Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 7

Review: Slimer by Harry Adam Knight

Slimer (A Star Book)

By Harry Adam Knight






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


After their yacht sinks, a group of drug smugglers find safety aboard a seemingly abandoned oil rig in Harry Adam Knight's Slimer. But since this is a horror novel, you know damn well there's nothing safe about an oil rig left derelict in the middle of the North Sea, shrouded in fog and pounded by storm-churned waves. One look at M.S. Corley's gorgeous new cover for this Valancourt edition of a lost 1983 classic should help further solidify that assumption.

Valancourt, a heroic small-press publisher responsible for rescuing forgotten horror stories from the dustbins of publishing history, have outdone themselves with a pair of Knight novels to kick off October. This and The Fungus arrive just in time to satisfy Halloween reading splurges (along with a re-issue of James R. Montague's Worms), and I'm finding myself in a bit of eco-horror heaven.

Knight, a pseudonymous nom de guerre for UK authors John Brosnan and Roy Kettle, have crafted an energetic thriller rooted in scary science and influenced by horror classics like The Blob and John W. Campbells' Who Goes There (the basis for the 1951 film, The Thing from Another World, and John Carpenter's immortal 1982 classic, The Thing). Searching for the secret of immortality, a covert group of scientific researchers have created something new, something beyond their wildest dreams...something wildly monstrous.

While there's a clever bit of sci-fi shenanigans at the core of Slimer, it's merely crafty set-up to get us into the blood and guts of survival for these stranded criminals. Brosnan and Kettle avoid getting bogged down in the technicalities or plausibility of the science, but when they do slow down enough to explore the background of their story Knight presents a really nifty spin on Richard Dawkins's selfish gene theory. I also really dug the psychological aspects of their particular brand of horror here, particularly their explorations of what happens to the victims of this book's creature.

Slimer has a high body count and Knight is focused on action over characters, which makes it difficult to get too attached to anybody aboard the rig. This is a book geared primarily toward the spectacle of fun gory horror and, unfortunately, the characters are paper-thin as a result. The men are reduced to simple archetypes: Paul is the leader, Mark is the drug addict, Alex is the giant asshole. No further depth or dimension required. The female characters don’t even receive this much development, sadly, and are largely indistinguishable from one another, existing primarily to provide scenes of titillation and victimization.

The characters are really this book's biggest hurdle for me, particularly the redolent, dated whiff of 1980s misogyny, but Slimer remains a highly entertaining bit of escapist pulp. Despite the central premise being overly familiar nowadays thanks to both the prior works of horror that have clearly inspired it and those works that have since followed, such as Paul E. Cooley's The Black and Pig by Edward Lorn and Craig Saunders, Knight shows a few sparks of originality in their execution thanks to the science underpinning it all. Thirty-five years after its publication Slimer shows only a few signs of its age; it's still a spry, fast-paced work of action-packed horror.



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Halloween Horror Reads!

It’s officially October, which means it’s time to start thinking about all those great Halloween reads, either in your TBR already or hitting up the bookstores from some personal Trick or Treating.

I love a good Halloween-themed read, especially over the 31 days between now and month’s end. My review commitments are keeping my reading time pretty tight this month, though, but I’m hoping to spice things up with a few pumpkin frights in between all the ARCs demanding my attention. Here are a few of the many Hallowen books in my TBR that I’m planning to pull from in the coming weeks as October wears on.

Some of these - most of the anthologies in particular - I’ve read previously and can personally vouch for and won’t be returning to again this year simply due to time constraints. Others will be brand new to me, like Bryan Smith’s All Hallow’s Dead, John Everson’s The Pumpkin Man, and Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest. I’m hoping to get to each of these three if nothing else, but we’ll see. Time is a rare and fleeting commodity these days.

