Wild Violets

by Ruth Baker Field

They grow in my mother's garden. Their pure, silky petals reach out like the hungry arms of a lover -- yearning ... caressing ... waiting ... I want to touch them but I am afraid.

They look so peaceful and enticing, but just like a woman, they hide and deceive. Please, don't get too close to my mother's wild violets -- their beauty is evil, their fragrance is death, and what lies beneath them is too horrible to see!

Genres: Horror, Fiction

334 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1980

Reviews

[Nina The Wandering Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

“He had come to grips with himself and faced reality. He did not like the human female.”

Another #PaperbackFromHell checked off the list, and this one was quite the reading experience. I chose to make Wild Violets (1980) my next vintage horror paperback because the title seemed fitting for macabre Spring reading and I wasn’t wrong—plenty of floral imagery and outdoor settings.

Kramer Willinger is a young man who suffers from something not too far off from an Oedipus complex after the death of his father. He develops incestuous, lusty feelings for his mother after taking the phrase “you’re the man of the house now” a bit too literally. His mother Alice loves her son but is wary of something wrong with him. She is non-verbal—communicating through sign language—and suffers from memory loss, not remembering her husband’s death—did she kill him or was it an accident? Stemming from Kramer’s traumatic adolescence, as well as a constant rejection from and fear of the opposite sex, he equates women to the wild violets in his mother’s garden–sweet smelling, beautiful, enticing yet deceitful—and blames them for his emotional/mental troubles. And thus, his villain origin story has come to fruition and Kramer becomes a serial killer, one who praises himself as clever and strategic while hiding under the guise of a charming upstanding citizen.

As is expected from pulpy horror novels published in the 70’s and 80’s, this book is full of misogyny—violence, lots of vivid descriptions of women’s bodies to appease the male gaze, even a touch of disdain for women’s liberation from male characters. The author, Ruth Baker Field, also seems to have made this her only published work and I couldn’t find any information on her—assuming the author is actually a woman and not a man using a pseudonym. In spite of the "ick" I got from many moments in this book, I actually found this to be a page-turner I couldn’t put down. Compared to the contemporary splatterpunk genre with it's gore, perversity and violence, it was actually pretty tame. (plus, after reading Chandler Morrison’s Dead Inside, almost nothing scandalizes me anymore).

If you like your horror a little on the pulpy side, are fascinated by the serial killer psyche, male characters with mommy issues, or if you even manage to find a used copy of this book out there in the wild, see how you fare!

**TRIGGER WARNINGS: s*xual assault, r*pe, misogyny, incest, violence, animal death (a wild bird is brutally killed)

[Tome Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeese, how can I describe this book… had a great premise. Had fantastic cover art. But the story inside was meh. The story is told between Alice the mother and Kramer the serial killing son who wants to sleep with his mother view points. I enjoyed reading Kramers sections, but was bored whenever the story was being told from Alice’s point of view. The lack of excitement during Alice’s sections is what brought this book down for me. it’s not terrible but it’s definitely not a classic Zebra Paperback from Hell. It has its moments and it does get better as the book progresses, but only 3 stars for me.

[Lance Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cautionary tale about how judo throwing a terrible husband off a cliff may cause a son to love his mom WAYYYY too much.

[Lyn-Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh goodness, I would NEVER recommend this book to anyone due to the ick factor of the subject matter, but I'm totally impressed by how convincing Field wrote her serial killer. Not that I need any more convincing to never go with a stranger, this book has me not wanting to even walk out to my car alone. 4 stars for the scares and cheers to Zebra 80's horror for designing yet another dream cover.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stilted and all over the place. A good paragraph here and there.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

So. Is this a good book, to say the least? The answer, no. However, is this a book that's unique and a book that nobody would dare to even THINK, much less write anymore. The answer, is yes! Wild Violets doesn't try to pretend to be anything more then its not. And what exactly it is, is certainly debatable. In general, we're dealing with a serial killer here named Kramer. All of his victims are female. What makes the book so unique, is that we're not going from scene to scene where weapons are used to murder anyone. That's not Wild Violets, sorry. The trade off for the high volumes of violence and gore, is none other then...the serial killers own sexuality. Huh!? Surprisingly, it works, and the weird infatuation that he has with his own mother helps to paint a wrongfully disturbing picture here. What doesn't work, however, is Ruth Baker Fields style of writing, and the approach that was taken to create this book. For example. Sometimes, it feels like its narrated, and then other times, it just feels like I'm reading soft porn instead of a horror book. I want to point out, too, that it's been a very long time since I've read this book, in fact, I was only 13 when I read it. This is back when all I had to do was see that Zebra released a horror book, and I checked it out from the library, no questions asked. Even back then, I got the sense that all of these girls were violated by Kramer, and I got the strange notion that the author was perfectly okay with it, too. I kept waiting and waiting for the tables to turn on him, and yet the book just seems to boast him as some kind of hero, and quite truthfully, Kramers character makes me sick to this very day! Had the writing been a little different, meaning, if the author had taken a more recognizable approach with her style of writing, I probably would have given this book 3 stars, but the idea was unique enough, to come up with a unique way of telling the story was just almost too much of a good thing here. The book was puzzling in every aspect, leans much more on the perverse side then erotic, but felt nothing horrifying until three quarters through, and I'm sorry, by the time, it's a little too late to be catagorizing your book as horror. Might have been shocking in 1980 when the book was released, however, in the 2020's, it's just plain silly. But make no mistake, Kramer is no ordinary serial killer! And his behavior alone is still very creepy. The rest of the book? Fairly laughable.

