I had read just a couple of stories by Orrin Grey so far (one included in Datlow’s last Best Horror of the Year) and I was impressed. Now, after reading the present book, I am enthusiast, but also sorry to find out that this is Grey’s third collection and that I’ve  missed his previous two.


The volume assembles fifteen stories. There are no misfires. Some tales are perhaps too derivative from the writer’s favourite movies ( he admits to be a confirmed movie lover) but remain very well crafted  and extremely entertaining. The quality of the other stories is superlative.


Here’s my list of the  most impressive tales.

“ Dream House” is an enticing piece portraying a man obsessed with an old, ill-fated TV show, the bad influence of which still lingers in a house where some shooting took place.

In the very dark “ Shadders” ,set in the world of chimneysweeps, deadly evil creatures dwell in the chimneys of an empty factory.

The title story “ Guignol” is a creepy tale set in the sinister atmosphere of an abandoned family house hiding in the attic unexpected, terrible secrets, while “ Haruspicate or Scry” is a superbly told pice where the memory of a beloved professor keeps haunting a young mother.

In the masterful “ The Well and the Wheel” a young woman discovers her deceased father’s unspeakable secrets and her own tragic, unavoidable fate.

“Dark and Deep”is a gentle, sad story about a mysterious fish-man once displayed in a freak show, whose corpse is finally taken back where it really belongs.


Grey is an extraordinary storyteller, whose disturbing tales will leave you spellbound.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Four of literatures greatest modern-day detectives meet for a drink in Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar to reminiscence about old cases, loves and the very few that got away. As John Rebus is on his home turf, he buys the first round and as the whiskey begins to flow is soon deep in animated conversation with Harry Bosch, Charlie Parker and Kurt Wallander. His esteemed guests are far from home, visiting from both the east and west coasts of America and Skona in the south of Sweden. The conversation drifts to the sidekicks who have helped the detectives crack many of their most troublesome cases becoming larger than life characters themselves, as well as friends and confidants. This is what all four of these bestselling writers and their most famous literary creations have in common; the authors John Connolly (Parker), Ian Rankin (Rebus), Michael Connelly (Bosch) and Henning Mankell (Wallander) have all supporting characters which have been given their own spinoff novels where the spotlight temporarily shifts onto a different star.


In 2017 Michael Connelly introduced us to Renee Ballard in The Late Show and she has since starred in three further novels where Harry Bosch is either the sidekick or co-headliner and the two sequences are now blended beautifully together. Ian Rankin introduced to Malcolm Fox back in 2011 with The Complaints, before later welcoming Fox into his main John Rebus series and although they will never be the best of buddies, are currently on nodding terms. Perhaps one day Rankin will give Siobhan Clarke her own book also, it is long overdue and deserved. In 2004 Henning Mankell cleverly gave Kurt Wallander’s daughter her own book, the superb Before the Frost and promised more to come, before the tragic suicide of the actress who played Linda Wallander in the Swedish version of the TV show meant that Mankell never felt comfortable returning to the series.


Changing the character perspective of a long-running series can provide fresh blood, new vigour for the author, and a detour or time-out from longstanding complex story arcs, and this is exactly what The Nameless Ones does for John Connolly. This is the second major break in succession from the series as book eighteen, The Dirty South, was a prequel of sorts. Technically this is book nineteen in his long-running Charlie Parker series, the cover wisely calls it a ‘thriller’, omitting Charlie Parker’s name entirely as he is mostly absent from the novel. Long term fans might moan a little about the sideroads the plot travels, however, alternatively I would suggest applauding the fact that popular character support character Louis hits the headlines. Earlier in the year I ranked all eighteen of the existing Parker novels in a hugely popular Ginger Nut feature, take a look here should you have missed it:

SURVIVING THE LOCKDOWNS WITH CHARLIE PARKER, RATING AND RANKING THE JOHN CONNOLLY SERIES

John Connolly is not a late starter on the Rankin, Connelly and Mankell sidekick bandwagon, as back in 2008 The Reapers, book seven in the series, Louis previously starred in an ‘origins’ story which delved into his troubled past and birth as a killer. Interestingly, Charlie Parker had a much bigger part in The Reapers than he does in The Nameless Ones. Did I miss Charlie in this new book? Yes, that goes without saying, but at the same time I was happy to see the author try something different, and Louis is very, very cool.


