Book Review: The Pineys #11: The Piney That Killed Thomas Edison

Tony DiGeralamo's New Jersey-based series delivers fun, quick action horror.

Tony DiGeralmo’s resume is, in a word, impressive. With experience in comics (The Simpsons), scriptwriting (Space Ghost Coast to Coast), and joke writing (Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher) among quite a few others. While his comedy chops are evident, he’s also got a knack for action-horror. His original series of novellas, The Pineys, is currently on its twelfth entry. We recently received the eleventh, and I was pleasantly surprised that despite having never read any of the previous books, it was easy to get into.

The Story

The Pineys series focuses on the Galloway family, a clan of monster hunters. They’ve been in the business for a long time, keeping a lid on supernatural shenanigans in and around the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. The prologue sees a bitter and vengeful Nikola Tesla (sorry nerds, he was overrated) unleash a formidable demonic force to wreak havoc on Edison’s compound in West Orange; luckily the Galloway clan of the day, lead by “Professor” Morrison Galloway, are there to deal with the fiend and ably do so, though Edison’s facility is destroyed by the resulting chemical fire. After initially fearing Edison was killed in the fire, he emerges from the structure out of a plume of choking black smoke. Furious, he abruptly sends the Galloways away.

And while he’s unable to prove it, Morrison Galloway feels something is off about him. Of course, he’s right. Edison’s body has been hijacked by an ancient demonic entity. And generations later, the current crop of Galloways finds themselves in a race to discover the being’s plans and put a stop to them.

The Characters

The characters (of which there are many), mainly focus on the aforementioned Galloway family members, both past and present. Each more or less tends to fall into some trope of team-member-with-a-specialized-talent/ability/personality common to ensemble action stories. The Galloways are a tight-knight bunch, and have spent decades patrolling the darkest corners of the New Jersey pine barrens, getting up to their elbows in blood guts and ectoplasm hunting otherworldly fiends they euphemistically refer to as “deer”. They’re a rough around the edges bunch, and the dialogue between tends towards near-constant ribbing tinged with familial affection.

Patriarch Hemmingway Galloway leads the group, as much for his hunting ability as for his ability to keep order and lead. He’s well-rounded, able as both a gunman and getaway driver. He chugs a beer just to get through one instance of having to contact a hated long-dead relative (and witch), Aunt Christie, which devolves into the two simply yelling at each other. His wife Darla assists, emotionally, organizationally and via crossbow. They are further assisted by Milton, an Instagram-model dating martial artist and Lewis, a gambler with an odd penchant to fall for scams, whose psychic ability allows him to see into the past of an object he touches, something that does some rather heavy lifting plotwise. He’s not blood, but is dating Shelly, the Smith & Wesson-toting Galloway girl.

Other Galloways and even other hunting families make brief appearances, which is understandable given that by this point the book has had eleven entries to gradually grow its cast. it’s not something that derailed the reading experience, but might throw off someone jumping in at a later point in the series, just be warned.

Also crossing paths with the core members of the family are feds, other hunters and a shadowy group known as the Blueberry Millionaires . . . getting into depth on them would spoil the fun, so I’ll just say that they’re as fun and intriguing as they sound.

The World

The world is modern day southern New Jersey, but as much of the action tends to happen out of the public eye (barring the occasional high speed chase along the highway or unintentional building explosion), much of the action takes place in deep woods or forlorn and hidden places, away from the human eyes and the light of God’s sun.

Politics

Nope.

Content Warning

There’s plenty of gunplay and describes the resulting bodily trauma from said bullets very well, and features plenty of ribald wisecracks between family members. Some of the dialogue and humor can be raunchy at times, and given the temperament of the various protagonists, there’s quite a bit of profanity (They’re New Jerseyans. Remember Jersey Shore? Remember how often they had to bleep stuff out? Stereotypes exist for a reason).

Who is it for?

The author frequently describes this series as “Supernatural, if Sam and Dean were from South Jersey”, and I’d say that was about right. It’s drenched in occult trappings, dark myths, mysticism and historical lore, but, like Supernatural, there’s a CW-ness to it that keeps it from veering into grimderp. The Pineys series delivers fun, solid action with some refreshing twists.

Why buy it?

The paperback weighs in at a mere 122 pages — these books are perfect quick, fun adventures in between heavier, more serious fare, and are frankly easy to breeze through in a dark, windy night or two when tree branches are scraping against the window.

Those are tree branches.

Right?