Rampaging Rapists attack Washington!

BLOOD BORN by Matthew Warner (2011 HW Press / 497 pp / tp)


When several girls go missing in the Washington, D.C. area, detective Christina Randall goes on the case; the girls who are found have been the victim of rape...but that's far from the worst part.  It seems each victim of this serial rapist has been impregnated--and are experiencing excelerated pregnancies.  Within one week, each victim gives birth to a primate-looking creature that immediately turns and devours its mother.


Margaret Connolly's daughter is now missing.  Margaret works at the CalPark Fertility Clinic, and has been trying to understand the outbreak of bizarre pregnancies.  She begins to loose her marbles when her daughter is abducted, but she eventually meets up with detective Randall and the two begin to piece things together.


BLOOD BORN features genetically-created bigfoot-like creatures who are on a sole mission to breed.  They rape without remorse, causing a quarantine of the D.C. area.  Among several nightmarish scenes is a highway packed with cars trying to escape the city being attacked by the creatures; the blood and guts fly, yet Warner keeps the chills on target without getting silly.  You'd think a novel with rampaging monsters raping women with over-sized penises would garner some laughs...but BLOOD BORN doesn't.  It's serious horror written at a break-neck pace, and despite a larger than usual roster of characters, the reader is never lost.


While BLOOD BORN is a fun monster mash, I wish Warner would've let us in a but more regarding what caused our Third Reich-worshipping genetics doctor to tick; his creatures were "born" from a mistake in an attempt to create the perfect human...but we learn so little of Dr. Nicolae Schaefer that he truly takes a backseat to the his unholy creations (it's suggested Schaefer may even be of supernatural origin, leaving things wide open for a sequel).  But regardless, Warner's 3rd novel is a serious scare-fest, blending police procedural thrillers with plenty of blood, guts, scares, and some of the horniest monsters to hit our nation's capital since the Clinton administration.  You've been warned...