In many ways this was a very simple tale of revenge, harking back partially to the events of A Bag of Bones when Angel, Parker and Louis all visited Amsterdam and an earlier killing which is only mentioned in passing from some years previously acts as a catalyst. This very cleverly and intricately plotted thriller could also be taken as an entertaining standalone story, but the ‘new’ reader might occasional wonder who this ‘Charlie guy is?’ and the fuss and mystique which surrounds him when his name crops us. The supernatural has a light touch in this particular novel and new readers may also wonder who the ghost girl Jennifer Parker is? But long-term readers will lap these references up, likewise a highly entertaining sequence with the Fulci brothers, one of the few scenes of the novel which take place back in Maine was a beauty. The connections Jennifer has to the supernatural Serbian folklore element of the story was also a highlight and hinted at what might lie ahead in one of the major long running story arcs once Connolly takes his pen back into that direction.


The 1990s Balkan War and the atrocities of the massacre at Srebrenica lurk in the background, with Louis and Angel tracking two brothers and their crew who tortured and murdered an old acquaintance of Louis. The novel dwells on the Balkan conflict in some detail with many of the ex-paramilitary Serbians now making a living as gunrunners, drugs, prostitution, and people smuggling. These are very nasty pieces of work for whom life is cheap and murder, torture and blackmail is second nature. Although brothers Radovan and Spiridon Vuksan fall well short of the best of Charlie Parker’s adversaries, ultimately, they are just murdering thugs, their regular reminiscences of their time in the Balkan War was fascinating reading and Connolly did a fine job of bringing this terrible period in modern European history to life.


In a round-about way the novel asks the question: ‘What future for Serbia?’ As the country hopes to join the European Union in the next decade is there still a place for the mass murderers from that conflict who have yet to be caught? Does anybody still see them as heroes? These complex questions are not asked or answered directly, but I am sure there are plenty of real Radovan and Spiridon Vuksans out there, probably hiding in plain sight.


Stylistically The Nameless Ones is slightly different from many of the other Charlie Parker novels and lacks the multiple character points of view and complex plots we are accustomed to. However, the end result is an incredibly readable page-turner thriller which I read straight through over two days. If I were being picky, I would suggest Louis did not have enough page time and the Serbs and the sleazy lawyer had way too much. Considering these were obviously characters who will not be returning in further books I was surprised so many pages were given over to them and the opportunity to develop Louis was not explored more fully. 


Reading a new novel from one of my favourite sequences is like catching up with an old friend I have not seen for a couple of years for a drink. On this occasion Charlie missed the train for that famous Edinburgh pub, but Louis was the next best thing and was great company. It is truly amazing that this series is still so vital, vivid, and alive after so many books and I hope if John Connolly feels that diversions such as The Nameless Ones are necessary to keep the creative juices flowing then I am with him all the way. If there is a better blend of detective and the supernatural out there than Connolly I would love to discover it.


Tony Jones

​In Amsterdam, four people are butchered in a canal house, their remains arranged around the crucified form of their patriarch, De Jaager: fixer, go-between, and confidante of the assassin named Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland.
They are wrong.

For Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into the east.
There is only one problem.
The sixth.

One of the blurbs of Amanda Headlee’s intriguing debut Till We Become Monsters uses the quote “Monsters exist and Korin Perrin knew this as truth because his grandmother told him so” with much of the success of the novel being built around the ambiguity of this big question. Coming in at a brief 226-pages it makes a memorable stab at keeping the reader guessing until the last fifty or pages. One could argue that the bloody climax does not exactly fit with what preceded it and even though it was still very enjoyable, I did not find it particularly convincing within the context of how the story is framed.


The action kicks off in March 1971 with Korin Perrin being read a story by his grandmother whom he loves dearly and in particular the folklore stories she tells him. He does not get on with his older brother Davis, who dominates the attention of his parents, but is disliked by the grandmother. However, two separate shocking incidents involving firstly their grandmother, then Davis, lead to a terrible family crisis which sends Korin into a mental hospital. This was part of an outstanding first fifty pages, which I found really eye-catching.


