much it for downers.
The crux of the matter is that a big shot political advisor returns home to care for his son after his ex-wife kills herself. The son who has mental issues far beyond treatment is miraculously cured. So, he runs around like Damian from "The Omen." Some of the town's citizens go missing. One every month. Drug dealers. Morticians and old acquaintances come together to make a real interesting story.
The high points were the elderly lady who turns out to be some kind of witch. She does all this conjuring with bones and blood and urine. She dances around naked in front of her guests. She drives a souped-up Jaguar. She is boney and thin. I had her in my mind looking like Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. The story, which was quite long, kept rolling. Never really snagged or slowed. Always building.
The low point was the necrophilia. The author described it a little too well for me. Pretty graphic stuff there. It was important to the plot, though. That was pretty much it for downers.
The crux of the matter is that a big shot political advisor returns home to care for his son after his ex-wife kills herself. The son who has mental issues far beyond treatment is miraculously cured. So, he runs around like Damian from "The Omen." Some of the town's citizens go missing. One every month. Drug dealers. Morticians and old acquaintances come together to make a real interesting story.
July 1, 2010
If you like sick horror, this one's for you.
February 26, 2016
- My Description -
Welcome to Greely's Cove, Washington state USA.
You'll find picturesque views and friendly tree-lined neighborhoods.
Not to mention vanishing residents and other odd occurrences shortly after a British doctor moves to the area.
Young Jeremy Trosper has Autism.
Dr. Hadrian Craslowe agrees to see Jeremy, claiming he can cure him.
Carl Trosper left Greely's Cove years before.
He has to move back after his ex-wife dies in a mysterious suicide.
After only a few weeks, Jeremy seems to exhibit no signs of Autism.
He soon begins reading books about the occult, and speaking in a British accent.
And that's when the FUN starts!
- My Review -
This book was so much fun!
It's also one of the scariest I've read.
It's the perfect read for October or when it's cold outside.
As the author does a very good job of describing the chilly weather occurring within the pages.
It is extremely descriptive in other ways too. It never feels long winded or boring.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending.
To anyone who loves a GREAT horror novel with the gory guts, this one is for you.
August 22, 2024
QOTD: are you a Paperback From Hell fan?
Please read my full review: https://fanfiaddict.com/review-greely...
“A hidden gem, buried deep in the sun-bleached sands of 90s horror, John Gideon’s “Greely’s Cove,” is a long forgotten and long overlooked Paperback From Hell, that beckons with a wicked grin. A Pandora’s Box of utter nastiness, it boasts a chaotic array of witches, psychics, sorcerers, zombies, pregnant zombies, an evil kid, an evil doctor, urine rituals, various other bodily fluids, lots of slime and goop, and a tonne of coke. It seems Gideon ticked off damn near every trope in the horror playbook. Each chapter is drips with gore, and oozing with ectoplasm- it’s wildly entertaining, as mesmerising as it is messy, and a novel that I hope to see more of online.”
Please read my full review: https://fanfiaddict.com/review-greely...
“A hidden gem, buried deep in the sun-bleached sands of 90s horror, John Gideon’s “Greely’s Cove,” is a long forgotten and long overlooked Paperback From Hell, that beckons with a wicked grin. A Pandora’s Box of utter nastiness, it boasts a chaotic array of witches, psychics, sorcerers, zombies, pregnant zombies, an evil kid, an evil doctor, urine rituals, various other bodily fluids, lots of slime and goop, and a tonne of coke. It seems Gideon ticked off damn near every trope in the horror playbook. Each chapter is drips with gore, and oozing with ectoplasm- it’s wildly entertaining, as mesmerising as it is messy, and a novel that I hope to see more of online.”
March 1, 2022
This was great until Part 2, then the pacing went all to hell.
March 26, 2012
Creepy, very creepy.
August 12, 2011
One of the best horror stories I have ever read. The ritual scene with the old woman still gives me the creeps!
November 26, 2011
Brilliant! i was gripped from start to finish! one of the best books i've read in a while! i'll be trying more by this author.
July 29, 2012
Creepy! This one stays with you.
June 2, 2023
The version I read was 1991 (different cover than above). Trade paperback.
Great vocab on the author; had to look up a few words, but they were used well. Usually a part of well-done descriptions.
Had a few scenes that actually provided a good scare. While the central conflict was more supernatural action than horror, the scenes leading up to that core conflict were quite good and creepy.
Ages well. Some older stuff doesn't, but this scales just fine for today's readers, I think.
I hadn't read Gideon before, but I'd read another if I found one.
Great vocab on the author; had to look up a few words, but they were used well. Usually a part of well-done descriptions.
Had a few scenes that actually provided a good scare. While the central conflict was more supernatural action than horror, the scenes leading up to that core conflict were quite good and creepy.
Ages well. Some older stuff doesn't, but this scales just fine for today's readers, I think.
I hadn't read Gideon before, but I'd read another if I found one.
June 28, 2025
It was hard for me to stomach such a raunchy book. The horror and gore side was great… but the multiple sexual interactions made me want to put it down. I almost thew it out the window of a moving vehicle. Im thankful it wasn't too detailed and only a few sentences long… but i just cant stomach it and i think it cheapens the book.
June 2, 2018
Loved this book - kept me hooked pretty much right the way through. First Gideon novel I've read so looking forward to checking out his other stuff! If you liked "Son Of The Endless Night" by John Farris then you'll like this too.
December 20, 2022
It's strange that at 422 pages, it feels underbaked, but it does. Somehow the character feel underdeveloped and the plotting feels rushed and haphazard. More like a first draft than a completed book.
August 19, 2017
This mediocre story is terribly written, full of worn-out phrases... DNF.
December 12, 2021
Unmemorable
July 9, 2023
🧟♂️🍆
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2023
Halloween 2023 Marathon Book 6/10
October 31, 2024
3.5 rounded down
September 2, 2014
This one was recommended by a friend so I went onto eBay and sought out a copy.
The book was written and is set in 1986, which isn't really relevant unless you wonder why at certain times the victims don't pull out their mobile phones and call for help. It calls itself an epic tale on the front cover, and it is long if nothing else.
Again, this suffers from a large cast that you can't always keep track of. I've said before that a lot of authors fall down when trying to do this but Stephen King seems to do it with ease in books like 'Salem's Lot and Under The Dome. It's a skill that I haven't had the guts to try yet. I have a book on the backburner which will involve a whole village of characters, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it. Maybe when I discover what King is doing right and so many others are doing wrong.
I found this book hard going and only stuck with it until the end out of stubbornness.
The book was written and is set in 1986, which isn't really relevant unless you wonder why at certain times the victims don't pull out their mobile phones and call for help. It calls itself an epic tale on the front cover, and it is long if nothing else.
Again, this suffers from a large cast that you can't always keep track of. I've said before that a lot of authors fall down when trying to do this but Stephen King seems to do it with ease in books like 'Salem's Lot and Under The Dome. It's a skill that I haven't had the guts to try yet. I have a book on the backburner which will involve a whole village of characters, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it. Maybe when I discover what King is doing right and so many others are doing wrong.
I found this book hard going and only stuck with it until the end out of stubbornness.
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