Below are thirteen (naturally!) Halloween horrors that have caught my eye over the past few years. Click the pic to head over to the Amazon product page to find out more about these titles and buy a book or two if they strike your fancy (and remember, this site does use affiliate links, so purchasing a book I’ve linked to helps me run this site, in addition to supporting the authors and publishers of the works featured here). And head down to the comments section to recommend some Halloween-specific reads, especially those by women authors, which I had a difficult time pinning down for this list!

Happy Halloween!

Review: The Toy Thief by D.W. Gillespie

The Toy Thief (Fiction Without Frontiers)

By D.W. Gillespie






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


D.W. Gillespie is the author of a number of short stories, but if I recall right The Toy Thief is his novel-length trad pub debut (he has a few indie titles out, too). It's a solid introduction to his work, and Flame Tree Press has signed him for a second release in 2019, which I'm most certainly game to read.

The Toy Thief is a coming-of-age story involving Jack, her brother Andy, and the strange titular rat-man creature that invades their home to take their most cherished toys. Told in a tight first-person perspective, Jack tells us the story of this significant past event, slowly revealing the details of their encounters with the Thief and the ways in which their history has colored and shaped the present for this family.

Jack is an unreliable and unlikable narrator, an abrasive woman who thinks quite highly of herself and isn't shy about taking others down a peg or two when her ego demands it. She believes she is better than those that surround her, but also aware that if she lived in another location, like Hollywood or New York, she'd only be average at best. She vacillates between shrill and personable. On the surface, she could just be another tough chick as imagined by a male writer, but there's enough hints in the story to convince me there's more to her story and how events have shaped and altered her personality. It's safe to say that the Thief has made Jack the woman she is today, and her encounters with him have permanently changed both her and her brother.

The Toy Thief itself is an interesting creature, and Gillespie injects it with a lot of promise and potential. I liked the history of this particular monster quite a lot, and its cravings and desires that compel it to steal from the children are pretty dang nifty.

On the horror front, though, The Toy Thief isn't particularly scary. Gillespie generates some solid moments of creepiness, but never any actual fright, and he eschews violence and gore for the most part. Perhaps it's more appropriate to view The Toy Thief as a dark family drama rather than a straight-up work of horror. In a brief supplementary interview with Gillespie, the author speaks of his admiration for the film work of Guillermo del Toro, whose influence can be felt here, particularly the del Toro of Pan's Labryinth and Crimson Peak, which rely heavily on atmosphere, family dynamics, and neat-o creature design far more than blood-curdling, spine-tingling terror.

Readers looking for a fast-paced, gore-filled romp might be disappointed, but those looking for something slower and quieter may find themselves engaged by Jack's autobiographical musings. The Toy Thief certainly has me curious to see what else Gillespie has up his sleeve in future books and I find myself looking forward to his sophomore effort, One by One per a recent tweet, to steal away some more of my time.

[Note: I received an advance reading copy of this title from the publisher, Flame Tree Press.]



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Review: Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke [audiobook]

Currency of Souls

By Kealan Patrick Burke






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My original CURRENCY OF SOULS audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Few horror authors write as eloquently and thoughtfully as Kealan Patrick Burke, a Bram Stoker Award-winning author who carefully chooses each word that makes it onto the page for maximum impact. Textually, Currency of Souls is a fine example of Burke’s methodical deliberation, and narrator Rich Miller delivers a reading that is aurally arresting right from the get-go.

Currency of Souls is a bit of a genre mish-mash. Tonally, it feels like a modern-day western with it bar-room setting, the Sheriff, and a handful of misfits populating the near-dead town of Milestone, but there’s enough violence and death to put it solidly in the horror genre, as well as a few fantasy elements and plenty of tragedy to boot. Milestone, however, is more than your average run-down locale, and each of the barflies carries the weight of their secret sins like an albatross. This is a down of damnation, and it may or may not be Purgatory or at least some facet of it, and each of the drinkers are constantly being manipulated by darker forces to murder one another. To say much more, though, would be a crime.

