Eraserhead Press / January 2008
Reviewed by: Jeff Burk

Kevin is your average loser, living above a porn-shop with his tarot card-reading cat. In addition to divination, his cat has been bringing home latex body parts, which Kevin soon fashions into a piecemeal sex doll. Once Kevin has all the pieces glued together, the doll comes to life. Her name is June, and she is on the run from an evil pornographer.

Piecemeal June is the first novella from Jordan Krall, and Eraserhead Press has managed to snag this interesting new talent. The book is filled with grotesque imagery of perverted sexuality, yet this is no mere exercise in exploitation. Kevin is seeking real love and companionship from June, and Krall’s use of a sex-doll as a representation of his emotional longing is a wonderfully clever plot device.

Krall’s writing flows nicely, whether he is detailing the sex doll coming to life or crab-human hybrid assassins. The surrealism and weirdness never overwhelm the sweet sensitivity of Kevin's inner plight. This story is for the romantic in all of us, while not neglecting the part that craves gore.

Krall is an exciting new voice to arrive on the horror scene. He combines gross-out with occultism but never forgets that characters are what make a story.

Eraserhead press has consistently published cutting-edge genre works and Piecemeal June continues in this trend of excellence. If your appetite for horror lately needs satisfying, Piecemeal June is a tasty small morsel (just under 100 pages) that very well may be just what you’ve been craving.

Purchase Piecemeal June by Jordan Krall.

Leisure / May 2008
Reviewed by: Blu Gilliand

Cedar Hill, Ohio, is a tough place to live. It’s a blue-collar town where most people make a living doing back-breaking work, turning shifts in factories, standing on their feet all day, collecting meager wages and holding out hope that one day things will get just a little bit better. It’s a town full of the kind of honest, hardworking people who are the heart and backbone of the country.

But simmering underneath all of that apple pie and red-white-and-blue are dark and sinister forces, things that have bubbled up from the ground many times before in Cedar Hill’s history, and which are now reaching a boiling point.

Coffin County, Gary Braunbeck’s latest in a long line of Cedar Hill stories and novels, is that boiling point. In a compact 270 pages, Braunbeck weaves together many of the various events and characters his readers have met in previous Cedar Hill stories (the majority of which are gathered in two collections from Earthling Publications, Graveyard People and Home Before Dark, with a third – The Carnival Within – on the way) and novels (including In Silent Graves, Keepers, and Mr. Hands). However, readers new to Cedar Hill work shouldn’t avoid this book – the author skillfully brings everyone up to speed without slowing the action down. You’ll get all you need to know to enjoy this as a standalone novel, but make no mistake – it’s a richer reading experience if you’ve visited Cedar Hill already.

Coffin County is storytelling on a cosmic scale, but Braunbeck keeps events grounded in cold, hard reality. It starts off quickly with the destruction of a large chunk of the town, then shifts focus to the investigation of a massacre at a local diner. Here the story bogs down a bit, as forward momentum is nearly lost in detailing the intricacies of fingerprint identification technology. It’s interesting information, and it leads to more than one jaw-dropping revelation as to the nature of the events going down in Cedar Hill, but it seems like it could have been shortened a bit.

Fortunately, it’s not long before the pace picks up again. Events begin to spiral out of control, but it is chaos with a purpose. It soon becomes clear the perpetrator is really trying to get the attention of one man, a Cedar Hill resident who already has more to deal with than he can handle. The two do meet near the end of the book – but as readers will see, it’s more a beginning than an end.

There’s a lot going on in what appears on the surface to be the story of a killer hell-bent on destroying an entire town. It’s important to remember going in that Braunbeck isn’t just telling a story in the pages of this novel – he’s been telling one big story all along.

And what a story it is.

Purchase Coffin County by Gary Braunbeck.

Hyperion / July 2008
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina

J.A. Konrath is the P.T. Barnum of the mystery world. Like Barnum, he is a businessman. Konrath has documented the journey from zero to hero on his blog called The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.  But more importantly, like Barnum, Konrath is out to entertain.

In Fuzzy Navel, the fifth book in the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series, Konrath walks the fine line of blending just the right amount of back story to remind readers where they’ve been without being boring and bring new readers into the fold. Lieutenant Daniels is one of the Chicago Police Department’s finest officers. She’s solved some tough cases earning the respect of her male peers. While she’s good at her job, her love life is generally a train wreck. She’s fought hard to keep her relationship with Latham Conger together, and the two are now engaged. Things seem to be looking up for Jack. She’s just received word that Alex Kork, one of the most dangerous serial killers she’s ever faced, committed suicide in prison. Maybe now, her chronic case of insomnia will finally go away.

