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Fear Book
It comes with the postman. But it's more than just another piece of mail.
Its clover is a red so deep it's almost black. As black as the darkest sin. Inside its pages are images, unspeakably vivid, that exploit your deepest, most secret fears . . . burning images of horror that will live in your mind forever.
It is a book without a title or a return address, but it can summon forth an ancient rage. A rage for lust. A rage to kill.
And the postage due is a price no mortal can ever pay . . .
Its clover is a red so deep it's almost black. As black as the darkest sin. Inside its pages are images, unspeakably vivid, that exploit your deepest, most secret fears . . . burning images of horror that will live in your mind forever.
It is a book without a title or a return address, but it can summon forth an ancient rage. A rage for lust. A rage to kill.
And the postage due is a price no mortal can ever pay . . .
- GenresHorror
249 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1988
2 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 24, 2021
Sam Dennison and his wife Joanne have just moved into their dream home: a lovely old house in the small New England town of Fairharbour, Connecticut where everyone's friendly, everyone knows everyone else, and the police mostly exist to arrest the same few drunken idiots every weekend. Everything seems to be working in their favor: it isn't long before Joanne's pregnant with their first child, Sam's able to commute to his job, and, while Joanne's not working, she's made fast friends with Babs, the next-door neighbor who's only a few years her senior.
All that changes the day, two and a half months later, The Catalog shows up in their mailbox.
The Catalog isn't really a catalog at all, but that's how everyone who looks at it somehow comes to think of it, capital letters and all. The Catalog comes bound inside a plain, blood-red cover with a simple label marked "Current Resident". There is no return address or postmark. Just looking at the outside is off-putting, but it's the interior which really does a number on you. The Catalog doesn't sell anything -- instead, it shows you page after page of hideous, horrifying pictorial representations of the worst things you've ever imagined. The shadowy reflections of all the memories and emotions you keep bottled up. The true face, hidden behind the masks we all wear every time we venture out into the civilized world.
All customized to personal taste. Everyone who flips through The Catalog sees something different within the pages. Reminders of everything they want to forget, everything they don't want to admit, every sin they've ever committed or even thought about committing: they're all on display in The Catalog.
You can throw The Catalog out with the trash, but a new one will show up tomorrow. You can burn it with the rest of your junk mail, but next afternoon will bring a replacement, just like clockwork. And once you've looked inside, you'll never be the same again. The Catalog brings to life those urges, pulls forth those desires, and re-opens those little doors we swore were locked up tight somewhere in the back of our subconscious mind.
Now that The Catalog has arrived at Sam and Joanne's house, nothing in their quaint little town will ever be the same. The question, of course, is "what?". What did these two innocent people do to deserve a subscription to The Catalog? What can they do to get their names off the list? And what will happen when their neighbors and friends start getting The Catalog for themselves?
* * * * *
Byrne's a fine comic plotter, and that skill translates well to the text-only medium. Warner published it in 1988, well after they had their freak out over Richard Laymon's "The Woods Are Dark" and went overboard in the censorship department, so if you're expecting something that won't hold back, you'll be disappointed. Byrne touches on a number of "adult" topics, but only long enough to make sure we know he's writing a "serious" book. It's a cautious approach you'd expect from someone writing their first novel, wanting to push boundaries but not wanting to get busted down to the slush pile for doing so. We get a little hint of BDSM, a couple pokes into "maybe it will happen" incest, a couple of "they're doing it, but the camera turns away" sex scenes, one near-rape, an instance of parents not minding that their fifteen year old kid reads girlie magazines in his room, several characters who openly ogle members of the opposite sex or spy on them while they are naked, and so forth.
Basically, this is John Byrne suddenly unconstrained by the Comics Code Authority, yet unsure what that means in terms of what he can get away with because he's never broken the rules before. It's not bad for a first effort, and Byrne gets creative with some of the carnage -- one character kills himself by stuffing a WW2-era grenade with a 15-second fuse into his mouth and pulling the pin, and Byrne really makes you think about just how long those fifteen seconds must be, and wonder how anyone could just sit calmly in a chair as they ticked down -- but I finished the book wishing there had been more.
Not wishing the story was longer (it actually starts to drag towards the end), but rather that Byrne had spent more time introducing us to some of the other residents of the town. There's also a character in the story who is a "Van Helsing" type, the one from out of town who gets brought in to figure out the problem and provide the answers, and it would have been nice to see her show up earlier. Meeting her with under 100 pages left in the narrative feels very "comic book-ish": you see this kind of thing in 80's comics all the time, where some invincible adversary is brought down at the last minute by some heretofore unrevealed person, or a new power discovered by the main character at the 11th hour that neither they nor we as readers know existed, and suddenly everything gets solved. Again, Byrne's coming at this the way a comic writer would, so it's understandable, and in the comics, this type of story (and especially the ending) would work much better than as a novel. I'd love to see this adapted into a graphic novel, because I think it would go over better.