Burke keeps the story moving along with plenty of twists and turns, betrayals, and double- and triple-crosses. None of the cast are quite who they appear at first blush, and Burke slowly reveals their true faces and natures in due course. The story itself is weighted in symbolism and degrees of complexity. Simply put, there is a lot going on throughout the entirety of this book. Listeners should expect to not only pay close attention to all the things being said but especially to what is left unsaid. I suspect Currency of Souls is a title that only grows more rewarding with multiple listens, and that future rereads will reveal additional previously unseen facets.

Rich Miller has a deep, brassy voice that immediately captures the atmosphere and tone of Burke’s work, perfectly in tune with the western genre elements present here. I was immediately lost in this man’s reading, lulled in by the strong, yet comforting rhythms of his narration. There’s a kind-of Sam Elliot vibe to Miller’s presentation, which I certainly dug, and the recording is crystal-clear enough that I could practically smell the smoke and whiskey stink of Eddie’s Tavern.

Currency of Souls is a bit like a good whiskey, in fact. The writing is smooth and read by Miller it leaves a pleasantly warm feeling deep in your chest, but the story itself is a complex and full-bodied spirit, possessing various layers of richness. Its narrative threads are knotty and tangled, and it takes some work to unravel before you can fully appreciate it. It’s the type of story you want to let linger a bit before you take another sip and see what else is there to discover.

[Note: Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]



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Review: The House by the Cemetery by John Everson

The House by the Cemetery (Fiction Without Frontiers)

By John Everson






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The House by the Cemetery has one of the coolest premises I've come across and, frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often - set up a Halloween haunted house attraction at an actual honest-to-goodness haunted house. As far as premises go, this is beautifully simplistic but also pretty damn smart.

Mike, a carpenter, knows all about the rumors of the house by the cemetery, but he grudgingly accepts the job offer to rehab the rundown domicile and get it ready for Halloween. In no time flat, Mike is finding out all sorts of weird things about the house. Unexplained noises, old occult symbols painted on the walls, recently murdered animals, and lots and lots of bones. Mike is also divorced and prone to thinking with his little head instead of his big head, so what else is he to do but say yes when the young and super attractive Katie shows up at the house's doorstep offering to help with the rehab and to share his cooler of beer?

Despite the great premise, John Everson doesn't exactly break any new ground with The House by the Cemetery, but he does keep things pretty consistently enjoyable and page-turn worthy. Horror fans who have read their share of occult and haunted house stories will find all their predictions about this book's big reveals proved accurate. The plot twists aren't all that surprising, and large chunks of the story feel repetitive, particularly the first half of the book surrounding Mike's labors at building a new porch and putting in new flooring.

Everson still manages to keep the story moving along in entertaining fashion, particularly as the team of house haunters prepare for their time in the spotlight by decorating rooms in homage to their favorite horror flicks. There are rooms devoted to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, giallo slashers, J-horror, zombies, and so on. It's a fun bit of teasing for what readers can expect once the blood starts spilling, but having the story stretched out across a summer to Halloween time-span means Everson has to save all the really good gory stuff for the book's final third. There's a fair amount of waiting around in anticipation for the story to kick into high gear during Cemetery's climax, but once that final section rolls around...hot damn! Everson paints the house in so much read that it almost makes Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead look milquetoast in comparison.

The House by the Cemetery might have been a seriously killer novella, but it feels a bit too padded as a full-length novel. That said, this is still a solid read and it skates by on its sheer fun factor, as well as its exhibition of appreciation and love for the horror genre as a whole. Once Everson gets his groove on, though, things take a turn for the weird and it's pretty freaking wild and wicked.

[Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this title from the publisher, Flame Tree Press.]



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Review: The King of Plagues (Joe Ledger #3) by Jonathan Maberry

The King of Plagues: A Joe Ledger Novel

By Jonathan Maberry






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Having listened to the first three installments of the Joe Ledger series, The King of Plagues included, it's safe to say that I'll be a devout follower of Jonathan Maberry's hero for the foreseeable future (particularly since I've already downloaded the rest of these books and have book #10 on pre-order for its late-October release). But having also done a minor bit of binge listening and working through these first three books in fairly quick succession (for me, anyway), I'm not entirely sure what else I have to add beyond what I have already said in my reviews for Patient Zero and The Dragon Factory.

