Leisure / August 2007
Reviewed by: Jeff Burk

Famous for coining the term "Splatterpunk" and editing several entries in the Book of the Dead anthology series, John Skipp has laid low on the literary front in recent years while pursuing a career in the film industry. Fortunately for his readers, he has returned to penning horror tales, and Leisure has wisely released his short novel The Long Last Call in paperback along with a bonus novella, "Conscience."

Both stories explore the classic battle between good and evil, a staple theme in horror fiction. While the concept may not be new, the execution of the theme in both stories here is excellent. Skipp’s use of foreshadowing is dead-on, with hints of where each story is headed dropped intermittently amongst non-stop action. Fans who enjoy their morality plays wrapped up in the context of a slasher film will be gripped by this exciting read - guaranteed.

The Long Last Call (originally published in 2006 by Cemetery Dance) tells the story of the employees and patrons of a strip club in the middle of nowhere. One night just before closing, a stranger shows up and offers everyone in the club obscene amounts of money if they will stay for a private party.

While the novel plays with a fascinating premise and moves along briskly, it ultimately fails to make due on its lofty promises of terror. As soon as the private party starts, the story instantly degrades into bloody violence, virtually ignoring all the possibilities for psychological terror. If there were any group of characters ripe for mental torment, it would be those hanging around a strip club at last call.

In the bonus novella, "Conscience", a hit man assigned to kill an ex-lover meets his conscience - literally. Though shorter, this piece is the standout work here. Playing once again with the good versus evil theme, Skipp explores this idea on dual levels – on a personal level through the eyes of the protagonist and on a broader cosmic level. Various characters on the periphery mention some kind of monumental new age event happening (perhaps the return of Quetzalcoatl?). This provides some explanation for the book's events and, more importantly, adds depth to the narrative while widening the scope for the story’s strange happenings.

Featuring an introduction by Brian Keene, Leisure's edition of The Long Last Call marks John Skipp's long-awaited return to the mass-market. Both stories are well-written and exciting tales of horror that will serve as a perfect introduction to anyone unfamiliar with Skipp's work and a great addition to the bookshelves of avowed fans.

Purchase John Skipp's The Long Last Call

Leisure / July 2007
Reviewed by: Jeff Burk

Despite being hailed as a master of horror fiction by the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Brian Keene, the late Richard Laymon has yet to receive the wider acclaim in America that he enjoyed in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Fortunately, Leisure Books has been re-releasing his works for a broader American audience over the past several years. Leisure’s latest Laymon release, The Midnight Tour, is notable as being the final book in the author’s Beast House saga.

While not essential to have read either The Cellar or The Beast House, the two earlier books in the trilogy, readers would be strongly advised to do so. The Midnight Tour’s plot relies heavily on the events of the previous two books and contains many spoilers. In order to enjoy the full artistic vision that Laymon had for this trio of terrors, a reader’s best bet is to read the three books in order.

In the series finale, we once again return to the Beast House, now turned into a haunted house tourist attraction. This time out, the sex-crazed monsters tied to the Beast House mythology have become common public knowledge, with books and movies detailing the strange abode’s violent history. People now come from all parts of the country to visit the infamous house that was home to myriad unspeakable horrors too obscene for the average visitor. In The Midnight Tour, we follow a group of visitors and workers at the tourist attraction who opt for the exclusive “Midnight Tour”, conducted every Saturday at the stroke of midnight. For those unlucky enough to be able to afford the pricey admission ticket, the true horrors of the house are revealed and Laymon’s visceral blend of sex and bloody violence ensues.

Laymon layers the main narrative with a subplot involving the character of Sandy Blume, one of the rare survivors from earlier in the series. This character provides the main thread of continuity between The Midnight Tour and the previous books. When we first met Sandy in The Cellar, she was just a scared little girl on the run from an abusive father. Now she has gone into hiding with a half-human, half-beast offspring and will do anything to protect herself and her child.

The Midnight Tour is amongst Laymon’s longest, clocking in at nearly six-hundred pages. The various plotlines interweave throughout the book and help sustain a break-neck pace for the duration. When finished, though, one will realize that the book contains numerous extraneous scenes serving as little more than filler and subplots that never come to fruition. At times, some of these subplots become lost in the main storyline and are never fully realized, leaving the reader with nagging unanswered questions. One comes away from the book with the impression that Laymon had too many ambitious ideas for the conclusion of the Beast House series and may have overreached somewhat in his ambition.