The calm before the storm isn’t a new concept but it is an important part of the story. Seeing the life Jack had and knowing what she’s gone through to get this far causes the reader to hope maybe, just maybe, she’ll finally get a little peace. Half of the fun of following a series is living with the character through those highs and lows. Fuzzy Navel offers plenty of both.

Jack has her work cut out for her this time around. A group of overzealous vigilantes forget who the bad guys are in their quest to rid the city of scum, leaving dead cops in their wake. Jack becomes a target when the group’s leader thinks she could identify him. This is the least of Jack’s worries. After receiving a strange phone call from her elderly mother, Jack ducks out on a de-briefing meeting with Internal Affairs, a move that could send her back to the civilian world for good. Especially if the higher-ups find out that she moved outside the city limits, which is a violation of CPD policy. Worse yet, comes the realization that the relief gained in learning of Kork’s suicide may be short-lived.

Konrath takes readers on roller coaster ride that soars higher on fear scale than any of the preceding books in the series. He also plunges Jack to an emotional low, leaving us to wonder if Jack will be able to find the strength to fight another day. Like its predecessors, Fuzzy Navel offers a unique blend of humor, gore, mystery, and thrills. Think Janet Evanovich crossed with Thomas Harris, and then turn it up to eleven. The result is a book you’ll find hard to put down.

Purchase Fuzzy Navel by J.A. Konrath.

Dark Tales / May 2008
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Angels, creepy crawlies, ruminations on death, and the Australian Outback are just a few of themes explored in this twelfth volume of short stories from British publisher Dark Tales. Clocking in at a lean 69 pages, Dark Tales: Volume 12 offers up a smorgasbord of thirteen original works of short fiction with a decidedly British flair.

The collection kicks off with Gary Kemble’s eco-terror thriller “All You Need Is Love,” in which a probe returning from Venus brings back a virus that has those it infects inexplicably grinning from ear to ear and doing some decidedly reckless things. “All You Need Is Love” is a cautionary tale that explores the tenuousness of international relations in a time of global paranoia.

“The Summer Ghost” by Robert Smith is a competent war-time ghost story that underwhelms at first but ultimately delivers the goods in the end with some ingenious spectral role reversal.

Ryan Lambie’s “The Beetles in My House” finds its entomology-loving narrator playing house with thousands of creepy crawlies. Think of the “They’re Creeping Up on You” vignette from Creepshow – substituting beetles for cockroaches – and imagine E.G. Marshall’s character welcoming the insect invasion.

“The Billabong” by Angela Graham is a somewhat disjointed take on marital infidelity in the Australian Outback. Despite its strong sense of setting, the story comes across as muddled as the snake-bitten main character’s increasingly hallucinogenic thoughts. The tale ultimately succeeds at macabre, but one is left with the impression that it’s almost by default.

John Morgan’s “Lights Out” is a clever variation on the idea of hovering between life and death, offering up a genuinely disturbing alternative to white-lit corridors with its grisly otherworldly hospital where the Hippocratic Oath is turned on its head before losing its head altogether. Morgan capably demonstrates that sometimes experimental works.

“Trail of Tears” by T.R. Johnstone is a grim apocalyptic survival story with just a hint of zombie lore that fully engages the reader from the opening paragraph. Think Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome meets The Children of Men.

Christopher M. Geeson’s “Love Thy Spider” is a genuinely creepy little tale about an elderly widow and her unwelcome arachnid houseguest who just won’t seem to leave. Talking spiders can be tricky business, but Geeson pulls it off admirably without veering off into parody territory.

In the fable-like “Angels and Oblivion, author Ben Langley offers an inventive spin on guardian angels that explores the depths of divine intervention – imagined here as a corruptible force. It’s an optimistic story about recovery and redemption, perhaps a bit of misplaced hope here among a collection of dark tales but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.

“Pulling Teeth” by James Brooks concerns a traveling cookery salesman who takes his Williams & Sonoma-like sideshow to the secluded home of an eccentric old woman who has a thing for wild boars and eagle owls. The story, while passable, is the weakest of the lot with some clunky turns of phrase and an odd aversion to commas in setting off introductory phrases that could have benefited from a more thorough line edit. Mechanics aside, there’s an appropriately ghoulish ending that’ll have you glancing sideways at your grandmother’s tube of Fixodent.