Maberry is a reliable author to turn toward, and the bulk of his work that I've read has left me satisfied. His Rot & Ruin series is a superb run of Young Adult post-apocalyptic zombie novels (a few which also feature Joe Ledger, naturally), and his latest, Glimpse, was an early favorite of my 2018 reads. His Ledger books follow a formulaic structure, as series books typically do, but they've proven to be immediately engaging. I like Ledger and his tough, smart-ass, but self-aware attitude, and Maberry has surrounded him with a great cast of supporting players and ultra-villainous baddies who you just cannot wait to see their asses kicked and/or killed.

The King of Plagues introduces us to a secret society of ultra-wealthy global elites, the 1% of the 1%, who control literally every single thing. They are the Seven Kings, and through their network of assassins, drug cartels, legitimate industries, terror cells, street gangs, government agencies, etc., they covertly run the world, destabilizing economies and nations for their own gain and pleasures. For the Goddess they serve, this is not enough, and so Sebastian Gault (a returning villain responsible for the zombie outbreak in Patient Zero) is recruited as their King of Plagues, with the goal of unleashing the ten Biblical plagues upon mankind in an act of global Armageddon. Joe Ledger, on sabbatical from the DMS, is called back into action to face what is easily the greatest threat he's faced thus far.

One thing that surprised me is the somewhat slower, more methodical pace of The King of Plagues in comparison to the prior two entries. Given this book's focus on germ warfare and biological terrorism, Maberry is forced to be a bit more restrained in the gunplay. While there are still plenty of great big giant action scenes, there are also quieter, more dramatic plays on turmoil. It is, after all, a little too reckless to get into a gunfight while wearing a hazmat suit and locked in a room surrounded by vials of ebola and contaminated air.

Restraining the violence is a good thing sometimes, and such moments allow Maberry to fully capitalize on the emotional horrors and physical trauma of murder by way of viral attacks, and the sense of powerlessness in the face of invisible microbial terrors. Other aspects of The King of Plagues are equally restrained, giving the book a bit more a grounded in reality feel. The Seven Kings aspect feels slightly comic-bookish and grandiose, but it's also hard to discount them given real world machinations and the influence of the ultra-wealthy on systems of governance and law. What cannot be discounted, though, is the severely human antagonists at the heart of Plagues. In fact, there's nary a zombie or genetically engineered beserker to be found. The horrors here are entirely human and natural, even if already highly deadly diseases have been given an extra bit of fictional oomph. For a series that has been populated with scientifically plausible-enough monsters, it's notable that Maberry bypasses that particular facet in favor of viruses and plagues, exhibiting the elasticity of this series and allowing the author and his characters to stretch their legs into some deeper and more diabolical arenas.

My only real complaint comes with a dangling loose end that came at the finale of the prior entry, The Dragon Factory. At that book's close, we saw Ledger on the hunt for an assassin that had previously escaped his crosshairs. It's an element that is all but abandoned here, as Maberry picks up the story sometime following Ledger's pursuit and his acquisition of an awesome white German Shepherd named Ghost. Apparently Ledger's hunt and Ghost's introduction are told in a short story, available separately naturally, which frankly irks me a bit. It's a bit jarring to have Ledger all of a sudden in the company of a killer attack dog, and denied the pay-off of The Dragon Factory's most pressing story thread.

This small issue aside, The King of Plagues is certainly a heck of a lot of fun. Ray Porter continues to impress, taking his rightful place as The King of Narrators as he exhibits a knack for various accents as Ledger's search for the Seven Kings takes him overseas to England and Scotland. It was fun listening to Porter adopt a Scotsman's brogue for some pertinent scenes, and his portrayal of the inmate Nicodemus allowed him to exhibit even further range in one particularly creepy scene.

