By DAN GREENBURG (Macmillan; 1987)

THE NANNY, a horror-fest from a prominent mainstream novelist and sometime screenwriter, riled up the horror establishment like nothing else until 1991, when AMERICAN PSYCHO upset scare scribblers (because, in the words of author Poppy Z. Brite, its author was viewed as an “upstart yuppie scum invading ‘their’ territory”).  That fact that this novel got a hardcover printing and a lucrative movie sale pissed off many, including Ramsey Campbell, who railed about THE NANNY at some length, alleging among other things that Greenburg was insufficiently well read given all the movie references the book contains (in fairness, there’s also a dissertation on Hemingway, and Greenburg had previously published the horror-tinged PHILLY).

Speaking of movies, THE NANNY has the ignominy to be best known for the absolutely rotten flick it inspired: 1990’s THE GUARDIAN.  So awful was that William Friedkin directed film it might seem difficult to believe that THE NANNY, contrary to what Campbell and others like to claim, is actually pretty damn good.  I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the most memorable horror novels of the late eighties, a furiously readable, bloat-free rendering of urban angst in the guise of a supernatural thriller that’s not dissimilar to ROSEMARY’S BABY in conception and impact.

THE NANNY can be viewed as an early iteration of the “___ from Hell” subgenre that would become beloved by Hollywood, a 1992 example of which, THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, utilized this book’s core concept: a nanny from Hell.  That Hell-spawned individual is Luci Redman, a.k.a. “Nanny,” an “astonishing looking” British woman who’s great with infants.

That’s a good thing for ad man Phil Pressman and his wife Julie, a NYC based, Chicago transplanted couple.  Their infant child Harry turns out to be quite a handful, having been diagnosed with colic.  “With visions of Mary Poppins dancing in their heads” the Pressmans hire Luci, who calms Harry down but proves an annoyance in most other respects.  She’s haughty, demanding, oddly needy and likes getting naked at inopportune times.

There’s also the fact that the background checks Phil runs turn up very little concrete information outside the fact that Luci would appear to be over 100 years old.  This doesn’t stop her from seducing Phil, and also (in her way) Julie.  Phil realizes he and his loved ones will have to break away from Luci’s influence, and takes some extreme measures to effect that escape, despite the fact that Luci always seems to be once step ahead of him.

Sexy, suspenseful, ominous and gripping: this is a nifty thriller with a well sustained tone of rising apprehension and a convincing depiction of parental angst.  Where the novel falters is in its unpredictable viewpoint shifts, occasional off-topic subject matter (as when Phil confronts his superiors about immoral practices he believes they’re engaging in) and the motivation for Luci’s evil behavior, which is a left a bit murky.  THE GUARDIAN attempted to fix that issue by turning her into a neo-druid who feeds infants to a malevolent tree, beside which THE NANNY’s ambiguity, annoying though it is, seems a far preferable alternative.