Nicholas Kaufman (editor), Jack Haringa Must Die!:
28 Original Tales of Madness, Terror and Strictly
Grammatical Murder (Merricat Publications, 2008)
Those who have read previous reviews by this reviewer may have noticed that I have a fondness for chapbooks, those small, inexpensive collections of short stories, poetry, and other literary odds and ends. Jack Haringa Must Die! is a delightfully macabre example of what recommends the chapbook, as its approximately one hundred pages contain many odd ends indeed, all focused on the demise of one Jack Haringa.
A word or two on the titular character may be necessary here.
Jack Haringa is neither a serial killer nor a multi-tentacled monster from an alien dimension (although you might be forgiven for believing him to be either of these creatures, considering the murderous glee with which his downfall is imagined within the twenty-eight stories of this chapbook). No, Jack Haringa is a real person, a writer, reviewer, critic and editor, along with S. T. Joshi, of the exceptional horror journal Dead Reckonings.
I myself had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Haringa speak on the subject of horror literature sometime last year, and I found him to be an erudite and eloquent man. Beneath that erudite and eloquent exterior, however, lurks the heart of, no, not a monster, but something much more malevolent: an editor.
It seems that Mr. Haringa's pursuit of grammatical perfection and punctilious attention to punctuation is a characteristic which instills in horror writers the urge to write Mr. Haringa into their stories just for the pleasure of killing him in new and creative ways.
Throughout the course of this chapbook Mr. Haringa experiences many a gruesome death, including death at the hands of zombies and slow torture by pontificating fanboy, not to mention the old Sweeny Todd treatment. Along the way, the reader gets to enjoy horror tales by such horror luminaries as Jack Ketchum, Brian Keene, Christopher Golden, and Lee Thomas.
As if these pleasures are not enough to recommend Jack Haringa Must Die! to the reader, the proceeds will go to a wonderful cause, for all of the proceeds from Jack Haringa Must Die! will support the newly established Shirley Jackson Awards. The Shirley Jackson awards recognize outstanding achievements in the literature of horror, psychological suspense, and the dark fantastic. These awards will debut Sunday, July 20, at the 2008 ReaderCon.