The standout of the collection is David Turnbill’s elegiac “The Dream of Aquiline Wings,” the story of a teenage girl literally at war with herself to stop the nightmarish avian transformation taking place within her. Turnbill crafts a beautifully written allegory for adolescence and the ravaging effects of divorce on children.

Sandi Sholl-Ellis’ “A Brush with Death” is a solid, at times poignant, chiller in which a dying woman - who knows death well after a lifetime of obsession - makes a deal with the Grim Reaper. Sholl-Ellis’ keen observations on aging and death are spot-on, as illustrated by this passage in which the narrator is observing the nursing home setting around her:

Now, at eighty-seven, I have heard all the dogmas of death. In the nursing home, they say it can be your friend. I can rid you of pain. It can take you to where there is no smell of yesterday’s shit and piss blended with today’s powdery adult diapers and disinfectant cleansers.

In death you won’t hear the outbursts of madness and confusion that are answered in barely disguised frustration and disgust in the middle hours of the night.

“Lady! Hey lady! Help me.”

“You need to lie down now.”

“Help! Help me. Can you help me? Lady!”

“Just take a sip of this. Swallow it down. There’s a good man now.”

There will be no clang and clamour of aluminum carts rolling on hard, cold institutional floors in death. No murmurings of rubber soled shoes on gurneys.

That’s what people say. Other people

Grief and madness are the central themes of “Famine,” in which author Chris Warmer takes readers from 0 to 60 mph in what starts out as a poignant and thoughtful portrait of a recently widowed man and abruptly switches to an outlandish conclusion in which an elevator and an underwear model figure into attempted cannibalism.  Best to hold onto the chair arms when reading this one.

All is not what it seems in David Hamilton’s ambitious “Baltic Afternoon” in which a young girl becomes a pawn in a game of induced memories and paranormal hoaxes in a Nazi-occupied Baltic village outpost in 1944. You may find yourself re-reading the last paragraphs as Hamilton attempts a denouement twist reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

While the compact and concise scares offered in Dark Tales: Volume 12 are perfect to squeeze in during an afternoon at the beach this summer, these tales are best served up late afternoon with a steeping brew of Earl Grey and a nibble or two of orange scone.

Purchase Dark Tales: Volume 12, edited by Sean Jeffery.

Cemetery Dance / November 2007
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina

In the introduction to The Story of Noichi the Blind, Chet Williamson leads readers to believe that the work they are about to read could be a lost manuscript of Lafcadio Hearn (a/k/a Koizumi Yakumo,) a late nineteenth century author, who is best known for his collections of Japan legends and ghost stories.  Determining whether it is or isn't is half the fun in this literary game of fact or fiction.

The tale of how Williamson came to be in possession of said manuscript is believable. Williamson discusses the process he went through to verify the authenticity of the manuscript. While he can’t provide a definitive answer, Williamson promises that the Afterword penned by one Dr. Alan Drew, Ph.D. will “shine more light on the question of authorship for the curious reader.” Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Noichi, a woodcutter, lives a meager existence. He befriends forest animals, great and small. One day, he discovers an injured woman the road. Noichi recognizes Noriko, a woman who works for one of his customers. In town, Noichi heard that Noriko murdered a Samurai captain and knows she is in great danger. When he learns the truth of what happened to Noriko, Noichi takes her in, promising to protect her from the Samurai. They eventually marry and live a happy, simple life in the hills above town.

Noriko falls ill and when Noichi’s herbal remedies fail to cure her, he is forced to seek the aid of a doctor. He knows bringing a doctor in is a risk, since Noriko is a fugitive. Noichi cannot bear the thought of losing Noriko. It is a risk he has to take.

Until this point, the tale is a beautifully rendered love story. There is some graphic violence related to Noriko’s encounter with the Samurai captain. But the reader is able to overcome the shock because of the compassion Noichi shows Noriko afterward. As their relationship progresses, it is easy to get caught up in the love story, thus making what is to come more tragic.

The aftermath of the doctor’s visit reminds this reviewer of her introduction to Japanese horror, which started with Takashi Miike’s film, Visitor Q. Sensitive readers who find graphic violence and taboo subjects, such as necrophilia, offensive are hereby warned to steer clear of this novella and Miike’s films as well. But those who enjoy black comedy and other perversions will delight in what the rest of The Story of Noichi the Blind has to offer.