Now that I've worked my way through the opening trio of this long-running series, I will be taking a small break from Joe Ledger's adventures before I get burned out. But you can be damned sure I'll be back for more soon!



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Review: The Bedding of Boys by Edward Lorn

The Bedding of Boys

By Edward Lorn






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Nevada Barnes is your average, run of the mill, hormonally supercharged fourteen-year-old. Regina Corsi, however, is decidedly atypical - a woman in her thirties, she is a hebephile and a serial killer. She seduces children, uses them to satiate her sexual desires, and then brutally murders them. Aiding her in her crimes is a strange white sheeted creature, appropriately named Ghost, who consumes Regina's victims and scrubs clean the various crime scenes in supernatural ways. Once Regina lays eyes on Nevada, neither of their lives will ever be the same...nor, I'm sure, will the small Ohioan town of Bay's End.

The Bedding of Boys is the third in Edward Lorn's Bay's End novels (there's a few short stories and novellas sets within this town's borders, as well), and although each can be read as a stand-alone work there's a hell of a lot of richness to be found throughout this series when taken as a whole. The End, as it's colloquially known, has a lot of history behind it and when read as a series you get the feel of a fully realized town, recognizing its familiar landmarks, shops, and citizens, as well as the seedy underbelly infecting this region. Bay's End is for Lorn what Derry and Castle Rock are for Stephen King. You don't have to read these books in any particular order, but I strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with Lorn's Bay's End and The Sound of Broken Ribs before hitting the sheets with this one. Feel free to ignore my advice, of course, but I suspect you'll want to know all you can about The End and its inhabitants well before this book reaches its climax.

Fair warning, though - Lorn gets into some highly fucked up terrain here. The primary thrust behind The Bedding of Boys involves a significantly older woman seducing boys much, much younger than she. Regina is, simply put, a child rapist. Lorn pulls absolutely zero punches, and right from the book's very first chapter reader's are forced to bear witness to a handful of murders and a graphically detailed sexual assault of a minor. It's shocking and vulgar and deeply unsettling, and it sets the stage for all that follows. Once Nevada is introduced in the wake of Regina's bloody mayhem, you'll instantly worry for him and your anxiety will rise in creepily steady fashion as he becomes intimately familiar with Regina.

Sex is filtered through the perspective of predator and prey, and whatever glimmers of romantic entanglements these characters may feel, Lorn never shies away from the horrific manipulations behind all of it. This isn't a Happily Ever After romance - this is straight-up horror. Sex here is a weapon, and it is wielded with profoundly deadly intent time and time again. Sex and horror have been intertwined forever, oftentimes purely for sheer titillation, or to make a point about female purity. This last point you can most surely disregard, as ain't nobody in Bay's End pure.

The Bedding of Boys has a surprising amount of depth in its themes of sexual conquest, gender roles, and the animalistic nature of passion and the pursuit for sexual pleasure. Sex begets life, and life begets death. Sex and Death are the Alpha and the Omega, and carnality comes with a cost for each and every one of these characters, rippling through time to warp both minds and bodies alike.

Like Stephen King and George R.R. Martin, Lorn enjoys flicking readers around like a yo-yo. He'll give you plenty of characters to care about, and he does an absolutely fantastic job writing teenage boys (as evidenced in the prior Bay's End), only to sucker-punch you and pull the rug out from beneath your feet. This an author who profoundly destroys his characters with masochistic glee, and there were a few times I wanted to reach out to him and ask him to stop, to leave these people alone, to not devastate them so utterly. But, hell, if I did that, it'd kinda ruin the whole point here, wouldn't it?

There's a darkness in Bay's End. You can't plead with it, and you can't stop it. You can feel the way it eddies through the streets, disrupting the whole town and its people's lives. You can feel it building toward something, too, all throughout The Bedding of Boys. Something cataclysmic. All things lead to The End, after all.



