The
Tribe by
Barri Wood Valancourt
Books, 2019 The Tribe, by Bari Wood—which was originally published by NAL in 1981—is a slow burning and suspenseful horror novel with a genuine Jewish golem at its core. It begins with the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Belzec at the end of World War 2. Major Bianco, an American officer, becomes curious about the inmates living in barracks 554 because, unlike the camp’s other survivors, they are skinny but not emaciated. Bianco searches the barracks and inconceivably discovers boxes full of food, which should have been impossible since the Nazi’s were starving any Jews that weren’t sent to the gas chambers. But before Bianco can question the men of barracks 554, they disappear from a military transport. The Tribe’s
roots are in Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, but the story is set in New
York City and Long Island in 1980. The murder of a young Jewish academic by a
ragtag Brooklyn street gang starts things off, but the police investigation
is cut short when the killers—all of them are still boys, really—are beat to
death in the basement of an abandoned house. The only clue, and it’s not
helpful to anyone, is the clay-like mud covering the crime scene. The Tribe is
a good example of 1980s horror. It is smart. The characters are well-drawn.
The suspense is built scene-by-scene, and while the reader knows what the
monster is, the mystery about the how and the why of the beast is intriguing
and surprising. A richness of detail about the Jewish communities in New York
City and Long Island, and the experiences of these men and women during the
Holocaust, adds texture. The story says something about racism and hate, too.
Its only real flaw, and this can be said of so many popular novels of a
certain length, is that the story’s pacing slows to a crawl in the few dozen
pages it takes for the characters to come together for the big and satisfying
climactic showdown. * * * This review originally
went live, in basically the same form, on January 23, 2020. The Tribe was
featured in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s
and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017); which is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon in Kindle (as I write this) here. It was republished as part of Valancourt’s
Paperbacks from Hell series. The Paperbacks from
Hell books are published in mass market—although the pricing is higher
than I would like for a mass market at $19.99—and in Kindle with some truly
excellent cover art. |
Check out The
Tribe at Amazon—click here for
the Kindle edition and here for
the paperback. |