The two shocking incidents brings us to the first big theme of the novel: family dynamics. And boy-o-boy if you think your family is dysfunctional wait until you see the Perrins! For much of the time I could not make my mind up who was the most f***ed up, the parents or their incredibly unlikable children. That was one of the major weaknesses of the novel, both Korin and Davis were so incredibly self-centred and self-seeking once the story jumped to the adult stage, I could not care less about them. In fact, I wanted to give the parents a slap for bringing up two children so poorly and the boys for making such little effort to get on. Central characters need a certain amount of empathy for readers to connect to and the brothers missed it by a mile.


His fascinating with folklore is one of the reasons Korin ends up in hospital and this place was so unpleasant it made Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like a holiday camp. I found this sequence to be vaguely unbelievable, okay, it’s the 1970s, but I struggled to accept how horribly the boy was treated in this nasty place, which was more like a prison. At this stage I did wonder which direction the book was heading into, and by page-43 the events jump to March 1986 when Korin is in his early twenties and a star university student. The novel remains in this period with Korin torn on what to do his major dissertation on.


His love and fascination with folklore has never deserted him and in some way, he wants to write a paper which proves that some of the old tales are based on fact, however, he struggles to come up with an angle and goes round in circles. Inwardly, he has never forgotten the stories of changelings his grandmother told him and after more frustration his professor tells him to take a week off and visit his family to chill out. After his girlfriend Maeve, who is a Psychology graduate, inspires him he thinks he has something new to investigate. Meanwhile, he continues to whine and feel sorry for himself, possibly making himself one of the most irritating main characters I have come across in quite a while. Forever moaning about what his family never did for him, when he did nothing much for them either. If readers abandon Till We Become Monsters before the wild finish it will probably be because of this character, or his equally annoying brother.


The story is told in the third person from multiple points of view, including Maeve, his parents, Davis and a couple of other characters which appear later. Korin was not an unreliable narrator, but he was certainly disturbed, and you could argue not a lot happened in the plot once it reached the adult sequence. It had a whiff of Young Adult literature to it, but I doubt teenage readers would find Korin to be particularly engaging and Davis was just too one dimensional to take seriously. He was in his mid-twenties, still lived at home, had no job and had loser written all over him. The two most engaging characters, Tate and Addy, were a welcome antidote to proceedings later in the action, mainly because they gave the reader a break from the Perrins!


There was nothing at all wrong with the action style finish and there were some exciting and painful sequences which will have you wincing as the characters wander around in sub-zero Minnesota snowy temperatures. I guess, ancient evil can awaken anywhere, and you can decide whether it fits with the rest of the book. In the end everything goes full circle, and you find out who and what the real monster is. But within the context of this novel did the way the supernatural was introduced into the story work? I was not convinced, but I still found Till We Become Monsters to be an entertaining read and a solid first novel. But the moral of the story is do not believe everything your granny tells you!


I should also point out that the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) provided by the publisher had a very irritating watermark in the book which blended too many of the characters into the white background. This was very annoying which reduced the enjoyment of the book and if it were not for the fact that the book was short, I would have given up. This is not the way to go about picking up reviews.


Tony Jones

"With her debut novel, Till We Become Monsters, Amanda Headlee raises the genre to a chilling new level. I recommend reading this one with all the lights on."—Phil Giunta, author of Like Mother, Like Daughters

Monsters exist and Korin Perrin knew this as truth because his grandmother told him so. Korin, raised in the shadow of his older brother Davis, is an imaginative child who believes his brother is a monster. After the death of their grandmother, seven-year-old Korin, blaming Davis for her demise, tries to kill him. Sixteen years following the attempt on Davis' life, racked with guilt, Korin comes to terms with the fact that Davis may not be the one who is the monster after all.
​
Past wrongs needing to be righted, Korin agrees to a hunting trip with his brother and father. But they, along with two friends, never make it to their destination. An accident along the way separates the hunters in the dark forests of Minnesota during the threat of an oncoming blizzard. As the stranded hunters search for each other and safety, an ancient evil wakes.

