Review of 'Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Individually, these stories are a lot of fun. About halfway through, I started to get frustrated by the slowness of two of the overarching plots: 1) The explanation of the angel-like communal behavior of the Ghouls, and their particular interest in Cal, and 2) The clear descent of the main character into end-stage alcoholism. Drinking is a cliche in hardboiled detective novels, and Niles starts to do something new with it when the character's behavior and health start to fall off a cliff at a certain point in these stories. But then this subplot is seemingly dropped. Both of these threads might get picked up in the comic books and carried further, but I'm not sure there was enough here to make me want to go find them. Having said all that, these are very fun horror stories taken individually.