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Review: Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward

Fear: Trump in the White House

By Bob Woodward






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Fear: Trump in the White House breaks absolutely zero new ground. Anybody who has been following the Trump trainwreck already knows everything they need to know about Donnie Small-Hands and then some (for instance, today's big news stories revolve around Stormy Daniels's allegations that Trump has a small mushroom-shaped dick, news that is also not very surprising in and of itself). Those who are part of the Resistance will find nothing fresh within these pages. Those who are Trump supporters will, of course, brush Bob Woodward's account off as little more than "fake news" and part of the on-going "witch hunt" within the media and the whole wide world at large.

Woodward's accounting, though, does lend further credibility to ousted White House staffers who have used their executive positions to pen their own tell-all novels, and further solidifies those stories published in legitimate mainstream press outlets (i.e. not Fox News). As half of the reporting team that took down Nixon, Woodward's reportage on the Trump administration is certainly welcome, as he is a credible voice, a reporter with a through-line of integrity that has been a member of the press for decades. His writing here gives us a fly-on-the-wall picture of life in Trump's Oval Office, quoting a number of administration officials such as Gary Cohn, Rob Porter, Lt. General Michael Flynn, Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Reince Preibus, and others. Woodward lets the words of these men tell the story, free of any colorful commentary or opinionated editorializing.

All of the principle players paint a strikingly similar portrait of Trump, and it's a familiar view, one that anybody who has been paying even the absolute most minimum amount of attention since the 2016 primaries would recognize. Trump is inarticulate, incurious, a compulsive liar, brash, addicted to Twitter, quick to anger, both wildly ignorant and profoundly stupid, unimaginative, and dead set in his ways. He's inflexible and unwilling to change his mind or opinions on anything, including his own deeply racist attitudes, as exhibited throughout his presidential campaign, again in the wake of the Charlottesville rioting, and yet again when discussing African nations, their inhabitants, and immigrants, as well as resolutely sexist. He has not a single shred of understanding of government, diplomacy, the military, or the economy. And, again, none of this news, nor is any of it surprising.

Because of the author's singular focus on the White House and its central players, Woodward forgoes any deeper examinations of Trump and his attitudes. Rather than an in-depth profile of the man who invented Birtherism conspiracy theories, we get the popular sketch version we see every day on the nightly news and live on Twitter. What we're told fits the common vernacular surrounding Trump, but there's never any attempt to dig deeper. Part of the sad thing (if one can ever manage to drum up anything resembling sympathy for such a rotten and disingenuous figure as Donald Trump), of course, is that any of Trump's own depth is merely skin-deep artifice. Simply put, there is nothing deeper to him. What you see is literally what you get. At the end of the day he's just another bitter, angry old man stuck in the past, sitting around watching Fox News and trying to convince everybody he's as great as he thinks he is, complaining about all the non-white men in the world. There's no question Trump thinks highly of himself, just as there's no question that his opinion is completely unfounded in fact. Facts, we know, are the one thing Trump hates perhaps more than anything, and his staffers routinely commiserate over how difficult it is to convince Trump of reality and how pointless it is for them to prepare daily briefings for him because he refuses to read
anything
.

So, is Fear worth reading? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure it is, particularly if you've already been following along since the oaf took his oath. It's a quick read, the writing breezy but plain, and Woodward certainly lives up to Christopher Hitchens's criticism of being little more than a stenographer to the stars. More than a year and a half into this national nightmare, Fear: Trump in the White House offers little in the way of actual news, and Trump's detractors will certainly find all of their worst suspicions and fears about the man confirmed. Trump's blind supporters, though, I suspect, aren't likely to ever bother reading this thing to begin with. The target audience, then, is simply the curious among us, those hoping to uncover revelations or maybe look back at the early days of this administration and chuckle knowingly to how things have played out since Jan. 2017. At one point, for instance, Trump is reported to have asked his staffers, responding to allegations in the Steele document, if he looks like a guy who needs prostitutes. I'm sure we all had our suspicions on that front, and, well, we definitively know the answer to that now, at least.