The Midnight Tour, which was written toward the end of Laymon’s life, is long, violent, and thoroughly gripping. With each of Leisure’s releases in the United States, more and more readers will hopefully discover the gory goods of this master dark scribe. The Midnight Tour is another novel that his fans should devour as one would the desert in a satisfying three-course meal - just make sure not to skip the appetizer or entrée.

Purchase Richard Laymon's The Midnight Tour

Tor / September 2007
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

In Dark Harvest, author Norman Partridge crafts an inspired throwback to the classic campfire tale and explores the idea that the real bogeymen are not those lurking in the shadowed corners of our childhood bedrooms but rather those all around us in plain sight. It’s an atmospheric coming-of-age tale and urban legend hybrid equally fitting for late Halloween night reading or storytime at summer camp.

In an unnamed midwestern town that no one ever seems to leave, Halloween signals an annual rite of passage for the town’s male teens, during which they hunt down the legendary Sawtooth Jack (aka The October Boy), a malevolent Jack o’Lantern-topped, candy-stuffed scarecrow that rises up each Halloween in the cornfields surrounding the town. There is much at stake in this mysterious vigilante-style showdown dubbed the Run: the one who slays Sawtooth Jack gets his one-way ticket out of this dead-end 1960’s suburbia and his family wins the equivalent of the lottery – a new house, a shiny new car, and no bills for an entire year. This year, 16-year-old Pete McCormick is determined to win the Run; he sees victory as his ticket out of town away from the broken promises of his unemployed, alcoholic father and the suffocating nothingness of small town life. But, like all good small midwestern towns, there are secrets out there amongst the corn stalks, and Pete and a female companion will soon learn that sometimes the stuff behind the legends (in this case a shadowy sect of town founders known as the Harvester’s Guild) is far more dangerous that the legends themselves.

Dark Harvest is The Outsiders meets The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And, like a movie adaptation of an S.E. Hinton novel, one half expects to see a young Matt Dillon or Ralph Macchio step off the page at any moment, hair greased back and ready to rumble with Partridge’s pumpkin-headed monstrosity. His prose drips with rich Halloween imagery that heightens the novella’s mood and atmosphere at every turn, and he never loses sight that at the heart of Dark Harvest is the idea of the timelessness of urban legend. Dark Harvest is Partridge’s campfire around which readers gather to hear his well-crafted apocryphal cautionary tale:

Yeah. You remember how it feels to go nose to nose with a legend. That’s why the stories they spin about the October Boy are all about the fear. You heard them around a campfire out in the woods when you were just a kid, and they were whispered to you late at night in your dark bedroom when your best friend spent the night, and they scared you so bad tenting out in your backyard one summer night that you thought you wouldn’t sleep for a week. So there’s not much chance of separating reputation from reality when you look the real deal straight in the face. He’s the October Boy…the reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with the hacksaw face…and he’s gonna getcha! That’s what they always told you…he’s gonna getcha so you know you’ve been got!!!

Partridge’s voice is thoroughly fresh, with delightfully original turns of phrase that often sneak up and overtake the reader in blissful moments of literary spontaneity:

His mom died of cancer last winter, and his dad drank away his job at the grain elevator the following spring. There’s enough rotten luck in that little sentence to bust anyone’s chops.

or…

It’s like the old man has a fish on the line, and he’s trying to reel it in with words.

Readers might initially find themselves thrown off balance by the disconcerting present tense narrative, but Partridge skillfully turns what could have been an exercise in literary vertigo around by using this here-and-now storytelling technique to make the reader part of the story, in turn building and sustaining a propulsive momentum throughout.

Dark Harvest could very well become to Halloween what Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is to its titular holiday, its classic sensibilities and resonance as strong as they are here. Clever without being pretentious, contemporary with an air of old-fashioned storytelling, Dark Harvest is destined to become a modern Halloween literary landmark.

Purchase Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest.

Biting Dog Press / August 2007
Reviewed by: Blu Gilliand 

Kealan Patrick Burke knows what scares readers. The books and stories that form the foundation of his growing reputation run the gamut of vengeful spirits and murderous intent with a sharp eye for detail and a voice that is strong, yet still evolving.

