The Night Boat

In high school, I read Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song. The book, which was published in 1987 as a mass market paperback by Pocket, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 1988. I was so impressed with the book that I swore that day I would read every McCammon paperback. As book promises go, I didn't follow up and have managed to neglect reading any of the author's books since. 35-years later, I finally have read my second McCammon book – The Night Boat. It was published in 1980 as a paperback by Avon.

The Night Boat is like the paperback equivalent of an Italian zombie film. I've watched the cult-cringes like Zombie Lake (1981), Shock Waves (1977), and Oasis of the Zombies (1982), so I know my way around the undead films featuring Nazi soldiers stirring from some ancient slumber to devour human brains. McCammon feeds off of that for this book, which was his third published work (actually his second written novel).

McCammon sets this underwater horror story in the golden sands of the Caribbean, specifically a fictional, small seaside village named Coquina Island. During WWII, the island was shelled and burned by a Nazi sub. Off the coast, British submarine hunters were able to torpedo the vessel and sink it to the ocean. The island's natives, steeped in Voodoo, curse the German corpses in their aquatic tombs. Then, David Moore comes along and mucks it all up.

Moore, struggling with survivor's guilt after the death of his family, is a salvage diver who runs a small inn on Coquina. While trying to unearth some hidden treasure, Moore sets off a discarded depth charge that frees the German sub from its grave. The sub rises to the surface, and later, is placed in a harbor awaiting either another sinking or some sort of museum appraisal. But, Moore, the island's determined constable, and a museum curator look inside...and discover Nazi zombies. They accidentally free the soldiers, and the undead begin to attack the living.

This is pure popcorn horror fun, and I loved every page of it. This isn't anything epic, and it doesn't waddle away time and energy with a lot of characterization. It's a combination of nautical fiction, police procedural investigation, and survival horror as the island defends itself from the zombies and the “ghost ship”. There's a little bit of entrail-shredding graphic scenes, a small dose of sex, an underwater salvage that reminded me of Clive Cussler, and of course, the traditional fleshy flavor of the traditional zombie sub-genre – in pure pulpy fashion. Voodoo priests, sacrifices, small-town paranoia, ghosts, Nazis, and ghost ships. It doesn't get any more enjoyable than this. The Night Boat is worth sailing. 

Get the book HERE.