The Worm Detective...

THE BONE WORMS by Keith Minnion (2011 Cemetery Dance Publications / 156 pp / eBook)


Having recently raved over Minnion's short story collection, IT'S FOR YOU, I was happy to see one of my favorites ('Up in the Boneyard') turned into a short novel.  Minnion takes a classic horror set up (an ancient evil comes back to haunt the present day) and makes it work.


In 1921 and 1922, two young boys are affected by The Boneyard, a mystical realm that exists about twenty stories in the air over a certain section of Pittsburgh.  Flash ahead to 1983, where a series of grisly (and strange) murders have police baffled: it seems some lunatic is managing to steal his or her victims' bones while leaving the flesh behind with precision-neat slices in the skin; first responders to the crime scenes are also discovering organs and muscles neatly stacked in a separate corner of the room.  Enter Detective Sergeant Francis Lomax, a straight-up cop haunted by his father's lack of faith in him.  Francis happens to see things at each crime scene others don't, and with the help of a geeky librarian, manages to get on the tail of the killer...or killers...or thing(s).


THE BONE WORMS can be read in a sitting or two, will give those afraid of heights the willies, and supplies plenty of suspense and gut-wrenching violence.  In the hands of a lesser author, this standard plot could have easily gone south, but somehow Minnion makes it seem fresh.  Check it out.