Madeline Night hosts a radio talk show dedicated to debunking paranormal fraud and documenting authentic paranormal experiences. The Midnight Hour is a collection of eight short stories about her resulting supernatural adventures.

James Chambers writes stories that are paced fast enough to friction burn a reader's eyeballs. Each of these pieces is an action-packed romp with supernatural bad guys and courageous good guys. It is pulp at its finest. While several stories are unable to stand alone, the collection shines when taken as a whole. The stories are obviously intended to be fun, and they are. There are not a lot of root-you-to-your-seat scares, but I did wince, laugh, and say "ewww" several times.

Many of the stories are peppered with genre references. Writers (Bloch), characters (Armitage), and even locations (Hobb's End from In the Mouth of Madness) get the nod. For those readers who enjoy searching for such things, they are there for the finding. I found them a wee bit distracting (though I am still wondering if "Saint Lawn Hill" is an intentional riff on the video game series "Silent Hill").

Onto the individual stories:

• "The Hand of Fate" introduces our plucky protagonist. Before going missing in Africa, Madeline's parents sent her a package, which contained an amulet. Suspecting the amulet to be more than it appears, she arranges a rendezvous with occult investigator Trevor Sebastian. He doesn't show up, but something else does. While this story is actually little more than an elongated scene, it sets up the stories to come, which all take place several years later.
• "The Children of Oneiroi" involves a crime against beauty. Is a gang of crazed street people kidnapping lovely ladies from their apartments or is the culprit something else? Enter Madeline Night and her tech Reggie Dan Clay. This story's structure is obviously derived from television dramas: We begin with a teaser and then proceed through several acts, and clues in the middle set up the next episode, err, story.
• "The Blackburn Cairns," involves The Midnight Hour's attempts to get to the bottom of a local mountain's legend. This story proves to be the weakest of the lot; by the conclusion, our characters are merely observers of events instead of participants.
• "Upon a Slender Stem" is something of a solo operation, as Madeline responds to a call for aid from an old friend, Trevor Sebastian's widow.
• "Blood & Water, Fang & Stem" is my favorite. It begins with a rash of dead animals whose throats have been cut and their blood drained. The only witness to the crime claims to have seen "three red fish float through the air like butterflies." This story ventures into bizarre territory. It uses good doses of humor to make the implausible easier to swallow, and it is the treat of the book.
• "Hot Baked Hell" is one of the volume's overtly funny entries, positing a darkness born of a cookbook.
• "Saint Lawn Hill" is a riff in Hill House territory but with more blood and guts.
• "The Blood of Demons" is an end-of-the-world sort of tale that posits demonically infested corpses crashing to earth and spawning alien horrors that attack and infect the city's human residents.

Artist Jason Whitely delivers some excellent illustrations to go along with the stories. Gut-wrenching Lovecraftian horrors, sinister blueberry muffins, flying fish, and our heroes are rendered with a wonderful style.

That said, I found myself longing for better use of the debunking aspect of the characters. Each of these stories features a supernatural menace. Spacing these out or incorporating some fakery into the stories would have been a nice touch. Maybe next season, err, book.

Since television seems incapable of producing good supernatural-adventure shows anymore (Night Stalker Redux anyone?), The Midnight Hour is the next best thing. It offers a fun romp through some spooky goings on. And flying fish.

The Midnight Hour by James Chambers, illustrated by Jason Whitley
263 Pages
Die Monster Die Books
Published August 2005

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