Teenage Grave is a quartet of short stories of edgy, dare I say artisan horror, that are heavy on the gore without being overly saturated with it. On first glance, the four stories seem to have nothing in common, but upon closer inspection, Grave is a contemporary collection of morality tales, each addressing a venial (perhaps even mortal) sin: vengeance, obsessive love, betrayal, lust, cowardice, and masochism. As one story so eloquently points out, “Nevertheless, he had no other choice. Such was the nature of his punishment.” The horror develops as each of the stories’ protagonists become trapped in their own acts of contrition.


In “Stale Air” by Jo Quenell, Jason visits his estranged father after the loss of his mother. “Dad’s house reeked of rotten fish,” and the décor is straight out of bachelor pad central casting. The son wants an answer to why his parent abandoned the family, but what he learns is much more bizarre in this well-paced romp into magical realism. “I Know Not the Name of the Gods to Whom I Pray” by Sam Richard is a surrealist painting of a man’s inability to live without his lover and the agreement he forges to rectify his loss. The Orpheus myth has nothing on this tale, a painfully sad and gruesome embodiment of the phrase “hell is repetition.”


Keeping with the theme of mythology, in the Greek tradition, Apate was the spirit of deceit. My favorite story of the foursome, “Apate’s Children” by Brandon Vidito, is an allegorical tale of the emotional turmoil a betrayer endures after he confesses to his transgression. The story is one you’ll reread just to gleefully collect the meticulously crafted details. Finally, if you thought Chuck Palahniuk’s underground fight clubs were bloody, check out the secret men’s organization in “Start Today” by Justin Lutz. Miles is a pushover, a rapidly regressing “spineless worm” whose girlfriend leaves him after tiring of using him as her personal verbal punching bag. Miles discovers the print ad for the group Start Today, which promises, “Find your inner alpha, harness your confidence.” All it will cost him is a few flayings of his flesh.


Editor Ira Rat proves himself to be a shrewd curator of captivating, sometimes transgressive, always unusual tales. This is the second publication I have read from indie house Filthy Loot, and I am blown away by the press’ ability to fold such an abundance of talent into a small package: Grave is a mere 70 pages from start to finish. Loot’s publications are thoughtfully constructed to be able to be read satisfactorily in one sitting: perfect for plane rides (they are coming back slowly but surely, CoVid!) and bedtime reading (if you dare!), and I will be checking out the rest of their catalog, and their arsenal of talented authors, for certain.


Purchase link: http://www.filthyloot.com/product/teenage-grave/

Featuring: Jo Quenell, Sam Richard, Brendan Vidito & Justin Lutz
​
Teenage Grave brings together four of the most brutally frank and intricately surreal fictions from the modern horror underground. Combining elements of splatterpunk, body horror, and transgressive fiction. Teenage Grave will lay you bare before severing your nerves. Smiling a little too much while doing it.

Purchase link: 
http://www.filthyloot.com/product/teenage-grave/

“The filth and decay, the desolation and the bad dreams of a nowhere ghost. And every red stripe across bare girl flesh keeps the darkness from creeping up on him. Raw and ready in transcendence, to transform them into supernatural beings in dramas of played out power in love and lust with no lies. Exquisite agony of ecstasy, pleasure in pain. And he sees it and the fire in his blood burns. Mysterious diabolism in exorcism of madness in a dim mist.”

Rob True’s debut novel In The Shadow Of The Phosphorous Dawn (2021) is a dazzling and disorienting psychedelic nightmare. True has created a powerful work that evades all attempts to pin it down. Capturing both the gritty, street level view of a crime novel and the hallucinogenic visions of ritualistic horror, In The Shadow Of The Phosphorous Dawn is both striking and original. True’s prose is both shockingly raw and full of carefully crafted stream-of-consciousness imagery. The novel is bleak and violent, but never gratuitously so, and this is balanced out by a knack for surreal and haunting imagery and a genuine compassion for the author’s bruised and broken characters. While it is sometimes a challenging read, it amply pays back the attentive reader, and is a wonderful example of just how innovative and exciting horror and crime fiction can be at their best.