Dr. Alan Drew, Ph.D., does offer insight into the similarities between The Story of Noichi the Blind and Hearn’s other tales. Is Williamson’s find an authentic lost Hearn treasure? Are Williamson and Drew really qualified to make that determination? Is Drew just a fictional pawn in Williamson's literary game? In this reviewer’s opinion, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Williamson takes readers to place they’ve never been before. In the grand scheme of things, it’s all about the journey, not the final destination.

Purchase The Story of Noichi the Blind by Chet Williamson.

Black Death Books / September 2006
Reviewed by: Derek Clendening

If you can imagine a world where our most precious resources have dried up and communities are left to fend for themselves against a ferocious inhuman race, then Derek Gunn’s Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder will leave you praying that the future doesn’t come too soon. Gunn takes a very real futuristic scenario and adds a healthy dose of imagination to create a world where humans have given way to vampires as the dominant species. These creatures won’t charm or seduce you, but they will gladly tear your throat out and toss away the remains. As the story unfolds, a group of brave human survivors have stepped up to the plate, willing to do whatever is necessary to survive - but they do so at their own risk.

Clearly understanding the importance of thematic consistency, Gunn stays true to his vision throughout by creating an authentic and thoroughly convincing apocalyptic setting. Subtle touches set it apart from typical apocalyptic tales - zombie novels come to mind- thanks to the real-life situations Gunn considers. For example, infections become difficult to treat because of limited access to antibiotics. Gunn never strays from his intentions as he places his characters in binds that seem impossible to escape. Further, he offers a much-needed break from those oh-so-frequent Anne Rice pastiches, in favor of more vicious and sadistic vampires.

When Stephen King wrote The Stand, he had 1,300 pages to introduce a host of major and minor characters while simultaneously advancing his plot. Gunn seems to have tried to do the same thing here in only 216 pages. Consequently, his characters receive no real introduction and have no firm back story. Instead, they come across more like stock characters than real people who a reader should care about. This weakness in characterization fails to ground the story from the beginning, affording precious little time to learn whose story this really was, their history and their motivations. Epic intentions aside, paring down the action enough to leave room for character development might have enhanced Gunn’s believable plot.

Readers often check a book’s cover or skim the first few pages to determine if the tale is right for them. Those looking for a particular kind of read might keep this practice in mind here to avoid disappointment. But if savage vampires roaming an authentic apocalyptic landscape are your thing, then Vampire Apocalypse will cater to even the most discriminating reader.

Purchase Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder by Derek Gunn.

Dark Arts Books / March 2008
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Dark Arts Books is on a mission. That mission: to expose the horror masses to the many unsung literary voices that populate the genre. Following 2006’s Candy in the Dumpster, last year’s Waiting for October, and this year’s earlier Sins of the Sirens collections, Like a Chinese Tattoo is the innovative publisher’s latest conduit through which it intends to spread the good word. Like DAB’s previous collections, Tattoo features four very different voices – Cullen Bunn, Rick R. Reed, David Thomas Lord, and JA Konrath – and held loosely together by the nonspecific theme of “inscrutably twisted.” Indeed, several of the tales here preclude scrutiny by virtue of their sheer audaciousness.

Cullen Bunn kicks off the collection with the competent “Tomorrow, When Demons Come,” a story about lust and devotion, personified human emotions, and a particularly sinister Korean bathhouse where troubles and inhumanity are washed away for twenty dollars. “Remains” is a marvelous tale, at once chilling and heartbreaking, told from the POV of a teenage boy whose suspicions about the mysterious stranger who comes to work on his family’s farm come to tragic fruition. Bunn shows real talent here, capturing that period between adolescence and manhood with genuine authenticity. He deftly maneuvers between the horror and humanity of the story in a style reminiscent of early Stephen King (think It or “The Body”) and imbues the story with a deep emotional resonance that never detracts from the horror yet stays with the reader long after the last word. To follow the praiseworthy “Remains” with “Granny Kisses,” then, is like watching a double-bill of Stand by Me and American Pie. Crude and nasty, “Granny Kisses” is the literary equivalent of toilet humor taken to the unimaginable extreme – and this will be either high praise or scathing criticism depending on your own reading tastes. For this reviewer, the story detracts from Bunn’s obvious talent and comes off as a mere shock tactic. Herein lies both the beauty and Achilles’ heel of collections like this: showcase an author’s diversity and range at the peril of the reader walking away without a clear idea of the author’s true voice. Is Bunn a serious writer letting off some steam with “Granny Kisses” – or he is a literary shockmeister who had a fluke with “Remains”? Hard to tell, but I’m betting on the former with fingers tightly crossed.

