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Nocturnal
very good story
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1983
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About the author
Ken Eulo
10 books10 followersKen Eulo is a Eugene O'Neill Award-winning writer and bestselling author whose novels have collectively sold over 13 million copies worldwide.
Eulo's began his career in New York City, in the 1970s, as a playwright. In the 1980s, he received national recognition with his first horror book series The Brownstone Trilogy. Since its publication in October 1980, the series has developed a cult following. His success was followed by the novels Nocturnal, The Ghost of Veronica Gray, Manhattan Heat, Claw and The House of Caine. During the same decade Eulo moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a writer for television shows, including Small Wonder, Marblehead Manor, and Benson.
Eulo relocated to Orlando, Florida in the 1990s where he founded and currently serves as the artistic director for the New York Acting Ensemble. The repertory company consists of writers, directors, and actors. They regularly produce touring shows and host regular performances in the Orlando area. Several notable company members have included writer Daniel Corey and actor Creagen Dow.
Eulo's began his career in New York City, in the 1970s, as a playwright. In the 1980s, he received national recognition with his first horror book series The Brownstone Trilogy. Since its publication in October 1980, the series has developed a cult following. His success was followed by the novels Nocturnal, The Ghost of Veronica Gray, Manhattan Heat, Claw and The House of Caine. During the same decade Eulo moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a writer for television shows, including Small Wonder, Marblehead Manor, and Benson.
Eulo relocated to Orlando, Florida in the 1990s where he founded and currently serves as the artistic director for the New York Acting Ensemble. The repertory company consists of writers, directors, and actors. They regularly produce touring shows and host regular performances in the Orlando area. Several notable company members have included writer Daniel Corey and actor Creagen Dow.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 29, 2012
Ken Eulo, Nocturnal (Pocket, 1983)
The ad in the back of this book (if you read eighties paperback horror, you've gotta remember the ads they stuffed in the back—one for the author and three or four for other authors published by the press; this one has a Clive Barker ad, among others) blazons, “Ken Eulo terrifies!” And indeed he does, but not for any of the reasons one would expect a thriller author to terrify. I found the purple prose gave me nightmares. The cheap, meaningless casual sex struck me with the grippe. (And if you've been following my reviews, you'll know I'm normally—hell, often—a fan of cheap, meaningless casual sex.) And the fact that Ken Eulo was a million-copy-per-book bestselling author in the early to mid-eighties? THAT, folks, is terrifying.
I could spend the rest of this review quoting pieces of the text that made me laugh, but I'll just point out Eulo's great subtlety with names, which offers a sterling example. I'll even give him a pass on naming his heroine Rose Carpenter, because in comparison, that IS subtle. (If you're not catching the reference, imagine her first name is “my boss is a Jewish”.) I mean, her therapist is named Reese Cinderella, for heaven's sake (to be fair, I'd have expected Eulo to give him another last name, but saying what would be a major spoiler), and her partner in Cinderella's psychic experiments/lover is named... Jack Squadron. Yes, we're being expected to take a book seriously with a character, and a main character no less, with the last name of Squadron. Help me out here, folks. The token redshirt's last name is Cutler... need I go on?
In any case, the names aren't the only problem here. Rose is, of course, willowy, beautiful, and damaged, and Jack is kind of hunky in a geeky sort of way (he can't be too buff, he's a Broadway composer). Cinderella, from Eulo's description, will remind you of every mad scientist in every Hammer horror movie you've ever seen, and this, I am sure, is no accident. There's even a highly-psychic psychotic sex criminal recently released from prison (named Alex Mana, and okay, maybe in the early eighties I can buy that no character in the book caught the significance of that last name) under Cinderella's care who's so obviously a red herring I don't even need to put that under spoiler space. You get where I'm going with this, surely? Three-dimensional characters may possibly exist in Eulo's mind, but they certainly didn't translate that way on the page. Flat characters lead to a flat book.
