Here’s another entry in the “haphazard collector” diaries. A few years ago I picked up a massive hardcover by Robert R. McCammon at a local used book store. I’d read read several McCammon books in the 1990s, both in paperback and hardback, from mass-market to small press editions. I have Swan Song in the Dark Harvest edition, signed by McCammon, some early paperbacks like The Night Boat, The Wolf’s Hour, Stinger, and Blue World, and as well as his mainstream hardcovers. Then he seemed to disappear.
The massive hardcover in question (700+ pages) is the novel, Speaks the Nightbird, a work of historical fiction set in the late 1600s in colonial America. The book was enjoyable, with young Matthew Corbett an innocent man struggling to find his place in the world, and fighting impossible odds. Probably a few years after I read the book I learned he’d continued the main character into a series of novels. At first these were published by Subterranean Press, and then Cemetery Dance picked up the baton. Those books are devilishly hard to find, at least at decent prices. A few of them have appeared in second printings, which means they’re expensive, but not insanely so. I bought a couple of these, one from each publisher. They’re out of sequence, of course, but I’m not sure I’ll ever find the others at prices I’m willing to spend.
The Providence Rider is the fourth book in the series, so I lack books two and three. I read this after Cardinal Black, which I think is the seventh book, meaning another gap. More are in the works, and maybe now I’ll be able to pick them up as they get published. If I’m lucky enough to find older copies, I’ll be able to fill in pieces of the overall story.
Matthew Corbett, the main character, is in early twenties. He comes across as a lucky, plucky, but not always very bright person. At times he fades into the background, overshadowed by more interesting characters. In some blurbs he’s compared to an early James Bond. Bond, at least in the movies, was lucky to escape many dastardly traps due to his enemies not just killing him outright. The same seems to the case with Corbett. The historical aspect lends flavor this the novels. There’s a slight aspect of the supernatural, but mostly it deals with the darker aspects of humanity.
It’s too bad McCammon faded out of the mainstream publishing market. He’s a talented writer who knows how to weave a tale, how to keep the reader’s interest. I’ve since gone back and tried to get a few hardcovers of the books I read as paperbacks. I’ve not read all his books, which I guess that’s why I call myself a haphazard collector, as I get ’em when I find ’em.
