BooksBarbecue
Back The Nest Save as PDF
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Copyright page
  3. Introduction by Will Errickson
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. TREMORS
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. SUSPICIONS
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. DREAD
  19. 1
  20. 2
  21. 3
  22. 4
  23. 5
  24. 6
  25. WITNESS
  26. 1
  27. 2
  28. 3
  29. ALERT
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. ENCOUNTER
  36. 1
  37. 2
  38. 3
  39. 4
  40. 5
  41. 6
  42. HAVOC
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. SEARCH
  50. 1
  51. 2
  52. 3
  53. 4
  54. 5
  55. CLASH
  56. 1
  57. 2
  58. 3
  59. 4
  60. 5
  61. 6
  62. 7
  63. COUNTERATTACK
  64. 1
  65. 2
  66. 3
  67. 4
  68. 5
  69. 6
  70. 7
  71. VICTORY
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. EPILOGUE
  82. About the Author

Written under the pseudonym Gregory A. Douglas by one Eli Cantor, there is a conviction and a dedication to horror, disgust, and despair that one doesn’t often find in the genre, believe it or not. Recall what Stephen King said about Rats author James Herbert in Danse Macabre (1981): “He does not just write, he puts on his combat boots and goes out to assault the reader with horror.” That’s precisely what Douglas/Cantor does in The Nest. No one is spared: not pets, not children, not innocents, not lovers, not the goodhearted. A pall of doom, hinted at in the sickly blue-green of that unholy cover, hovers over the entire tale. This is a good thing.

Reading Cantor’s obituary in the Sarasota Herald-­Tribune (he died aged 93 in 2006), it’s easy to see why The Nest has a satisfying quality so many other paperback horrors do not. “He was the ultimate renaissance man,” his daughter stated. An award-winning writer going back to the 1940s, Bronx-born Cantor wrote plays, stories, poetry, and musical compositions, studied law and journalism, worked in the First Golden Age of Television, and ran a printing press, and was highly successful and well-­recognized in all these fields for decades before he wrote The Nest. In other words, Cantor lived, and loved, the creative process, and was committed to it. This is not always true of paperback writers, for whom the term “hack” is a bit above the pay-grade. Cantor was simply over-qualified, and his dipping into the sleaze is something we should be thankful for.

All of these attributes contribute to the success of The Nest, purple prose and all. Like the pulp writers of yore, who wrote for a penny a word, or something probably even less, Cantor goes all out. He works for those pennies, skimping on no detail (like how the insects eat through the victim’s eyes into the brain). Early on, he gives a picture-postcard tour of his Cape Cod town of Yarkie, describing history, houses, buildings, and citizens to ground his tale in the everyday. Does that mean the story is padded and perhaps overlong at 448 pages? Maybe, but the scenes of cockroach horror are so powerful, so merciless, so unforgiving, that they more than make up for Cantor’s overzealousness in other areas.