Houston author Hank Schwaeble
Courtesy Hank Schwaeble
The cover of ‘Normal for the Spider’
Blackstone Publishing
Houston’s Hank Schwaeble is redefining the very concept of monster in his new book, “Normal For the Spider” (out Sept. 15 through Blackstone Publishing).
Sienna may be an unrepentant thief and killer, but she’s not prepared for what she finds in the basement of a bookstore where she was hoping to hide from her pursuers. It’s a twisted series of puzzles straight out of a “Resident Evil” game, and that’s before she encounters the zombie and the vampire. Within the first several chapters, Hank Schwaeble establishes a world where horror is carefully constructed by sinister figures eager to strike terror into the hearts of their victims using classic tropes.
Schwaeble’s book is deeply interested in the monstrous. A group of rich psychopaths (their word) target other wealthy elites in a series of crimes as both a way to fund their lifestyles and to strike fear into a class of people that typically have nothing to fear. Their games culminate on an island where they let loose creatures constructed with the latest science and Hollywood magic, from werewolves to a Frankenstein monster (technically it’s more of a Terminator, but it’s still horrifying).
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“I wanted the story to be a gritty tale where there’s not a supernatural cause behind any of these things; it’s all just human orchestrated,” said Schaweable in a phone interview. “I could sense the growing among certain sectors of society with pace of change and the dissatisfaction with the current social structures. And I can sense the undercurrent of violence brewing.”
Tapping into contemporary rage
The two-time Bram Stoker Award winner and Magnolia lawyer grew up finding comfort in old monster movies, so it’s not surprising he would incorporate them into his novel. What sets it apart is its keen focus on using those monsters as part of a very modern zeitgeist. Schweable cited the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as an example of the rage he is tapping into for the story. It’s not a coincidence that one of the rich men selected for the games is the head of a pharmaceutical company.
His hero, Sienna, tries to navigate this world of extremely nebulous morality. She feels utterly secure in her own ethical judgment, but suspicious of a shadowy cabal that doles out horror while reaping profits. Going from working class serial killer to upper class Illuminati member is an uncomfortable move for her.
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“Power corrupts, whether it’s formal structural authority or whether it’s self-anointed,” Schweable said. “There is an immorality in establishing your own morality on other people, and I didn’t want to do it in a fashion that implied ‘this is the answer’ because I don’t think there are answers.”
Moralizing aside, the novel is good, horrific fun. Imagine if an episode of “Scooby Doo” took place on Jurassic Park, but it was run by Jigsaw. Schweable takes some time getting to the truly frightening bits, but it’s a wild ride once he finally does. Sienna ends up on the cabal’s island being hunted by multiple monsters, some of whom are just barely human and some of whom are truly diabolical. The mystery aspects keeps the plot moving forward as Sienna tries to uncover why the orchestrators of the island nightmare are now being picked off one by one.
Too much talking?
The only flaw to the book is that it’s a bit talky. The opening chapters are gripping, but there is a lot of slow philosophizing between that and the action on the island. Even once the bodies start piling up, circular arguments among the survivors take up too many pages. There’s a reason Jason Voorhees kills a camp counselor every ten minutes in a decent “Friday the 13th” script, and Schweable probably could have cut a good portion of the characters walking the reader through the mystery.
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The philosophizing has merit, though. At its core, “Normal For the Spider” asks the reader to extrapolate from understandable antipathy for the modern world to the logical, terrible endgame. It’s ironic that Frankenstein’s monster is so prevalent in the novel as the people who create it fail to remember the moral of that story. To paraphrase a popular meme, they create the Torment Nexus because it looks so cool and just assume it won’t bite them in the rear end because they are so rich and smart. There just aren’t good monsters, at the end of the day, no matter how deserving their victims and valid their anger.
“You don’t have to be a psychopath to harbor dark imaginable things,” said Schweable. “That’s normal. It’s part of being human. I hope I bring out the fact that the people in this novel are not necessarily much different than everybody else or most other people. They’re just more extreme examples.”