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Review: Scapegoat by Adam Howe and James Newman

Scapegoat

By Adam Howe, James Newman






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


2018 has been a phenomenal year for reading, with a number of titles already in the running for my best of the year list, but in terms of sheer entertainment value alone Scapegoat will be a hard one to beat.

Adam Howe and James Newman have written one hell of a crackling read here with a story that is all about the escalation of threats. Mike Rawson, Lonnie Deveraux, and Pork Chop are travelling by RV to attend WrestleMania III, accompanied by Cindi the Bar Girl, who just so happens to be way more than she appears. After taking a drug and booze-fueled detour, the gang find themselves lost in the woods, a situation Lonnie worsens even further when he accidentally runs over a woman fleeing for her life. Turns out, the woman’s own situation is damn severe even before she found herself on the wrong side of a speeding RV – she has been beaten and cut up from head to toe, the seven deadly sins engraved on her skin. Stopping to help her puts the guys right into the crosshairs of the men chasing her – a band of redneck cultists hell-bent on reclaiming their sacrificial scapegoat.

Scapegoat is just all kinds of wild, and if you’ve read Howe’s two Reggie Levine novels previously you already know redneck backwoods shenanigans is this dude’s bread and butter. This is an odd thing, indeed, as Howe is a Brit, but thanks to American globalism and the spread of Hollywood commercialism in particular, it’s pretty clear he grew up on a steady of diet of Burt Reynolds flicks like Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance. Howe is apparently obsessed with crafting the ultimate cross-over between these films, at least when he’s not obsessing over Nic Cage movies and skunk apes. But, you know what? I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Howe gets it and he knows how to craft a damn fine story that chugs along with the speed and grace of the Bandit’s own Trans Am.

To sweeten the pot even further, though, is fellow Howe fan James Newman, author of Odd Man Out, who also wrote an introduction to Howe’s Tijuana Donkey Showdown and shares co-writing credit here. Newman, hailing from the American south, clearly knows his way around the backwoods, too. Both authors inject in Scapegoat a clear affinity for wrestling, heavy metal, and Lost In The Woods And Chased By Maniacs horror. In terms of collaboration, it’s pretty clear these two guys are writing with a singular purpose and a shared hive mind. And once they get going, there’s no slowing them down.

Scapegoat is a quick, down and dirty kind of read, pared to the bone and trimmed of all the fat. While plenty of the book is a run-and-gun affair, we still get some great character beats and moments of introspection and reminiscing that illustrate the relationship between Mike, Lonnie, and Pork Chop. There’s also plenty of carnage, threatening portents of occultism, explosions galore, moments of wonderfully shocking violence, and an incredible climax that spins this story into some wonderfully dark realms. Now look, I would have been more than content to have Howe and Newman tell me a story of redneck cultists chasing after our lost losers, but the few extra miles they travel in upping the ante here is absolutely perfect. The ending in particular is incredibly gutsy and I had to take a few moments to simply appreciate the verve of these authors.

Scapegoat is a mile-a-minute blast, the type of book that’s pure joy fuel. You might even be compelled to hop into an RV and storm into the Tennessee woods looking for trouble. Just remember, those seven deadly sins serve as a warning for a reason…

[Note: I received an advance reading copy of this title from the authors to provide a publication blurb. I have chosen to review Scapegoat here as well because I just flat-out loved this damn thing.]



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Review: My Pet Serial Killer by Michael J. Seidlinger

My Pet Serial Killer

By Michael J. Seidlinger






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In a crowded bar, you watch the patrons around you, sizing up a potential partner and the potential competition. You see something you like, a particular hair color or style, a smile, nice arms, nice legs, a nice chest, a pretty face or a handsome jawline. They catch you watching. Signals are exchanged, subtle but inviting. You make your move, your approach invited, expected, desired. There is, for at least a brief moment, and maybe longer if you're lucky, potential. You've been looking for certain attractive qualities, waiting for that one person who is a match. Such is the way of dating. But, what if you're looking for more than a common date? What if you're looking for, say, a serial killer?