With Midlisters, his new novella from Biting Dog Press, Burke shows he knows what scares writers, too. There’s the fear of fans who might take the work a little – or a lot – too seriously. There’s the fear of fading out as younger, edgier writers muscle their way onto the bestseller lists. Finally, there’s the fear that haunts everyone who puts pen to page, no matter how strong their sales stats might be: the fear that they just aren’t very good.

Protagonist Jason Tennant is facing all those fears and more as Midlisters opens. His marriage is on shaky ground, and he’s become increasingly bothered by the success of fellow author Kent Gray, who is known for a series of vapid “sex-fi” books. Tennant accepts a rare invitation to appear as “Guest of Honor” at a nearby genre convention, The New England Aurora Convention, mainly for the chance to confront Gray, whom he confesses inwardly he hates “because he was a better writer.”

On the way to the convention, Tennant experiences a blowout that leads to him giving convention-bound hitchhiker Walt a ride. Walt, it turns out, is a big Kent Gray fan, but he’s read Tennant, too. The duo parts ways at the convention, neither knowing they are destined to come together one last, bloody time.

With each new release, Burke’s grasp of mood, style, and story grows more confident. His depiction of the Aurora Convention, with its costume-clad fans and bemused guests of honor, expertly describes such affairs without lampooning them. And while the Tennant character is at times a bit too familiar – we’ve all read lots of tales about cynical, bordering-on-bitter writers – Kent Gray is a surprise, completely defying expectations the moment he steps into view.

Tennant’s confrontation with Gray, which the story builds to from the beginning, takes a different-than-expected direction, and leads us right into the book’s explosive climax. It’s a compliment to Burke that he’s able to take a handful of clichés – obsessive fans, professional jealousy, and murder – and twist them into a tale that feels fresh and new.

Jason Tennant’s greatest fear seems to be that he’s not a good writer. For all we know, it’s a fear shared by Kealan Patrick Burke. Somebody needs to let Burke know he’s got nothing to be afraid of.

Purchase Kealan Patrick Burke's Midlisters.

Harper / October 2007
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

It’s always a pleasure as a reader to stumble upon an exciting new voice in genre fiction; it’s an even greater pleasure when that first-time author proves their debut was no fluke. That’s exactly what Sarah Langan accomplishes with her sophomore release, The Missing. And, as one delves into Langan’s lush, lyrical prose and a chillingly insidious evil that once again threatens a skillfully drawn ensemble of characters, we’re buoyed by the fact that this is a writer who actually gets better with each word that flows from her blood-soaked pen. Like King and Straub and Koontz before her, Langan proves that she’s no one-hit wonder and is in this for the long haul.

While The Missing is enough of a continuation of the story Langan began in The Keeper to keep fans of the former enthralled with periodic references and a surprise cameo by one of the main characters from the previous book, the new tome easily works as a stand-alone story. Langan once again sets her tale in small-town Maine, this time in the slightly larger Corpus Christie, upscale suburban neighbor to Keeper’s Bedford. When school teacher Lois Larkin takes her 4^th grade class on an ill-conceived science outing to neighboring Bedford, now decimated and reduced to a ghost town after the events of the previous book, the reader just knows that the ghosts of Susan Marley and the Bedford denizens that so ably haunted Langan’s debut are coming back for more. After a student goes missing, a sinister virus that’s equal parts environmental and supernatural in origin starts to take hold of Corpus Christie’s good citizens, turning them into scampering, flesh-eating human environmental disasters.

Langan makes strong use of her own background in toxicology here, creating a hybrid genre all her own: toxicological horror. As in The Keeper, she also imbues The Missing with compelling social commentary, making a strong case that madness lurks inside each of us. Like many of the working class characters in The Keeper, who live from paycheck to paycheck on the cusp of homelessness and poverty, so, too, are the inhabitants in The Missing one microorganism away from snapping their caps - despite their markedly better economic and social class. In Langan’s world, the smallest cell can equalize a class-obsessed society with one infinitesimal mutation.

Interestingly, Langan expands her narrative horizons here with some added horrors not present in her debut, straddling the line between ghost story and apocalyptic zombie horror. Indeed, there are moments in The Missing where the author appears to be channeling Brian Keene as much as she is Peter Straub. While The Keeper was decidedly more supernatural and cerebral in nature, Langan flexes her visceral muscles here with some graphic zombie action, hints of vampirism, and even an Oedipus complex thrown in for good measure. Whereas the horror in The Keeper was confined within Bedford’s town lines, Langan expands the playing field in The Missing with story-driven CDC involvement, military confinement, and periodic radio reports from outside Corpus Christie that detract somewhat from the intimacy of her debut. It’s a small yet unfair criticism to pine for the intimacy lost between novels when Langan so ably shows growth here, clearly demonstrating that she’s got loftier goals in mind than becoming the formulaic Danielle Steel of horror lit. With The Missing, she promises to deliver a new experience with each novel she pens - so fans of comfortable rote and routine fiction beware.

If The Missing lacks some of the familiarity of its predecessor, Langan makes up for it with even stronger characters and her masterful writing chops. The inhabitants of The Missing are colorful, divergent, and always believable even in the face of the unbelievable horror Langan levies at them. Standouts in this batch include: Albert Sanguine, a vagrant schizophrenic with Tourettes-like outbursts who demonstrates the novel’s penultimate act of unexpected humanity; Fenstad Wintrob, a psychiatrist plagued by Oedipal demons and a nagging, crisis-driven addiction; Lila Schiffer, his patient prone to tragically low self-esteem who emerges stronger than her myriad psychoses might otherwise suggest; and Danny Walker, a resilient teenage boy who puts up a lone front when his family falls victim to the marauding, virus-afflicted townsfolk.

As in her debut, Langan again conjures up the more literary of horror’s dark scribes. With strings of almost poetic words and phrases strung together to deliver finely honed descriptions, she at once transports readers into a highly visualized kaleidoscope of imagery where she not only scares, but unsettles. From the escalation of mood…

She looked out the window, and that same unsettled feeling from breakfast returned. Something about the lawn, and the trees. The breeze was mild, and things were just beginning to dry up and die. A few cars were on the road, but not as many as usual. It was too quite. Like one of those kid’s pictures from Highlights magazine that asked: “What’s wrong here?” while birds flew backward, and people had been drawn without lips or eyes.

…to convey the human decay caused by the virus:

When she smiled at him, he saw that no PTA in their right mind would have her. Her teeth were black. Not brown, like she didn’t brush them, but black, like all she ate was Hostess cupcakes and raw sugar, so that layers upon layers of crud now coated her rotting teeth.

Publisher Harper gets a small demerit for the illogical title variations in the American and UK editions, with the latter’s Virus far more fitting and powerful a designation. Fortunately, the cover of any Langan book could announce the words TV Guide and still be deemed superlative on the strength of what’s nestled on the pages within.

Purchase Sarah Langan's The Missing

from Postscripts #10 / Spring 2007
Reviewed by: JG Faherty

Some people might pick up the latest issue of Postscripts (Number 10, Spring 2007, edited by Peter Crowther), because of stories by Stephen King, Joe Hill, or Tim Lebbon. Or maybe because of the whole section devoted to Michael Marshall Smith. But every anthology has its hidden gems, and one of the best in this anthology is “Hearing Aid,” by Rick Hautala.

One of the things I’ve always found refreshing about Hautala is his no-nonsense approach to horror. Hautala’s stories are back-to-the-basics, straightforward dark fiction, sometimes dealing with monsters and boogems pulled from the depths of Maine’s deep well of supernatural myths, and other times providing a quiet but chilling look at the world.

Hautala admits that one of his main influences is Rod Serling, and the Twilight Zone/Outer Limits style is certainly evident in this story of a man who gets fitted for a hearing aid and ends up with something much more than he bargained for.

If you’ve read any of Hautala’s previous works, you know things are not going to end well for the protagonist. The story is short, with no wasted words. We know everything we need to about the main character in a few brief sentences, and his problem is thrust upon him, and us, immediately.

I’m a sucker for traditional horror, and “Hearing Aid” is the kind of story I grew up reading, and still enjoy. It’s a modern campfire story. It creeps you out, makes you feel sorry for the main character, and might even make you think, ‘Wow, what if...” long after you’ve read it.

In short, it’s a damn good story with no verbal doilies or pseudo-literary pretense.

But then, what else would you expect from a storyteller from Maine?

Purchase Postscripts #10 featuring Rick Hautala's short story "Hearing Aid"

Delirium Books / January 2008
Reviewed by: JG Faherty

The Infected is a rollicking, thrill-packed, adventure ride of a novel that provides more non-stop action than possibly any book I’ve ever read. By the time you finish it you feel as if you’ve taken a hit of speed. The excitement kicks in on page one and never lets up. At some points it was so relentless I had to stop reading and catch my breath. This book should come with a warning: ‘Persons with heart conditions or pacemakers should not read this book.’

