Ladies' Night

By Jack Ketchum
Gauntlet Press $16.95

Jack Ketchum's work to date has often challenged readers to accept the horrific actions of which humans are capable or to which they may be driven. His novels pull no punches in the best horror tradition, leaving no character safe from harm or death and guaranteeing no happy endings. No need to debate the splatterpunk label, though one could surely make a case that Ketchum's best fits squarely together with that body of work. Rather than celebrating splatter, I have always felt that the movement, if there was one, simply injected a healthy dose of realism and realistic pessimism into hitherto fanciful and often unconvincing monster-driven novels. Suddenly, the monster was your neighbor, the stranger next to you at the bar, and the person you thought you knew but who harbored shocking secrets. No one is safe from anything in the real world, so the realism of splatter has always been what I appreciate most.  

Ketchum's Ladies Night is an all-muscle jump back in time, back to when horror wasn't generations of witches or vampires, but grabbed you by the gut and wouldn't let go. It is a tightly controlled exercise in madness and anarchy which reminded me of the best Richard Laymon, and the best Stephen King, too - think THE STAND without the bloat. (I don't mean to imply that King's masterpiece should have been this lean, by the way, for King's one of the few writers whose "bloat" is almost always itself interesting.)

A strange road accident leads to a bizarre night of horror, as in portions of Manhattan the battle of the sexes takes on distinctly different characteristics than the usual verbal sparring. Suddenly and without warning, the female population turns on their unsuspecting counterparts, unleashing well-hidden and perhaps long-held loathing for those who oppress them both consciously and unconsciously. 

Lederer, a cop who suspects the cause of the weirdness, is one of the protagonists, but his role is more that of an observer. The true characters are straying family man Tom Braun and Bailey, the bartender who helps him stray, Tom's wife Susan, and their son Andy. As well as Tom's neighbor and Andy's sitter, Elizabeth, and various others who come into contact with Tom on the hot summer night in the city when all hell breaks loose. 

Once again mining a George Romero vein for inspiration, but placing his people in convincing and gut-wrenching situations, Jack Ketchum turns in yet another exercise in emotion depravation, as his characters slowly watch their humanity and that of friends and lovers slowly strip away of its own accord. Several years old and considered "unpublishable" by the regular press, Ladies Night is added to the growing and impressive Gauntlet Press list and we horror lovers who still prefer - deep in our hearts we believe in - the bleakness of the human condition, we benefit mightily. Shunning political correctness and normal sensitivities, Ketchum's narrative steamrolls you into submission with its inevitable finality and blunt prose. Just who will survive this night of horror, this Ladies Night? It's no given, and that's what makes Ketchum such a compulsive good read. This is the heart of horror in all its rawness, right down to the bitterly ironic title. You won't enjoy it, not really, not in the sense of true "enjoyment," but you'll be grateful for the chance to read this short novel by one of the most understated voices in our field.