As against that though, Byrne's a very capable storyteller. I plowed through all 249 of Fear Book's pages in a single marathon, because I wanted to finish it and see how he tied things together. "The Catalog" is a great idea, and Byrne's style of bringing big-time terror to small-town USA is reminiscent of Bentley Little's penchant for taking one tiny thing (the big box store; a home-owner's association; charter schools; the guy who delivers the mail) and making it the crux of an entire novel. I don't know if Little inspired Byrne, or if Byrne had ever heard of the guy, but if you enjoy Little's work, you're apt to find something enjoyable in Fear Book. If, on the other hand, you're hoping for the kind of special sizzle you get from Ketchum, Laymon, or hell even William W. Johnstone (who wrote more about incest, sodomy, Satan, and child abuse than any ordinary human being should have been comfortable with), you might want to send Fear Book back marked, 'Return to Sender: Postage Due'.
Three blood-soaked envelopes out of five.
All that changes the day, two and a half months later, The Catalog shows up in their mailbox.
The Catalog isn't really a catalog at all, but that's how everyone who looks at it somehow comes to think of it, capital letters and all. The Catalog comes bound inside a plain, blood-red cover with a simple label marked "Current Resident". There is no return address or postmark. Just looking at the outside is off-putting, but it's the interior which really does a number on you. The Catalog doesn't sell anything -- instead, it shows you page after page of hideous, horrifying pictorial representations of the worst things you've ever imagined. The shadowy reflections of all the memories and emotions you keep bottled up. The true face, hidden behind the masks we all wear every time we venture out into the civilized world.
All customized to personal taste. Everyone who flips through The Catalog sees something different within the pages. Reminders of everything they want to forget, everything they don't want to admit, every sin they've ever committed or even thought about committing: they're all on display in The Catalog.
You can throw The Catalog out with the trash, but a new one will show up tomorrow. You can burn it with the rest of your junk mail, but next afternoon will bring a replacement, just like clockwork. And once you've looked inside, you'll never be the same again. The Catalog brings to life those urges, pulls forth those desires, and re-opens those little doors we swore were locked up tight somewhere in the back of our subconscious mind.
Now that The Catalog has arrived at Sam and Joanne's house, nothing in their quaint little town will ever be the same. The question, of course, is "what?". What did these two innocent people do to deserve a subscription to The Catalog? What can they do to get their names off the list? And what will happen when their neighbors and friends start getting The Catalog for themselves?
* * * * *
Byrne's a fine comic plotter, and that skill translates well to the text-only medium. Warner published it in 1988, well after they had their freak out over Richard Laymon's "The Woods Are Dark" and went overboard in the censorship department, so if you're expecting something that won't hold back, you'll be disappointed. Byrne touches on a number of "adult" topics, but only long enough to make sure we know he's writing a "serious" book. It's a cautious approach you'd expect from someone writing their first novel, wanting to push boundaries but not wanting to get busted down to the slush pile for doing so. We get a little hint of BDSM, a couple pokes into "maybe it will happen" incest, a couple of "they're doing it, but the camera turns away" sex scenes, one near-rape, an instance of parents not minding that their fifteen year old kid reads girlie magazines in his room, several characters who openly ogle members of the opposite sex or spy on them while they are naked, and so forth.
Basically, this is John Byrne suddenly unconstrained by the Comics Code Authority, yet unsure what that means in terms of what he can get away with because he's never broken the rules before. It's not bad for a first effort, and Byrne gets creative with some of the carnage -- one character kills himself by stuffing a WW2-era grenade with a 15-second fuse into his mouth and pulling the pin, and Byrne really makes you think about just how long those fifteen seconds must be, and wonder how anyone could just sit calmly in a chair as they ticked down -- but I finished the book wishing there had been more.
Not wishing the story was longer (it actually starts to drag towards the end), but rather that Byrne had spent more time introducing us to some of the other residents of the town. There's also a character in the story who is a "Van Helsing" type, the one from out of town who gets brought in to figure out the problem and provide the answers, and it would have been nice to see her show up earlier. Meeting her with under 100 pages left in the narrative feels very "comic book-ish": you see this kind of thing in 80's comics all the time, where some invincible adversary is brought down at the last minute by some heretofore unrevealed person, or a new power discovered by the main character at the 11th hour that neither they nor we as readers know existed, and suddenly everything gets solved. Again, Byrne's coming at this the way a comic writer would, so it's understandable, and in the comics, this type of story (and especially the ending) would work much better than as a novel. I'd love to see this adapted into a graphic novel, because I think it would go over better.
