Boneman

by Lisa W. Cantrell

Phoenix City detective Jackie Swann and police officer Dallas Reid trail a notorious drug dealer whose right hand man is reputed to have occult powers capable of turning humans into mindless instruments of destruction. Reprint.

Genres: Horror, Thriller

Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cantrell serves up an interesting mix of police procedural and voodoo in Boneman, but the ending felt rushed and too short. This is set in Phoenix City, supposedly in the Carolinas; a mid size town with a growing drug problem. Our main protagonist is Dal (Dallas), a cop who now works on the Drug task force; him and one other guy. Our second lead is J.J., a crime reporter for the local rag and aspiring author. J.J. and Dal grew up together and are BFFs, even though they are very different types of people. The book kicks off with some dealers getting offed and Dal and J.J. on the scene(s). Something is going down on the streets, with rumors of a Haitian gang muscling their way in, but this is not your typical gang war, as the Haitian gang has some voodoo up its sleeve...

Cantrell paces this one nicely, introducing Jackie, a State Bureau of Investigations hot shot, who is sent down to help sort out the mess, being basically paired up with Dal. Fans of police procedurals should enjoy this as Cantrell does a nice job with the various cops! The voodoo component was suitably mysterious, but I will not go into detail to avoid spoilers. The ending, however, was a bit of a wash. It felt like the book was really getting going and then Wham, Cantrell wraps it up in just a few pages. Still, a fun, quick read! 3 stars!

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF'd @ p. 50

Awhile back I just happened to pick this up from a Friends of the Library book sale. I had never heard of it or the author before, but I figured I'd give it a try. They were doing one of those fill up a bag as full as you can for $5 sales and I thought why not. As it turns out, Boneman by Lisa W. Cantrell was pretty actively awful. I should have just left this one behind and picked up a completely different book to stuff in my bag.

[N Smith]

Nice concept, but a pretty boring book.

[J. P. Wiske · Rating 1 out of 5]

Voodoo is a surprisingly underused theme in novel-length horror, so I'm always eager to see what authors will do with it. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was badly misplaced here.

Thematically, the voodoo element is used without actually being explored. Frankly, calling it voodoo-themed is probably an overstatement: there's absolutely no sense of the cultural or mythological background. Indeed, it seems that the author feels that concept of voodo is fully captured by evil black men who turn their victims into zombies with mind- and body-altering drugs.

I don't think this cultural insensitivity is malicious, but rather deeply lazy. And this laziness is evident in a story-telling style that is hackneyed and sloppy. There's a ham-handedness to nearly every paragraph that's made more remarkable by the apparent conviction of profundity with which it's delivered. An example:

"Home.
The word had no particular claim on him. It was merely a four-letter word for living space/domicile/place of residence. It provided him with somewhere to sleep, take a shower; an address to put on his personnel files."

Where is the economy of style here? What does the synonym-dump add that the first two sentences fail to communicate? "Chair. It was merely a five-letter word for an object designed for sitting/an option when you tire of standing/a piece of furniture best paired with backsides." I mean, I get it: the idea is that this character's home has no emotional resonance (itself a cliche). But ALL homes are domiciles, living spaces and/or places of residence, even the ones that mean nothing to their residents! So, in other words, all the author has really said is that "home" is just a four-letter word for "home". Great. Illuminating.

Or for sloppiness consider the throwaway character who, "smiling", slaughters his family with a "stainless steel carving knife" before "grinning" as he "[draws] the saw-edged blade across his own throat." Forgetting the utter unoriginality of the scene, with all its "smiling/grinning" violence, what is the purpose of telling us what kind of knife was used (and what it's made of, and which drawer it was retrieved from, etc., etc.) if at the end, it's clear that you don't know what a carving knife even looks like or what it's for! (hint: a saw-edge exists on literally NO kitchen knife, and a SERRATED edge--which would be found on a bread knife--would totally defeat the purpose of a carving knife)

Sloppy, boring, borderline offensive. Just a disaster of a book.