The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

I would like to thank Titan Books for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £19.99 hardback £10.99 ebook

Etsy Beaucarne is an academic who needs to get published. So when a journal written in 1912 by Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor and her grandfather, is discovered within a wall during renovations, she sees her chance. She can uncover the lost secrets of her family, and get tenure.

As she researches, she comes to learn of her grandfather, and a Blackfeet called Good Stab, who came to Arthur to share the story of his extraordinary life. The journals detail a slow massacre, a chain of events charting the history of Montana state as it formed. A cycle of violence that leads all the way back to 217 Blackfeet murdered in the snow.

A blood-soaked and unflinching saga of the violence of colonial America, a revenge story like no other, and the chilling reinvention of vampire lore from the master of horror.

They say confession is good for the soul which raises all sorts of interesting questions. Do the sins you commit simply get absolved because you’ve just admitted them? Can the slate ever be truly wiped clean? Should we try to understand you, or can we still condemn you for what you’ve done? This was one of several topics I found myself grappling with after reading Stephen Graham Jones’ superb and complex historical horror novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter that explores two characters in confession but also sheds much needed light on some of America’s darker history.

In 2012 Etsy Beaucarne is a struggling academic who through a chance discovery is presented with the diary of her grandfather Arthur thinks she may finally have the ticket for tenure she has always wanted. The diary is the researcher’s dream of providing some real eyewitness history as Arthur relates the period of Montana in 1912 he lived in as a Lutheran pastor. But Etsy’s reading reveals a stranger mystery in the form of a mysterious Native American named Good Stab. In a series of encounters with Arthur Good Stab wants to confess his own life and it is a strange tale of life after death, transformation and murder. However, everyone has secrets of their own to uncover and Etsy is about to find out her own family’s secrets too will be brought into the light.

This was a stunning horror read bringing to life a period that I am unfamiliar with as a UK reader and delivers true horror with huge skill both in the nested set of stories within stories that this book becomes and provides a very inventive spin on the concept of vampires combined with the slow unpeeling of our three key characters’ lives and their inner motivations.

Jones demonstrates immense range as we start off with Etsy writing her own diary a 21st century middle-aged academic who perhaps is a little chaotic but also in such desperate need of tenure. We get to feel her buzz and excitement as this manuscript is found and offers such a big opportunity. The opening lowers our defences as to what is about to pass and allows a contrast with the voices to come quite familiar to us.

In the role of hearing confession, we have the elderly Arthur Beaucarne and Jones makes his voice very different to Etsy’s in tone and asides we sense an older man, worldly wise, perhaps a little food obsessed but with initially a twinkle of humour too. He feels likeable. Rather than fire and brimstone he appears quite humane, and we feel a man perturbed by a sense of mysterious murders going on where mutilated and painted bodies are being found in this small town far from anywhere. Into this comes a mysterious figure Good Stab in rows that appear to mirror a priest’s garments and wearing dark glasses and he wishes to confess to Arthur in private. We sense something is going on and then we get into the real meat of the story bouncing between the end of the Wild West in 1912 where cars, trains and ocean liners are appearing and the still frontier era of 1870 when the grab for more land and power by the US government went into overdrive and vast genocide was carried out under the eyes of progress. However Good Stab’s tale is also one of the supernatural as a chance encounter with a caged stranger creates the circumstances of his death and afterlife. One in which a thirst for human blood becomes key.

Good Stab’s story is also told in his voice and its excellently designed too – if Arthur initially feels light and comedic then Good Stab feels a man full of loss, regrets and yet too has humour but slightly sharper. His story is compelling and Jones’ take on the vampire is both familiar but also quite unique. Here the vampire can drink the blood of other creatures, but this has unusual side effects, he can pass for human but the desire for blood never goes away and also comes with enhanced strength, powers of recovery and senses. Despite all of that Good Stab never comes across as someone fully inhuman and that I think comes down to the way Jones uses the vampire elements of the story to have Good Stab become a witness to the rapid changes over the next few decades as the land Is slowly taken and violent crimes are undertaken by american settlers including the mass slaughter of buffalo purely for their skin (leaving their meat to rot), mass killings of various tribes by violence, starvation, casual cruelty and just the slow endless destruction of Native American life. There is also a key plotline about Good Stab realising they are not alone as a supernatural creature, potentially meeting a powerful God who has his own plans for him but also entering a new battle for the future of his people as another with similar powers to Good Stab enters the scene. Their battle for power begins in earnest in the final stages of his tale that is gripping and ends in a place I was not expecting. Jones knows when to scare us with violence and blood but also Good Stab’s desperation as he realises his powers can let him down both due to his own nature and how bigger forces are still more cunning and powerful than he is.

So around halfway in the novel we start to think this not simply an unusual interview with a vampire. There are many hints that Good Stab is involved in what may be going on around Arthur’s little town and there is the question of why exactly Good Stab wants to confess. For all Arthur’s humour we get regularly his painful casual racism towards Native Americans being mentioned and he isn’t being fully swayed by Good Stab’s tale. More than confession is required from this tale. What evolves is a really well played reveal to the wider story that adds more tension and drama into these two characters’ lives as they are trading stories and pasts all leading us neatly back to the modern day for a finale which I won’t spoil too much but manages in just a few final chapters to be surreal, funny, tragic and also heart-racing as to what the final outcome is. It works beautifully pulling all the storylines together for one final time and really sticks the landing.

I usually read at a fast pace but with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter I found it worked best digesting each ‘confession’ and savouring the story’s revelations as to consider where we were heading. The horror is both the undead when they let rip but much more the human at what they can do to one another in the name of ‘progress’ otherwise known as greed. There are no real heroes in this story we see terrible acts being witnessed and caused by main characters all serving their own needs. That helps us keep guessing where this story finally ends. As much s it is the story of Arthur and Good Stab it also shows us the way life was about to change horrifically for Native Americans across America and the destruction of an entire way of life being witnessed by one man after his own death feels both tragic and epic. I came away with a sense of injustice finally being given a voice and a novel that I sense will stay with me for years to come. It is one of the best horror novels I’ve read in a while. Strongly recommended!