Cage of Night

Back in the 90s I wrote a novel called Cage of Night. I liked it but many many publishers didn't share my enthusiasm. The complaint was that they couldn't figure out if it was a crime novel or horror fantasy. How do you market it? The publisher that finally took it on decided to experiment with their returns policy. I'm told, though I don't know this for a fact, that when they told the chains no returns, the book was still born. I do know that I received three large boxes of paperback copies from their warehouses. I'm assuming that a number of other boxes of them were also stuck in the warehouse. Again all this is second and third hand so I can't swear to it.

The other day while looking for a different box of books I came across twenty copies of Cage of Night. If you'd like a copy please send me $11. I'll sign it, inscribe it, whatever. All four of my readers, in their more sober moments, have expressed great entusiasm for this book--and who am I to argue?

Here are a couple of reviews:

C.S. Thomspon on Allan Guthrie's Noir Originals Website

"A different type of noir horror tale can be found in Ed Gorman’s Cage of Night, which manages to be genuinely chilling even though the horror is essentially an illusion. In this story there is no detective or urban setting, only a young man named Nick Morrow and a very memorable femme fatale named Cindy Brasher. Nick is rather naively in love with Cindy, who believes that an old well in the forest contains a trapped alien visitor. Nick is convinced that Cindy just needs to be rescued, even while the murders around Cindy keep piling up. It’s unclear whether or not there really is an alien outside of Cindy’s mind, but the demonic combination of the well and her charms is still fatal.

"The small-town setting is reminiscent of Jim Thompson, but many of Thompson’s narrators are hitmen, sociopaths or con-artists, viewing the small-town world through their own twisted mindset. Nick Morrow is basically a boy-scout, and the world he lives in is one of keg parties and high school crushes, which makes Cindy’s underlying eeriness even creepier by contrast. Nick’s innocent and likable personality is only pitiable in the world of noir, and in the end he is as morally compromised and trapped as any anti-hero."

Charles de Lint The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction:

"Ed Gorman has penned a riveting thriller...He presents his story in matter-of-fact prose that lends a harrowing element to the proceedings. There are no flashes of fantasy or whimsy here, only an ever-darkening spiral that draws Spence into a place where he stands to lose everything.

"Aliens or Shared Psychotic Disorder? In the end it doesn't matter because people are still dying, but the question and how Gorman's characters have to deal with it make for fascinating reading."

Ed Gorman
3601 Skylark Lane SE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52403