The Gulp - Alan Baxter does it Again
By far my favorite story by HP Lovecraft is the Shadow Over Innsmouth, I did a whole deep dive on the story earlier this year on the site. When I first read it I loved the idea of a local town that seemed normal but that no one from outside the town ever really wanted to travel to. I must have read that story ten times over the years and I always pick up something new and different when I read it again.
I’m not sure if Alan Baxter had the Shadow Over Innsmouth in mind when he came up with the fictional town of Gulpepper (known by locals as The Gulp) but there are a tremendous amount of similarities between Innsmouth and The Gulp. An oceanside harbor town that people from outside visit only when they absolutely have to. The first story even had an outsider spend the night at a creepy hotel in town that also calls back to the Lovecraft tale. Most importantly, The Gulp is just as intriguing and kept me turning the pages fast and furious.
This book is billed as five novellas all set in the same town. And it is that, but it’s also much more. In many ways this is a novel with Gulpepper at the center of all of the individualized stories.
I’ve always loved when I finish a book and I’ve felt like a town or city or building is a character of its own. Many haunted houses books are like this, Stephen King does this well in many of his books set in small town Maine. Baxter has certainly accomplished that with The Gulp.
As with all of Baxter’s work, we get a perfect mix of crime thriller and straight up horror. He is able to mix those two genres seamlessly and create an environment where absolutely nothing seems out of the realm of possibility. Anything can and does happen. I’ve reviewed a few other book by Alan Baxter and I always say the same thing: he writes the kind of shit I want to read. So I always end up enjoying his books.
The Gulp features five stories all of which are great in their own way. But I want to point out three of them that I liked the best. But please when you read this—and you must read this—read all of the stories in order. It will make the experience that much better for you.
The first story is titled Out On A Rim and is the perfect opener for this book. You follow the main character as he drives into The Gulp for the first time, and the reader discovers more about the town as Richard does in the story. Perfect opening act.
The next story I want to point out is my favorite of the bunch, Mother in Bloom is about a brother and sister whose mother has just died. But they don’t want anyone to know because they fear being taken into state custody and the daughter is nearly 18, so they try to hide the mother’s death. But because it’s an Alan Baxter story, you know strange shit is going to happen. This one has a bunch of gross fungus horror and a great story that made me think what the hell is going to happen next on more than one occasion.
The final story I’d point to is Rock Fisher the last story in the book. I am a sucker for weird horror and this story is about as weird as it gets and in an absolute perfect way. Having spent so much time on Cape Cod throughout my life, I’m also a huge fan of sea monsters and anything to do with the ocean and this story has its fair share of that too.
You honestly can’t go wrong with The Gulp. It’s a perfect combination of stories that blurs the line between separate stories and a single novel told through many different points of view. Baxter will keep you guessing from the first page until the last and leave you wanting to read more about Gulpepper.
Are we going to get more from Alan Baxter about the town of Gulpepper? I’m not sure but I hope so!
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