This is, at its earliest and most basic, the premise of Michael J. Seidlinger's My Pet Serial Killer. Claire is a student studying forensic science, but she has some very particular fetishes and she knows how to find those particular qualities that she finds desirable in a mate with unerring accuracy. She could, presumably, easily become a victim, but some mysterious kink in the rules of attraction gives her an upper hand, as it has with Victor, dubbed the Gentleman Killer by the media at large.

Serial murder is most often about power and control, and is typically inextricably tied to sexual pleasure. In the world of BDSM, those who possess positions of power in their daily life often seek out sexually submissive roles in their carnal affairs. I'm sure we've all heard stories about the powerful executive who absolutely dominates the boardroom during the day, only to frequent certain types of clubs at night where he can be handcuffed and spanked. It makes sense, in certain perverse ways, that a serial killer, whose carnal activities are literally matters of life and death, who possess total and complete power over another, would enter into a submissive affair. After all, don't serial killers need love, too, and what would be the nature of their relationships?

Enter Claire. Smart and domineering, she makes killers her pets. She breaks them down piece by piece, destroying their defenses until they are left entirely subordinate to her, until a serial rapist and murderer like Victor is left wearing nothing more than a leash and literally licking her kitchen floor clean.

My Pet Serial Killer is as much about psychosexual fantasy and fetishes as it is about murder, and Seidlinger puts all of it on graphic display for readers. Perhaps more than any of these, though, My Pet Serial Killer is all about voyeurism. Claire rigs her home with webcams so she can watch Victor at work with his prey, and they routinely speak via computer chat programs like FaceTime. Written in first person, Claire tells her story directly to readers. Other chapters tell us of the eventual movie and television series based on Claire's work and relationships.

Seidlinger himself uses these various techniques and this story as a whole to riff on the relationship between his readers and the appeal that serial killer stories hold for them. Serial murderers are certainly fascinating taboo subjects, and it's fair to say there is a certain voyeuristic allure to such crimes. In both fiction and true crime works, the serial killer genre allows readers to explore dark fantasies, real or imagined, and observe horrifying experiences, descend into psychological madness, and escape all of it free from any lasting harm. We watch, disconnected and safe, seeking some degree of satisfaction from such stories. We seek understanding in the unraveling of these mysteries of a serial killer's mind, and in this understanding we've come to dominate the killer, being neither a victim nor the incarcerated murderer, reducing these crimes and the various actors within to little more than digestible forms of entertainment, making these brutal acts of atrocity and those who commit them submissive to our own morbid curiosities. We have made them into little more than performers.

My Pet Serial Killer is an interesting and intense meditation on the relationship between killers and the women who derive companionship from them, while also establishing a meta connection between the readers and the material. Claire is a forensic scientist, but Seidlinger demands that we be forensic readers, studying the crimes and the relationships presented to us to unravel the mystery, while also examining our own relationship to that which we are consuming. Is Claire any better than the killers she has dominated since the burgeoning of her sexuality, directing them to kill for her entertainment, and even going so far as to supply them with their victims and bury the evidence? Are we any better than Claire in our search and consumption of such stories, particularly true crime narratives in which actual human beings have been murdered in awfully grisly ways so that we can gaze salaciously upon them for a few hours of entertainment?

Seidlinger brings an uncomfortable fourth dimension into the equation, subverting ones typical expectations of a serial killer horror novel if you're willing to dig deeply enough and get your hands dirty. You can certainly enjoy My Pet Serial Killer on a superficial level, digging into it for its brutal kill scenes and kinky sex, but it's a far more engaging and rewarding read when approached with thoughtful deliberation and a bit of psychological studiousness. To get the most out of My Pet Serial Killer requires a willing degree of complicity and submissiveness. How you'll fare with it, though, is all part of the mystery.

[Note: I received an advance reading copy of this title from the publisher, Fangoria.]



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