The mystery angle isn't awful, though it was relatively overused at the time (more in movies than in novels; The Eyes of Laura Mars is an obvious choice, and The Fury will also come to mind, especially given that Rose's reluctance to work with her powers runs along very parallel lines to Gillian Bellaver's, the character played in that film by Amy Irving). But plot alone does not a novel make, even a B-grade genre novel. If you're wondering why so many of the big, big names from the last golden age of horror dropped off into obscurity, haunt any used bookstore that doesn't refuse to carry stuff more than a decade old (you should be avoiding places like that anyway) and grab some books by authors like Eulo; you'll figure it out soon enough. * ½
The ad in the back of this book (if you read eighties paperback horror, you've gotta remember the ads they stuffed in the back—one for the author and three or four for other authors published by the press; this one has a Clive Barker ad, among others) blazons, “Ken Eulo terrifies!” And indeed he does, but not for any of the reasons one would expect a thriller author to terrify. I found the purple prose gave me nightmares. The cheap, meaningless casual sex struck me with the grippe. (And if you've been following my reviews, you'll know I'm normally—hell, often—a fan of cheap, meaningless casual sex.) And the fact that Ken Eulo was a million-copy-per-book bestselling author in the early to mid-eighties? THAT, folks, is terrifying.
I could spend the rest of this review quoting pieces of the text that made me laugh, but I'll just point out Eulo's great subtlety with names, which offers a sterling example. I'll even give him a pass on naming his heroine Rose Carpenter, because in comparison, that IS subtle. (If you're not catching the reference, imagine her first name is “my boss is a Jewish”.) I mean, her therapist is named Reese Cinderella, for heaven's sake (to be fair, I'd have expected Eulo to give him another last name, but saying what would be a major spoiler), and her partner in Cinderella's psychic experiments/lover is named... Jack Squadron. Yes, we're being expected to take a book seriously with a character, and a main character no less, with the last name of Squadron. Help me out here, folks. The token redshirt's last name is Cutler... need I go on?
In any case, the names aren't the only problem here. Rose is, of course, willowy, beautiful, and damaged, and Jack is kind of hunky in a geeky sort of way (he can't be too buff, he's a Broadway composer). Cinderella, from Eulo's description, will remind you of every mad scientist in every Hammer horror movie you've ever seen, and this, I am sure, is no accident. There's even a highly-psychic psychotic sex criminal recently released from prison (named Alex Mana, and okay, maybe in the early eighties I can buy that no character in the book caught the significance of that last name) under Cinderella's care who's so obviously a red herring I don't even need to put that under spoiler space. You get where I'm going with this, surely? Three-dimensional characters may possibly exist in Eulo's mind, but they certainly didn't translate that way on the page. Flat characters lead to a flat book.
The mystery angle isn't awful, though it was relatively overused at the time (more in movies than in novels; The Eyes of Laura Mars is an obvious choice, and The Fury will also come to mind, especially given that Rose's reluctance to work with her powers runs along very parallel lines to Gillian Bellaver's, the character played in that film by Amy Irving). But plot alone does not a novel make, even a B-grade genre novel. If you're wondering why so many of the big, big names from the last golden age of horror dropped off into obscurity, haunt any used bookstore that doesn't refuse to carry stuff more than a decade old (you should be avoiding places like that anyway) and grab some books by authors like Eulo; you'll figure it out soon enough. * ½
April 6, 2020
The worst kind of old horror paperback, cheap and disposable, with no excitement or fun on the part of even the writer visible in the writing.
Reads like the novelization to a mediocre slasher from the 70s trying to bank on the popularity of Halloween with barely any kills onscreen being committed by an unthreatening killer. Buy it for cheap for the cover, leave it otherwise.
Reads like the novelization to a mediocre slasher from the 70s trying to bank on the popularity of Halloween with barely any kills onscreen being committed by an unthreatening killer. Buy it for cheap for the cover, leave it otherwise.
June 10, 2022
Ugh. What a hot mess. So many arbitrary characters and red herrings in a story that winds up making little to no sense. There’s some psychological hocus pocus and unexplored telekinetic powers mixed with Freudian dream imagery. But, man, what a drag to get through.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews