From Philip K. Dick Award-nominated author M.T. Hill, The Breach is a unique science fiction mystery set in the dangerous underground world of the urban exploration scene.
Freya Medlock, a reporter at her local paper, is down on her luck and chasing a break. When she's assigned to cover the death of a young climber named Stephen, she might just have the story she needs. Digging into Stephen's life, Freya uncovers a strange photo uploaded to an urban exploration forum not long before he died. It seems to show a weird nest, yet the caption below suggests there's more to it.
Freya believes this nest - discovering what it really is and where it's hidden - could be the key to understanding the mysteries surrounding Stephen's death.
Soon she meets Shep, a trainee steeplejack with his own secret life. When Shep's not working up chimneys, he's also into urban exploration - undertaking dangerous 'missions' into abandoned and restricted sites. As Shep draws Freya deeper into the urbex scene, the circumstances of Stephen s death become increasingly unsettling - and Freya finds herself risking more and more to get the answers she wants.
But neither Freya nor Shep realise that some dark corners are better left unlit.

This chapbook contains five new short stories, one extended essay, a piece covering the history behind Wildgoose Lodge, and story notes for The Unheimlich Manoeuvre. That book, which I reviewed here, is being reissued in a deluxe edition; this chapbook represents the new material in that edition, allowing those of us who already have the book to pick up the additional pieces in this format (which I think is very considerate).

The first piece is an academic essay in which the author discusses the relationship between the uncanny and domestic spaces in her own work; using examples from the stories, along with quotes from various reviews, she draws connections between Freud’s essay on the subject of the uncanny in fiction and the stories in her collection. It’s a fiercely intelligent and thoughtful essay that demonstrates a level of insight into the themes underpinning the author’s work that I found extraordinary.

Of the five new tales, ‘Haunted By The Ghost’ is a flash piece on a single page that reads almost as poetry - it uses two symmetrical passages as a call and response, turning sunshine to chilling shade with remarkable efficiency.

‘That Thing I Did’ is a study of grief and depression that resonates with a powerful desperation. Fahey cleverly runs the narrative along a twin track, with the backstory behind the cause of the lead character's grief and guilt unspooling in tandem with his slow motion emotional collapse. Fahey captures the spiral of misery with great clarity and without mawkishness, before landing a hammer blow in the closing pages. Stunningly well crafted.

‘The Wrong House’ invokes dislocation, isolation; the terrifying feeling that one’s life is wrong; that, to quote the song, you may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife. Again, Fahey is masterful in painting a portrait of psychological trauma, with a vivid eye for the telling detail and a voice that drew me in and evoked my sympathies immediately. 

‘Possession’ takes themes from the first two stories - dislocation, deterioration - but threads in a new concern in terms of identity. Fahey does a fine job of grounding this tale, as the others, in the mundane; in this case, a new job in a new town and a new house. The main character is an estate agent, and Fahey does a superb job of painting a portrait of her new office environment, and the people she works with, before the strangeness begins to intrude. What I especially enjoyed about this one was the slippery feeling of things just gradually falling out of control, without there being any obvious trigger point; anyone who has ever started struggling with memory loss or disorientation as a result of prolonged sleep issues will find this one uncomfortably relatable, I suspect. 

And then ‘I Wait For You’ flips the script by taking the perspective of the house as a starting point; a delicious conceit that Fahey commits to with full hearted glee, producing in the process a brilliantly eerie tale that examines notions of ownership and belonging.

The story notes that close the chapbook out cover the entire collection, and give a fascinating insight into the process behind the creation of the tales.

Overall I’d say if you haven’t yet picked up The Unheimlich Manoeuvre, you should grab the deluxe edition; these stories are every bit as strong and fascinating as those in the main book, and they manage to fit in thematically whilst creating their own resonances and perspectives. Similarly if, like me, you read and enjoyed the earlier release, this serves as a brilliant coda to that book; providing the opportunity to revisit Fahey’s preoccupations with domesticity, identity, and the alienation of the familiar. As with the original release, very highly recommended.

KP
9/2/20

Last year I was mightily impressed by Jon Bassoff’s wonderful and decidedly weird The Drive-Thru Crematorium which ended up one of my favourite novellas of 2019. This time out Bassoff expands from the 160-page novella into a shortish, but perfectly formed, 226-page novel. Some of the very cool quotes, which are worth revisiting, about Bassoff initially attracted me to his work include; “Bassoff is the Kafka of Colorado, a writer who spins feverish nightmares out of the insane realities of modern life” and “Toss Kafka, David Lynch, and a pinch of Flannery O’Connor in a blender, and you might end up with The Drive-Thru Crematorium”. Now having read The Lantern Man, these outlandish quotes ring truer than ever before.
 
The Lantern Man is another strange book, but not to the surreal levels of The Drive-Thru Crematorium, and clearly illustrates the diverse writing ability of the author, with a different blend of ‘crazy’ this time out. If you’re expecting more of the same, think again, this latest work follows a blueprint which heads into true-crime territory. It is presented in the form of newspaper clippings, interview transcripts, photos, drawings and other documents pertinent to a concluded police investigation. However, the most crucial document is a diary of a young woman, who apparently, committed suicide which takes up most of the book page-time, with the other documents dispersed throughout the very twisty narrative.
 
The diary recovered was titled ‘The Lantern Man by Lizzy Greiner’ and was retrieved close to the burned body of a young woman. The book was closely scrutinised by Detective Russ Buchanan, who believed the investigation into the circumstances of the death of Lizzy was flawed and that the case should be reopened. The Lantern Man opens with a letter from Detective Buchanan to Chief Mickel of the Leadville Police Department, requesting they take another look. Although most of the book is told via Lizzy Greiner’s diary narrative, it has numerous footnotes written by Detective Buchanan who often questions or debunk what Lizzy is saying, and his voice is as entertaining as the young woman. But is he really the voice of reason? A lot of the fun is had in reading between the lines of these contrasting narratives.
 
The reader has no idea where The Lantern Man is going and that holds a lot of attraction in a novel which cleverly blends horror, thriller and true crime as it slowly reveals that the Greiner family had more than a few issues. It drops breadcrumbs all over the place, many are red herrings, and you have to decide yourself whether you want to believe Lizzy Greiner’s narrative, which Detective Buchanan does his best to debunk; Lizzy was seeing a psychiatrist and had a whole heap of emotional problems is an obvious example he drops. Lizzy was a classic unreliable narrator, so how much could she be trusted anyway? Could you believe anybody who would deliberately sets themselves on fire? Jon Bassoff has previously been compared to David Lynch and there is most definitely a slice of Laura Palmer in Lizzy Greiner. Twin Peaks was all about secrets, and what lay below the surface, The Lantern Man is no different.       
 
Lizzy has a great voice and as you follow her narrative the whispering Detective Buchanan is never far away giving his slightly different versions of events. She is an odd girl for sure, seemingly obsessed with her brother Stormy, his relationships, and struggling to get over the death of her sister from an earlier drowning accident. Being inside the head of Lizzy is very convincing and so the notes provided by Buchanan are very jarring and combined they keep the readers on their toes as things play out very slowly in what was a cleverly plotted story with Buchanan’s voice becoming more prominent as the story spins on.
 
Who is ‘The Lantern Man’? you may be asking and what is his role in proceedings? All small towns have their own local legends and ‘The Lantern Man’ is a local boogieman tale used to scare little kids. Reputedly he was a miner who died after becoming trapped in a blocked cave who came back from the grave and haunted the local area, close to where he died. Lizzy has an unhealthy interest in this story and believes he was involved in both the drowning of her sister and other crucial plot developments which play out deliciously. Detective Buchanan, of course, investigates further….
 
It is not going to take you long to read The Lantern Man, which was very fine company for a few hours. I must also compliment the author on his very clever ending, which I really did not see coming, but once it dropped lots of other things became considerably clearer. Mixing genres is never easy and Jon Bassoff nails the cross between mystery, crime and horror in some style with this clever and sneaky read which will keep you on your toes until the final page.
 
4.5/5
 
Tony Jones

In 2006 Max Brooks gave us the huge break-out hit World War Z, later turned into the blockbuster film of the same name starring Brad Pitt, and I will be amazed if this bland treatment of Bigfoot replicates this earlier success. At the time World War Z had a very fresh approach, presenting itself as a non-fictional account, written by survivors and scientists, on what occurred during a worldwide zombie holocaust. Max Brooks tries to use the same non-fictional trick with Devolution, but it falls flat, failing to deliver on every level. In the fourteen years since his bestselling debut Brooks has published no longer fiction and only a few graphic novels, so perhaps his inactivity is significant in returning with the same format. I hope this author is not a one trick pony; but whatever you do next Max, please stay well away from the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie deserves much better than this kind of treatment.
 
Whereas World War Z pulled in a startlingly large range of resources and documents to make the product creepily believable, Devolution is the absolute opposite.  Proceedings rely almost entirely upon the journal/diary of Kate Holland, and over almost 300-turgid pages we are presented with seventeen journal entries, spread from September 22nd to October 17th. These entries dominate the book, and everything else comes across as bland unnecessary padding, such as interviews conducted by Kate with park rangers, scientists and others with insider knowledge of Bigfoot. Conspiracy theories are also given a passing mention in Kate’s musings, but Devolution relies so heavily on this journal/diary one wonders why Brooks just did not write a straight horror thriller about Bigfoot? Ultimately the shadow of World War Z seriously holds this book back, as it seems he is grasping at straws attempting to make the subject matter more interesting than it really is. Alma Katzu recently showed with The Hunger (2018) that strong horror novels can be built around historical mysteries (the Donner Party disappearance) and perhaps Bigfoot should have been tackled in a similar way, rather than repeating the style used in World War Z. 
 
Does anyone else out there think Bigfoot is old hat? Do these beasts not belong in ‘man versus nature’ movies made for TV along with Grizzly back in the 1970s and eighties? I appreciate there are current Facebook pages on Bigfoot sightings and that the phenomenon plays an important part in American culture and in Cryptozoology, but Devolution brings absolutely nothing new to the table and if you are a Bigfoot enthusiast prepare to be seriously underwhelmed by this book. The creatures are barely in the story, apart from a few hints here and there, action is minimal until well proceedings, and when they finally do appear, I struggled to decide who were the most boring characters; the creatures or the humans.
 
Proceedings open with a journalist doing research into a volcanic eruption at Mount Rainier which led to widespread destruction, and if an article in an obscure cryptozoological website was to believed “Bigfoot destroys town” written by Frank McCray, who was the sister of Kate Holland.  The volcanic eruption has knock-on effects on both wildlife and remoter communities, including ‘Greenloop’ where Kate worked before her mysterious disappearance. This was an eco-friendly, high-end tech savvy community where most of the novel is set and where Kate writes her journal. By the end of the introduction Frank has sent the journalist Kate’s journal, hoping he will publish it….
 
Considering how famous the Bigfoot myth is in the USA I was surprised Brooks does not make more of its history. Little is made of the many hoaxes or other stories and tries to explain it away by saying that many of the most famous sightings took place in periods where there was a lot of distrust in the government and so they were filed in the ‘crazy’ file, along with the UFOs. One wonders if the book might have played differently if some humour was built around the Bigfoot mythology, something entirely lacking in proceedings. There were plenty of opportunities to stray into X-Files territory, but the author obviously decided against it.
 
The overall premise is too simplistic: a volcanic eruption brings a ‘troop’ of Bigfoot (or should that be Bigfeet?) down from the mountains and they quickly encroach upon those living at Greenloop and the surrounding area. This was a very weak central plot, but that was all there was, and there was just not enough going on to make it either interesting or entertaining. The story could have played out without all the extra paddings, the interviews etc, they were all very superficial and added little to proceedings. If these extra documents were included to make the reader take everything more ‘seriously’ they failed miserably. As a foreigner, or non-American, neither do I feel I picked up any new information on the Bigfoot subject, which was a missed opportunity. Also, time has not been kind to this style of ‘docu-drama’ fiction since World War Z first appeared fourteen years ago, especially since television has really advanced with similar realistic complex docu-drama. Devolution might make a fun docu-drama but, in the right hands, it would make an even better mocumentary. 
 
Devolution was a complete misfire which I would avoid like the plague. If you want to write a novel about huge nasty monsters which hide in the forests then go ahead, hell, I’ll be happy to read it. But it is the turgid way the source material is presented that is the most startling failure and Bigfoot, wherever he or she is, deserved much better than this. Nessie beware, Max Brooks might be coming to tarnish your legend next. 
 
1/5
 
Tony Jones

As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now.

But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing – and too earth-shattering in its implications – to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the beasts behind it, once thought legendary but now known to be terrifyingly real.
Kate’s is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity’s defiance in the face of a terrible predator’s gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death.
Yet it is also far more than that.
Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us – and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.
Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it – and like none you’ve ever read before.

This conversation highlights a state of mind that we can all relate to: in our bleakest, loneliest moments, we want to feel wanted, to be special, to escape our life. And if the price for that is a little blood, then where is the harm?
 
It’s always a joy to encounter something in a book that you don’t see coming. Some people might spot a twist a mile off while others blunder straight into the author’s trap and stand astounded. I was certainly in the latter camp when I got partway through the book and a word – just a single word, an adjective – turned everything that I’d just read upside down. You might see it coming, you might not, or when you finally get there, you might decide that the truth is exactly what you thought it was all along, or you could find that it was something else entirely.
 
Some might find the format of the novel a little jarring, as the narrative does jump around in time a bit. In addition, the chapters are usually quite short, often with an abrupt ending combined with a hint at what is to come, such as chapter four which ends with the standalone sentence of: We’ll get to the bodies eventually.
 
Personally, though, I found the short chapters really enhanced the idea that I was listening to someone speak. It was as though each chapter was a pause for breath, and the jumping around as well as the little bits of foreshadowing were just part of Cassandra being a natural storyteller and keeping her audience on their toes.
 
As noted above, the style is kind of epistolary with the narrative being framed as Cassandra writing a tale for her nephew and niece. In fact, it might be that the manuscript started at chapter one, and that everything described there was just part of Cassandra’s playful nature in describing to Janus and Penelope themselves exactly what they were doing as they approached her house. The beauty of that first chapter is that you don’t know – and that’s a theme that carries on throughout the novel, that uncertainty as to what is true and what is made up or assumed.
 
Because the story is written with the assumption that it’s Penelope and Janus reading it, the narrative deviates from Cassandra’s life story now and again to address comments to the two readers. I thought these asides were well-done and used sparingly, to good effect, so that they didn’t pull the reader out of the story too much. I particularly liked the section, about fifty pages from the end where Cassandra teases her readers:

I will give you a way out, Penelope and Janus, you can still walk away from this. You can abandon the story before it gets ugly. The password is THORN, yes THORN, like my maiden name. But then again, you don’t know that for sure. I can still change my mind on the next page. Maybe it isn’t THORN at all, but MARMALADE or SPARROW. But for now it is THORN.
You should probably read on. ​

The title of this book is perfectly chosen since even those four words deal with the issue of blame: whatever happened, it’s because you let me in. It’s a question that goes hand in hand with the central concept of this novel: what is true and what is imagined? And who is responsible for whichever truth you choose? Even if you agree that Cassandra’s mother at fault, does her fault lie in the fact that she forced Cassandra into Pepper-Man’s arms because she cared for her so little, or was it because she saw Pepper-Man for what he was and turned a blind eye?
 
There is no way to tell which of the various versions of events given in You Let Me In is the truthful retelling. And, by the end, it seems that what is true doesn’t really matter. As Cassandra herself says to her brother: People, faeries – we all have to live. It’s a predatory world out there. We all eat something, don’t we?
 
At its conclusion, this book is about one woman’s struggle to live with what life has given her, to find joy amid the sadness of a neglectful and cruel family, and to spend her years with as much happiness as she could, letting go of the hurt even when others wouldn’t.
 
This is a book that constantly changes, forever challenges you and will leave you battered, bruised, and unsure of reality by the time you reach the last page. I highly recommend it.
​

'By the end of the third page I was not only hooked, but beginning to think that this might be the best book I'd read all year.' Joanne Harris

'I wanted someone to know, you see. To know my truth, now that I am gone. How everything and none of it happened.'
Everyone knew bestselling novelist Cassandra Tipp had twice got away with murder.
Even her family were convinced of her guilt.
So when she disappears, leaving only a long letter behind, they can but suspect that her conscience finally killed her.
But the letter is not what anyone expected. It tells two chilling, darkly disturbing stories. One is a story of bloody nights and magical gifts, of children lost to the woods, of husbands made from twigs and leaves and feathers and bones . . .
The other is the story of a little girl who was cruelly treated and grew up crooked in the shadows . . .
But which story is true? And where is Cassie now?