Michael McBride is a self-confessed caffeine junkie, and The Infected reads as if he’s somehow managed to infuse the pages with his favorite stimulant so that it enters your bloodstream through your fingers. The story moves along at such a breakneck speed there are times you’ll feel your heart racing - not from extreme terror (although there are plenty of scares and creepy scenes), but from the adrenaline rush you get. The chapters carom along like an out-of-control rollercoaster. Each time you think there will be a break in the action, zoom! you rush forward again. It’s the literary equivalent of Red Bull.

The Infected is an apocalyptic novel that begins with a Mayan priest casting a curse upon the Spanish invaders who are slowly decimating his people. The book then jumps ahead to the present time, as the curse is fulfilled with a plague of zombies. As for the ending...well, I won’t tell you how it ends. That would be cheating. But suffice to say, it doesn’t end the way you think it will.

It also doesn’t begin the way you think it will. While most writers save their plot twist for the final chapter, McBride gives us several, including two or three before we even meet the characters who end up as the protagonists of the book.

The plot is pretty straightforward - we’re talking zombies here, after all. They’re gross, and they eat flesh. But McBride’s zombies are not your average, run-of-the-mill undead. No, these disgusting creatures would run circles around Romero’s shambling dolts. Not that McBride’s zombies are flashing Mensa cards. But they have a healthy dose of animal cunning that makes them particularly dangerous and hard to predict.

Besides offering thrills galore, the book also plays havoc with the reader’s emotions. McBride seems to enjoy letting the reader get to know a character, to feel an attachment, and then he pulls the rug out by visiting a particularly gruesome death upon said character. There were at least two occasions where I leaned back in my chair and practically shouted at the pages because the person I’d thought would end up the hero became a zombie happy meal. Or worse.

For those of you who enjoy gore, never fear. While The Infected is by no means one of those splatter punk, shock value only books, it provides plenty of healthy doses of the red stuff. Zombie feeding fests are lovingly rendered in shades of blood-red, bone-white, and flesh-pink, and McBride calls upon his own background in the health sciences to create zombies who are far more disgusting than the usual gray, drooling monsters of the movies. The zombies in The Infected would make a person dying from gangrene, or Ebola, or terminal zits look pleasant by comparison. You can imagine how awful they would look - and smell - as they charge towards you, teeth bared and ready to rip the flesh from your bones.

To create his monsters, McBride combines equal parts science, Mayan history, and imagination to produce a zombie that you can actually believe in. And the science aspect allows the zombie menace to spread so fast that before the story is over, major cities all over the world are on the verge of collapse, the Army’s back is against the wall of defeat, and utter chaos reigns over everything as our small band of heroes keeps getting smaller at every turn.

Much of the action in The Infected takes place in a hospital setting, or involves characters who happen to be medical professionals. This allows McBride to bring his own background into the story, adding an air of authenticity to these scenes, to the point where you find yourself thinking, ‘what if...’ - a scary thought indeed when reading a work of horror fiction.

McBride uses a deft touch when developing his characters. Just enough description is given to provide each person with a unique personality and look, but the focus always remains on the story. No long, drawn out sections of dialog; no paragraphs devoted to physical descriptions or individual backgrounds. Yet through a minimum of words and interactions, McBride manages to bring the characters to life as real individuals, people you want to cheer for, people you feel sorry for when their throats are torn out or their skulls are cracked open.

The final scenes take place in an underground military shelter deep within the mountains of Colorado, where several questions that plagued me through the final third of the book are finally answered, the scenes written in a grudgingly defiant attitude as the inevitable comes to pass for more than one character. The ending, unlike so many books today, is a definitive conclusion that doesn’t leave the reader hanging, but at the same time it allows for the possibility of sequel.

If any fault can be found with The Infected, it’s that you’ll get so caught up in the action you’ll speed through the pages and finish the book before you realize it. And at today’s hardcover prices, that might upset a few people. But don’t use this as an excuse to not read it - this is the perfect book for reading on the train, at the beach, or just sitting on the deck with a beer.

In fact, if you read The Infected during your lunch break at work, you might find you don’t need that afternoon cup of coffee.

The hardcover limited-edition of this book sold out within 36 hours of being announced. The publisher is now taking names for the waiting list. If you'd like to place your name on the waiting list, please contact Delirium Books.