[Danielle Klassen · Rating 2 out of 5]

So here's the deal: remember how much you enjoyed Psycho? Well hows about we take away all that subtle dread and suspense and replace it with *long* passages about how much Norman (Kramer) enjoys/worries about his penis. Add a few rape scenes, a main character that is more whiny than he is frightening and voila! Welcome to Wild Violets! I don't want to get too far into everything wrong with the writing and the unrealistic things that go on in the plot for the review for this one because it isn't meant to be taken too seriously. The one issue I will harp on is that the entertainment factor starts off with a decent amount of potential for a kind of cat and mouse game with a stalker who is clearly sick in the head and much more clearly based on the aforementioned Norman Bates. Except that Bates was interesting and Kramer isn't. The bigger problem is that his maniac sex conquest and the repetitive "SEX PSYCHO" lamentations by the characters overshadowed the plot to the point where it wasn't disturbing and had moved right into "get back to the plot" territory of annoying. Within the first fifty to sixty pages, we get to know more about the main character's ejaculatory issues than we do about anything else. I will note that in reading these kinds of books, one must be prepared for a particular mindset that is frowned upon today and that this has to be taken in stride. That said, I will also mention that the cavalier depiction of rape in the book is somewhat frustrating to read because it's just there. I know that someone might argue that this can add to the sinister nature of the character but he doesn't feel one way or the other about it and then just goes on whining that his couldn't orgasm. In a case like this, the rape isn't part of the plot as much as just a sprinkle of some unpleasantness that is masked as a justification for what he does later but if he doesn't care, it makes for a poor reasoning. Again, this book isn't meant to be taken seriously but that part did take me out of the story and made it more annoying to read to the point where I just wanted to get it over with. Potential for a more engaging read was there but this tale is better left on the shelf in a pinch.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spooktober 2022 Book 12

This book is basically just 334 pages of a perverted incel serial killer rapist with a major Oedipus complex. You’d think him trying to constantly sleep with his mother would be kinda kinky in a Pornhub sorta way, but it’s boring as shit as it’s repetitive and gross.

Also gross are the countless descriptions of said incel momma’s boy’s massive dick as it’s basically rock hard the entire story and he constantly moans about how it hurts and how he wants to use it to make love to women but apparently can’t ever actually complete the deed cuz all he wants to do is splash his baby batter inside his mom (yeah…seriously). So instead he just rapes and kills women cuz apparently it’s their fault he’s impotent.

Even with one of the better covers in the Zebra catalogue, this book sucks. In fact it’s an easy contender for worst book if 2022. Don’t read it.

[MaDonna Sheehy]

absolutely banger cover but this was full of explicit scenes detailing a child having sex with his drugged mother so maybe I’ve found the limit of trashy horror that I can stomach!!

dnf but will keep in my collection just for the design of it all lol

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young man from a privileged old family becomes a serial killer after a family tragedy when he was a small child.

A pretty good read with shades of Ted Bundy (car, arm plaster cast as a prop, pretending to be a cop, murder kit etc) with a big dose of sexual dysfunction and Oedipus complexes

[Caleb J. Pecue · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 and boy oh boy was there incestual thoughts and plenty of rape. I didn't expect that. It is odd that this book was the only thing Ruth Baker Field wrote... What ever happened to her?

[Scorpio8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most unusual way to tend your flower garden!!!
The psychotic character in this one rings all too
true with what one might be unfortunate enough
to run afoul of in real life.

Having read this so long ago I can't help think
of the Warren Zevon song "Excitable Boy".
This lad was quite excitable and took a real shine
to carrying out his perverse handiwork.

This should deliver some unsettling reading if
you want to take a ride on the roller coaster
psyche of a madman who sports a unique green thumb.