Fortunately, I’m familiar with Rick Reed’s work because, again, his contributions here range from the ingenious to the inane. “Purfleet” is an inventive take on a horror staple that involves a wife on the run from a seemingly abusive husband who takes refuge in a psychiatric hospital. But all is not as it seems and Reed pulls out a whopper of a twist in the end that will leave Bram Stoker enthusiasts smiling from ear to ear. Likewise, “Moving Toward the Light” is a capable revenge tale first published in The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams in 1998. Gritty and not for the faint-of-heart, Reed’s story of one young woman hitting rock bottom and the otherworldly forces that avenge her brutal rape and beating in order to build her up again is one of hope and redemption in the midst of hopelessness. Astute Reed fans will instantly recognize this as a sequel of sorts to his 1992 novel Penance (Dell), about a serial killer preying on child prostitutes on the streets of Chicago. Although Reed’s third contribution mines the same juvenile humor of Bunn’s “Granny Kisses,” there is at least a recognizable plot. “Stung” is part of the ongoing misadventures of a recurring character from Reed’s fictional stable named Amelia. Here readers find the overweight, socially awkward heroine joining a company getaway at her employer’s summer home. Joined by her nagging, shrewish mother, Amelia runs characteristically afoul of trouble – found here in the form of a wasp that stings her in the rectum. Ample bathroom gags abound, with flatulence and clogged bowels meeting KY jelly and a well-placed toilet plunger. You do the math.

If the first two author showcases leave you feeling a bit uneven, David Thomas Lord knows how to straddle the line between literary and lighthearted without losing his voice. He starts off strong with the previously published “The White Room,” a visual treat of color and monotony in which white takes center stage and reveals the true colors of madness. “The Great White Ape” is the standout story of the entire collection, and Lord crafts a remarkable tale of bait and switch…of spider luring the fly to its web… that has the timeless feel of a classic. Part travelogue, part period piece, “The Great White Ape” reads like an enthralling adventure epic, morality play, and cautionary tale all rolled into one – Gulliver’s Travels meets The African Queen meets At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Some underlying eroticism helps imbue the story with its constant sense of low-lying tension as Lord moves the story to its heartrending conclusion. “Da’s Boy” - Lord’s literary quickie here - wisely circumvents the bawdry humor of Bunn’s and Reed’s stories and opts for more gallows humor in this dialect-heavy tale of a tragic bond between grandson and grandfather.

Mystery scribe JA Konrath was an adventurous choice to round out the anthology’s quartet, and Dark Arts should be commended for such an inspired choice. The three Konrath stories included here are a fine introduction to an author who can pull off experimental (as in “The Confession” which is told entirely through dialogue), black comedy (as in “The Necro File,” a bold crime noir/horror parody that’s Scary Movie meets The Naked Gun), and deceptive (as in the seemingly straightforward torture/revenge tale “Punishment,” which kicks the legs out from under the table in the last paragraphs). Konrath demonstrates that irreverent humor need not be gratuitous to be effective, using the mundane events of everyday life as fodder for his sharp wit, as in this passage from “The Necro File”:

Next, I checked my email, where I discovered I’d won the Irish lottery, inherited eighty million dollars from an unknown relative, and was asked to shuffle funds into my bank account from the President of Rwanda. They all got my standard response: enthusiastic replies with an attachment supposedly containing my routing number. The attachment really contained an email bomb, which once opened would bombard their computers with tens of thousands of naked pictures of actress Bea Arthur. I called it the Maude Virus.

Bill Breedlove waxes nostalgic in his introduction to Like a Chinese Tattoo about discovering Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum in the library as a kid and the hunger that collection set off for him, satiated only by devouring other like tomes. Along the way, he was introduced to the voices that would gradually form his own primary literary interests. He uses this formidable childhood experience to espouse the virtues of the anthology format, making the case that for a limited commitment in terms of time, money, and patience, the rewards to readers are immense. His point is well-taken with Like a Chinese Tattoo. With superb standouts like David Thomas Lord’s “The Great White Ape” and Cullen Bunn’s “Remains” overshadowing the few questionable misfires here, Tattoo yields large returns for those willing to invest a little patience. Like literary tapas, the stories in Like a Chinese Tattoo offer a small taste of some big talent. Another noteworthy addition to the impressive (and growing) Dark Arts catalog.

Purchase Like a Chinese Tattoo with stories by Cullen Bunn, Rick R. Reed, David Thomas Lord, and JA Konrath.