Carl is reeling from his brother’s suicide. His relationship with his girlfriend Anna is on the rocks, he is slipping back into his destructive old habits of taking drugs and dealing them for small-time local gangster Mick in the dilapidated estate they live in. He soon has darker concerns to face, as a wave of brutal and bloody ritualistic gangland killings sweeps the estate, spectral shadow men keep following him, and the line between reality, nightmare and hallucination starts to dissolve. As the deaths pile up and Carl’s already tenuous relationships collapse, Carl finds himself being sucked further and further into a horrendous nightmare he has no chance of unravelling.

True places the reader squarely in Carl’s perspective, and the novel is a claustrophobic exploration of this character’s descent. Through stream-of-consciousness prose, we experience first-hand Carl’s worrying lapses of memory, his barely-controllable violent urges, his hallucinations, drug-fuelled or otherwise. True expertly portrays the disorientation from Carl’s troubled headspace, and like Carl the reader is constantly kept of their guard and questioning what is real and what is not. There are no easy markers to separate reality from hallucination, nightmare from lived experience, and as Carl’s state exacerbates, any distinction between the two melts away. The rawness of True’s prose and the expert control he exerts over perspective and viewpoint combine for an incredibly intense and disturbing front-seat journey into madness.

Carl’s personal descent is mirrored by his surroundings. True vividly describes a working-class milieu with a surreal and apocalyptic edge. The desolate council estates, disused gas stations and crumbling warehouses are transformed by a psychedelic touch into a ravaged and bleak landscape, hinting at the devastating impact of years of austerity and economic collapse whilst reflecting the shattered, fragmented mind of the novel’s protagonist. Streets full of faceless crowds, alleyways haunted by sinister shadows or familiar faces, all combine together to create a perfect reflection of Carl’s alienation and depression. In this way the novel calls to mind the early work of J. G. Ballard like The Drowned World (1962), where the postapocalyptic landscape is as much a reflection of the protagonist’s inner world as a physical location, but True is a much more visceral and immediate writer than Ballard ever was.

True’s voice is so distinctive and unique that it defies comparison. The only other novel I was put in mind of at all whilst reading In The Shadow Of The Phosphorous Dawn is Anna Kavan’s apocalyptic final novel Ice (1967). Like Kavan’s masterwork, True’s novel explores frank depictions of drug use and places the reader directly in the viewpoint of characters whose perspective is distorted by drug addiction and madness. Ice and Phosphorous Dawn also both use the protagonist’s incredibly dysfunctional personal relationship to excavate humanity’s darkest and most disturbing impulses. In True’s novel, Carl’s relationship with Anna is deeply unhealthy, with both characters repeatedly unable to escape each other’s orbit, despite the fact that they share nothing but sexual fascination and their own brand of nihilistic solipsism. This reflects Carl’s other fractious relationships, whether with his father who abused him or his sister who cares for him, or his tendency for violence. Carl is a dark and disturbed character, but the novel is remarkable for the empathy with which it explores his personality. True never excuses Carl’s sometimes horrendous behaviour, but he shows us where Carl’s nihilism and detachment from the world come from, and how pitiful and tragic his struggle against it is.
​
As the novel progresses and Carl’s grip on reality becomes ever more tenuous, True’s writing rises to a powerful crescendo of nightmare intensity. Are Carl and Anna connected to the mysterious violent killings, or do the violent killings simply reflect the worst of their destructive impulses? Phosphorous Dawn is not interested in comforting the reader with simple answers or clean resolutions, but rather embracing and exploring the chaos and the darkness. Troubling, vivid and unforgettable, True’s novel will haunt the reader long after they have turned the final page. It is a bold and exciting debut, and I eagerly await more from Rob True.

Like many Europeans brought up on Miami Vice and Elmore Leonard books, I find the state of Florida a fascinating blend of the attractive (Art Deco architecture, beautiful landscapes etc.) and the repulsive (think Disneyland and white supremacy.) This “Florida Gothic” element is what made me pick up Gaby Triana’s latest YA novel Moonchild. Its heroine Vale, a teenage girl with burgeoning psychic abilities, bolts from her suffocating Miami Catholic home and falls in with a band of other young psychics all set on investigating Sunlake Springs, a decaying rural estate with a long history of horror.

Sure enough, Triana squeezes every last drop of local violence and prejudice from the state’s history and makes great use of Sunlake’s split personality, part healing New Age hotspot, part whirling vortex of hatred. Like Richard Matheson’s Hell House (which is just across the road, thematically speaking), the Springs is built on psychogeological stratae of human misery that gradually manifest through the different characters, who each have their own personal reasons for investigating the secrets of the place.

That said, the pace is anything but geological. I really don’t know why the blurb describes this book as a slow burn, because once Vale has got shot of her relatives the novel goes like the clappers, with real page-turning quality and enough plot twists to keep the novel’s readership constantly on the back foot. In that respect it even compares favourably with quite a few adult crime novels I’ve read.

This does come at the cost of character development and style, however. The latter is a bit flat and rushed at times, and the spiritual jargon of the psychics’ rituals and chants is awful, though sadly you can’t say it’s not realistic. Character-wise, I liked the diverse cast, but some of the psychics are still pretty stereotyped, especially the mandatory tortured bad-boy Goth (and anyone who thinks it’s impossible to do that kind of character without resorting to stereotypes should check out Johnny from Sarah Singleton’s amazing YA novel The Amethyst Children.) And considering the extremely graphic violence of the horror scenes, the rather coy, muted way in which sex is treated is a bit jarring, though I did like the way characters of all genders are shown going casually topless and even naked without the world coming to an end.

But what of the two most important characters, Vale and the house? The house isn’t great. With the Florida location I was hoping for something along the lines of Simon Kurt Unsworth’s snarling, beautiful Art Deco nightmare, the Ocean Grand Hotel, but as a location Sunlake Springs never has time to quite come into focus, even though the hauntings themselves are often very vivid. Vale, however, is a worthwhile and likeable heroine whose problems and emotions seem real and immediate. Triana does a terrific takedown of the evils attached to the unthinking acceptance of inherited religious belief. Although she’s a calm and patient kind of girl, Vale is labouring under a burden of quiet anger, much of it due to the sexual hypocrisy built into her churchy social milieu – a fertile breeding-ground for homophobia and sexual abuse.
​
If this in itself is hardly a revelation, the point is made unusually well via a sharp, nuanced examination of how people within a community treat each other. Vale’s anger and distress are only too alive, and her problems are shared by all women to some extent, regardless of background. Fortunately, with the help of her friends Vale is able to use these bad feelings to propel herself forward, and ultimately Moonchild has an optimistic message. The world today seems keener than ever to punish teenagers for the crime of being young, so it’s cheering to encounter a book that depicts the ordeals they go through in detail, but also allows that a future might be possible for some – if they can avoid sinking into despair.

By Daisy Lyle 

Lori is determined to confront the Cabal and get her life back….
​
Having not read much by Tim Waggoner before this, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. From the blurb, Lori Palumbo has to ‘confess and atone – or suffer’, so I was envisaging some kind of cult type thing, especially with the Cabal mentioned so prominently.

Turns out this is an altogether much stranger beast, with the Cabal all possessing odd physical appearances – goat eyes, gills on the back of the head amongst others – whilst bizarrely all having the fingernail of their little fingers painted pink.

Lori lives with her ex-boyfriend, Larry, much to chagrin of her current boyfriend Justin. In the early part of the novel, I struggled to tell them, although this became easier as the plot progressed.

The early part of the novel builds the mystery of what Lori has done nicely and introduces the more other-worldly elements carefully. There is an extremely effective sequence early on when shadow creatures attack Lori in her house, and this is the novel at its best: where the horror creeps into our world.

Initially, I wasn’t sure about the sequences set in another dimension called the Nightway, but these grew on me, especially when we were introduced to the Garden of Anguish and Edgar. That said, I definitely preferred the real-world sections more than the Nightway and I wonder if the novel would have been stronger with fewer fantastical sequences.

There is also a scene which features an assault on a shopping mall that perhaps should feature a trigger warning. It fits within the themes of the book but is still a tough section to read.  Without going into specifics, this was a little too close to real life tragedy to be entertaining but certainly ramped up the horror.

Reading my review back through, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy Your Turn To Suffer, and that’s not true at all. This is a good read, and fans of Waggoner’s work will be pleased. However, I would be cautious as to whom I recommended it: if you like multiple worlds, ancient ones type horror but with more action than your typical Lovecraftian fare, then you will love this.