As against that though, Byrne's a very capable storyteller. I plowed through all 249 of Fear Book's pages in a single marathon, because I wanted to finish it and see how he tied things together. "The Catalog" is a great idea, and Byrne's style of bringing big-time terror to small-town USA is reminiscent of Bentley Little's penchant for taking one tiny thing (the big box store; a home-owner's association; charter schools; the guy who delivers the mail) and making it the crux of an entire novel. I don't know if Little inspired Byrne, or if Byrne had ever heard of the guy, but if you enjoy Little's work, you're apt to find something enjoyable in Fear Book. If, on the other hand, you're hoping for the kind of special sizzle you get from Ketchum, Laymon, or hell even William W. Johnstone (who wrote more about incest, sodomy, Satan, and child abuse than any ordinary human being should have been comfortable with), you might want to send Fear Book back marked, 'Return to Sender: Postage Due'.
Three blood-soaked envelopes out of five.
June 27, 2011
The back of this says that the cat who wrote it is famous for writing Superman comics, and he should probably stick to that because it's pretty obvious that books without pictures are way out of his league...
Full review here:
http://www.mrsatanism.com/books/fearbook.htm
Full review here:
http://www.mrsatanism.com/books/fearbook.htm
July 13, 2025
To see why you should not waste your time with this check out my reading vlog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QpnT...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QpnT...
October 29, 2024
I hadn't read this book since I first got it in 1988. I didn't remember anything about it. I purchased it, at the time, because Byrne was (and still is) one of the most influential artists and writers in comic books. I was interested to see what he would do with a novel. After rereading it, I understand why I don't remember any of it.
The premise falls on a red covered catalog that drives people insane. They see the worst possible images in the book and it causes them to do horrible things, often to themselves. A married couple who recently purchased a house is now receiving said catalogs--daily. Only the husband has seen the interiors and his attitude became ferocious to his wife in demanding she never look within them. The neighbors have a pervy son, who is an overweight cliche of a comic book fan, who steals one of the catalogs and falls under its influence. What he does almost had me stop my reading, but I endured.
There's not much horror in this book until the final act when the origin of the catalogs is revealed and how they can be stopped. The origin is decent, the stopping seemed random. I didn't enjoy reading this and I can understand why Byrne didn't have another book published.
Dark, disappointing, revolting, sad, and ultimately a waste of one's time. Yeah, I didn't like this. I see it's worth some money on eBay so I'll get rid of it there.
The premise falls on a red covered catalog that drives people insane. They see the worst possible images in the book and it causes them to do horrible things, often to themselves. A married couple who recently purchased a house is now receiving said catalogs--daily. Only the husband has seen the interiors and his attitude became ferocious to his wife in demanding she never look within them. The neighbors have a pervy son, who is an overweight cliche of a comic book fan, who steals one of the catalogs and falls under its influence. What he does almost had me stop my reading, but I endured.
There's not much horror in this book until the final act when the origin of the catalogs is revealed and how they can be stopped. The origin is decent, the stopping seemed random. I didn't enjoy reading this and I can understand why Byrne didn't have another book published.
Dark, disappointing, revolting, sad, and ultimately a waste of one's time. Yeah, I didn't like this. I see it's worth some money on eBay so I'll get rid of it there.
Read
August 3, 2020A book I wanted bad enough I pre-ordered it from B. Dalton (look it up kid's). I read it twice that year and loved it. From what I have gathered it is long out of print. I still have my copy on my shelf , can't remember much of anything specific about the story. Think I'll leave it as a childhood memory of a book I loved ... most reviews are not kind to it so I am thinking as an adult it just wouldn't hold up. Incredible writer though , he is a comic book legend to be certain.
June 29, 2020
A pretty good horror book. A few minor questions left at the end but overall a creepy self contained story.
June 12, 2022
Interesting premise, but not a fan of the writing.
September 7, 2012
I really did not like the characters in this book as the story progressed. They seemed one dimensional and wishy washy. The backstory to many of them was hinted at, but never fully delved into. At a certain point in the book, I did not care about the story anymore, and just wanted the book to be over with. The ending was quite a letdown, and lasted much too long.
I would skip reading this one, if I was you.
I would skip reading this one, if I was you.
April 22, 2012
I read this book way back in high school when it first came out. Since that was about 25 years ago I don't remember much about it, but I remember that it was a decent read.
I only bought the book because I was a huge comic nerd, and the writer was one of my favorite comic book writers/artists at the time.
I only bought the book because I was a huge comic nerd, and the writer was one of my favorite comic book writers/artists at the time.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews