The Hungry Ones is the second book in the Messy Man series, the series’ first book being The Nightmare Room. Jessie Voss purchases a closed-up roadside motel which was home to a brutal experience - a man shot and killed several guests staying at that motel.  Jessie hopes that with the passing of time and with a facelift, the motel could one day become a happy place where people can rest their heads.  It doesn’t take long for her and one of her guests to experience some strange occurrences that escalate into something dark and evil which cannot be explained.
 
I really enjoyed The Nightmare Room and this second book does not disappoint either.  It’s a lovely layering of the past and present, of the real-world and of otherworldly planes of existence.  There is a nice blend of characters from the first book, but this second story is often told in the point-of-view of a character not in the first book.
 
I really liked the setting for this story.  An old motel being restored only years after a bloody slaughter is fertile ground for dark things to happen.  And for me - I have a place in my heart for little mom-and-pop motels.  My first job ever was a housekeeper in a small roadside motel, so like Jessie, I did a little bit of everything to keep things running.  So it was neat to immerse myself in a story located in such a place.
 
As for the antagonist, the demons are crazy unique and unlike anything I’ve ever read.  These evil spirits recreate themselves, usually at night, into masses of charred remains with human-like features.  The scariest thing about them is that they are quite regenerative, so they seem impossible to defeat by humans.  They’ve recruited a man named Mr. Wood who carries the demons’ physical remains around so that they can reform and hunt for lost souls to devour.  They’re very creepy!  And it’s sad (but thrilling) to watch them hunt room to room for the souls of those victims killed in the motel’s earlier murder catastrophe.
 
The Larson family and Ellen reappear in this book.  Much of the story is told in the child’s point of view, and it’s very well done.  Ellen is just as quirky in this book as she was in the first.  The new main character in The Hungry Ones is Jessie.  She’s realistic and likeable and easy to root for, as she tries to protect her guests and the motel from whatever the hell is haunting the place.  Steph is a little on the annoying side, but that may only be because she reminds me of someone in my own life - but she is important and consistent throughout the book.  Wood is a good creepy-bad-guy in cahoots with the demons.  The characters were three-dimensional and consistent which is nice.  I felt like the conversation in the book was a bit flatter than in the first book I read, but not bad overall.
 
The book had a pleasant pace throughout - nothing felt too slow or too fast.  The ending didn’t seem rushed or drawn out.  Each chapter pretty much focused on one character’s point of view, so there was a nice hopping from one character to another without being too confusing.
 
I was not disappointed at all by the ending.  Things were pretty well resolved without a lot of loose ends.  I went into the ending wondering if we’d learn of the demons’ origins and the last sentence of the book ties it up nicely.  Could there be more books in this series?  There is the potential for the story to continue is some fashion.
 
I think this book (and even its predecessor) would make excellent buddy reads.  It would have been fun to work through the different pieces of the puzzle and anticipate the endings.
 
All in all, I feel like Chris employes careful, thoughtful planning to create a complex and thrilling story.  It could be easy for the story to fall apart or wander away from its core themes, but Chris’ books tell unique, horrific stories.

What do ghosts fear? The Hungry Ones...
At the outskirts of Maple City sits the Crossroads Motel, a throwback to the days when the motor lodge was king. Two years ago, the motel was the site of an act so brutal that its buildings were left to rot.

Jessie Voss, however, sees promise in the Crossroad's bare bones and buys it up, determined to breathe new life into the place.

When the Larson family shows up on her doorstep, road-weary and desperate for a break, Jessie offers them lodging, even though her grand opening is still a week away.

But the arrival of guests awakens the motel, and Jessie soon finds herself host to both the living and the dead.

If you’re never come across Silver Shamrock Publishing make a mental note to check their back-catalogue out; they impressed me greatly with their recent novella In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland and continue the good work with the excellent Cricket Hunters. This was one of those novels I was given for review which I knew little about but was quickly sucked into a very cleverly told tale which effortlessly moves between 1998 and 2013 with a great sense of time and place. Set in a small Texas town, Cricket Hunters is as much thriller as it is horror, and I going to be very light on the plot to avoid potential spoilers. Make sure you follow the narrative closely and prepare yourself for a satisfyingly clever ending which knits the time periods together. 
 
Cricket Hunters opens with Celia (known as ‘Cel’) reflecting on the poor state of her marriage; she has been with Parker for fourteen years and married for six, several miscarriages have put a strain on their relationship. She also suspects Parker is having an affair with a new teacher, Lauren Page, at the local school where he works. Early in proceedings, after an argument, Parker disappears, initially Cel thinks he is with Lauren, but soon the police become involved and Cel’s troubled relationship with Parker’s family only make things worse. The majority of the story is told from Celia’s point of view, but Parker is also featured and so the state of their marriage is seen from both points of view. 
 
Stephen King gave us the ‘Losers’ Club’ and Jeremy Hepler introduces us to the ‘Cricket Hunters’ when we head back to 1998 with the second story strand built around a group of old close-knit school friends. The 1998 and 2013 periods were balanced perfectly and complimented each other with their plots slowly making clever revelations which impacted events in the alternative. In 1998 Cel and Parker are around age 15/16 and have been friends for years, but attraction is beginning to deeper towards flirtation and more. Three other members of the ‘Cricket Hunters’ are also introduced; Abbey, Natalie and Omar. The latter two characters have small roles in the 2013 sequence, Abbey however, is the elephant in the room as at some point around 1998 she mysteriously disappears. This is mentioned in the blurb, so should not be seen as a spoiler, and so Cricket Hunters effectively runs who parallel mysteries in 1998 (the murder) and 2013 (the disappearance). Are they connected and if so how? It was good, old fashioned, fun joining the dots together.
 
The 1998 sequences was also a terrific coming of age story with lifelong friends beginning to feel the pangs of attraction and leave childhood stuff behind, with thoughts of getting their driving licences and other more pressing business, like who to make out with. Abbey Powell matures physically quite early and soon catches the eye of Parker, who is also attracted to Celia and so tension develops as he is interested in both girls. Until this point Celia had often been the leader of the ‘Cricket Hunters’, which was the name the gang adopted after they used sharp sticks to kill crickets, the noise the insects make at night bothers the sister of Celia’s grandmother, with whom she lives. The mass killing of insects did seem like an unpleasant and odd pastime for teenagers, but it was an important part of the story.
 
Does that sound weird? The grandmother pays the teenagers to kill crickets…. This is because the grandmother is a self-proclaimed ‘bruja’, or so we’re told, which is Spanish for witch. The grandmother is Mexican and believes her sister has been cursed in some way and one of the strengths of the book is the reader is never quite sure whether this is real or not.  Either way, as Celia has been growing up with her grandmother has been teaching her the tricks of the ‘bruja’ trade and she even has her own ‘grimoire’ which is a spell-book to help her with the trials which life might throw up. Celia believes this stuff, and when the ‘Cricket Hunters’ were younger they thought this was all very cool, but as they approach the age of sixteen it seems more like mumbo-jumbo stuff for kids. Jeremy Kepler balances this potentially supernatural angle balanced perfectly throughout both stories and has fun keeping the reader on their toes.
 
This is one of those stories where the children never truly leave their past behind and years later the shadows are still there clouding their judgment and personal relationships. Although I did not particularly empathise with any of the characters this did not detract from my enjoyment of the book and the 1998 sequence, in particular, had a dark vibe running through it which added an edge. If small town American life didn’t have this shadowy underbelly the world of dark fiction would be a much poorer place!
 
Several minor gripes; I found using italics for the occasional Spanish word to be incredibly repetitive and unnecessary, particular ‘abuela’ for grandmother, all it did was draw attention to a word which seemed to be used way too often. Secondly, Melanie and Omar were very much bit players in the 2013 sequence and might have been given more to do in the plot. Thirdly, there was some quite unpleasant animal torture/mutilation scenes in the book which some readers might find unnecessary and might influence your opinion of a couple of characters.
 
Overall though this was a book I sped through in no time at all which blended an entertaining coming-of-age mystery with elements of horror and suspense from an author to watch out for. I just picked up The Boulevard Monster and am ready to take more Kepler for a spin.
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Tony Jones

 
 
The Devil’s Advocates is a series devoted to exploring the classics of horror cinema, with the authors coming from the worlds of academia, journalism and literature. Many other films have already been featured, ranging from Carrie, to Antichrist, Halloween, Saw and Silence of the Lambs. The author of It Follows is an associate professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.
 
I was a massive fan of this particular horror film, catching it on the cinema and on at least two other occasions since, so I was particularly curious at what level the book would be pitched at, given the academic background of the author. First up, it is a very slight volume, only 92 small pages which includes both pictures and bibliography. I doubt there is any more than two hours of reading here, so £9.99 in the UK is a pretty steep price for a very short book. Calling It Follows a long essay would not be far from the mark.
 
Even though I enjoyed reading this essay, and the author does make numerous fascinating observations, I’m not entirely sure I learned that much particularly new about the film. A major weakness is the large wordcount spent recapping the plot before leading into the points under observation. Bearing in mind the book is only 92 pages I felt this was unnecessarily long-winded and I did wonder whether this was extra padding as the author did not actually have enough to say to merit a full book.
 
Many of the discussions covered were old news and well covered in other magazines and articles; such as the possibility that the director David Robert Mitchell was making a statement about sexual promiscuity (possibly HIV) and although Mitchell is quoted on numerous occasions he actually says very little. Likewise, he remains silent about the origins of the entity and the ambiguity of the ending. If you’re looking for answers you’re not going to find any of them here and definitely not from Mitchell! That’s not a particular criticism of author Joshua Grimm, sometimes a “wavy curtain is just a wavy curtain” (or a scary movie is just a scary movie) and there is no deeper meaning, no matter where you look or how far you dig. However, if we don’t ‘seek’ I guess there would be no film criticism at all!
 
It Follows is obviously aimed at fans of the film or media studies students and frames it well with an informative introduction, and along the way makes lots of comparisons to other films such as Halloween, Ringu and even Goonies. The latter might be a stretch, but the points the author makes are good ones. Along the way the discussion takes in where It Follows sits within the slasher genre and makes thoughtful comparisons between the entity in the film and the zombie sub-genre. This was all new to me and was well thought out and argued.
 
My brother was also a huge fan of this film and over time we have discussed a number of the points covered in the book, including; the obscurity of the location (Detroit?), when was it set? Why do the mobiles look so weird? What about the lack of parents and adults? Why was there a guy playing a piano in the cinema scene? Was the lack of current teen ‘chat’ deliberate to prevent the audience dating the film? The weird looking mobile phones and other things which on their own are quite innocuous, but when added together all play a part in creating an outstanding film with an atmosphere all of its own.
 
The study also looks at scenes which do not work as successfully; such as the swimming pool sequence. I would agree that this is one of the weaker (and pretty stupid) moments in the film. Once in a while the author clutches at the odd straw, claiming that the colour of underwear means something of significance. We’ll have to disagree on that one. Ultimately It Follows is framed as both a coming-of-age film and as a ‘Final Girl’ film. This is a good idea and is well-argued, extended even further with Joshua Grimm proposing that the Final Girl is actually an ‘Only Girl’. I’m not familiar with the Only Girl concept, but it was solid food for thought.
 
Books like this are very hard to pitch at the correct level. It is academic to an extent, but also very accessible to the knowledgeable horror reader or general film fan, ultimately though because it’s a bit of both and there should be something here for both camps. But how much can you truly analyse a scary movie?
 
 
Tony Jones

This book is action packed, from start to finish there wasn’t a second that I would have changed, removed or redone. The characters will make you feel exactly what they feel and the description is a perfect balance of letting the reader envision but making you see it the way the author intended. This is an emotionally charged book. It is rare that a book will make me cry. This one did. I felt the loss, the power and vengeance.
 
It all starts out with a young black man living in Alabama. He is in love and has just found out he is going to be a father. He is so excited and has planned a special evening for him and his lady. They have to go to another town to celebrate because she is white. It has been kept secret that they are involved. He is getting ready for their date when someone knocks on the door. He is home alone. His mother is working and his dad is not in the picture. He freezes and the knocking becomes pounding. His heart races and he looks out the window into the darkness. What he sees terrifies him. Men shrouded in white sheets. Yes, that’s right it’s the KKK. He runs to the back door to try to flee into the woods behind the house when the door is kicked in and he is grabbed. Beaten, bloodied and stabbed in the eye he is drug across the yard and past the burning cross in the yard. Someone has discovered his secret.
 
A few paragraphs later the story flips to a man that has been recently released from prison. He is still engaging in criminal activity and is the enforcer for a boss. If you don’t pay then he comes to play. Trust me, you don’t want that to happen. In the middle of making someone pay the price his phone rings. He knows that ringtone. It is his ex wife. He answers it and she is crying and hysterical. What she tells him makes his blood run cold. His son has been murdered. She demands that he come and set things right. He calls his former cell mate a Mexican man and they travel to the small backwoods town. They are pulled over by a white cop as they enter town and harassed. Finally making it to the ex wife’s house the plans for vengeance are swiftly out into motion. What ensues is a war that left me feeling vindicated for the victim.
 
I will not tell you more than this because I don’t want to ruin the book for the reader. If I was to compare this book to a movie or another book it would definitely be John Grisham’s, A Time To Kill only this one is better. Much, much better.
 
Andy Rausch is going to go places with his writing. He can take a story and characters and make you love some and despise others. I could see the town and the people in my mind when I read this book and that is how I love to read.
 
I highly recommend this book and anything else that Andy has written. You won’t be sorry that you did, I promise. 

I should have realized this would be a good book as soon as it cursed me. If I’d heeded Brent Michael Kelley’s warnings at the beginning of the book, I would have been living a safe, boring life. But, I ignored it and jumped right into Doomsday Furnace. And you know what? I’m glad I did. The 12 stories in here are some of the best, most twisted, cruel-smile inducing tales of woe and misery I’ve read. It’s an absolute blast and I’ll gladly pass this curse on to you just so you can experience Kelley’s book with me.

We get a bit of everything with this collection. There are ancient beings, space stations, people facing the end of the world, and just about everything in between. Kelley jumps from funny yarns about drunks on a voyage to a supply ship, to a doomed group of old people trekking across the country in search of a tower that’ll help them die. His ability to mix humor with horror will lead you down some unexpected paths. I had no idea where Kelley was going to take me next, but I quickly learned to trust him. No matter how much dread his ideas brought to me, he always threw in a laugh or two just for fun. He mixes humor with horror to keep you on your toes.

 Even though the stories varied in tone and concept, I definitely picked up on a theme carried throughout the collection. Now, you are probably going to say, duh, it’s called Doomsday Furnace for a reason. Not so fast there friend, only a few of the stories are actually set during a cataclysmic event. I’d posit that the collection is more about someone facing the end of something. So, yes we do have a story like The Eighth of June, where a Doomsday Cloud is coming toward Earth. And while we don’t get to see it actually hit, we do get to witness how humanity would react knowing the date the of the end of the world. There is also A Friend in Paga which is about a membrane that has encased the world, infecting everyone’s dreams. But, the rest of the stories focus on things like a group of children stopping the semi-regular sacrifice of their own. Or a parent willing to do anything to end the looks people give his child. Doomsday could have many different meanings, depending on who you ask. In Kelley’s collection we get to see he that he has some amazing answers.

One thing I picked up quickly while reading the book is that Kelley loves torturing his characters. And I almost hate to say it, but as I worked my way through Doomsday Furnace I had fun watching him do it. He finds some really creative ways to turn the screws. Maybe it’s putting an intelligent scientist into a spaceship full of idiots then forcing her to work out what an insane captain is trying to do. The frustration she faces oozes off the page and it is wonderful to witness. Or, in probably the best story of the lot, The Randy Dream, we get to follow poor old Randy try to deal with the fact that the entire world dreamed about smashing his head in with a rock. It’s so diabolical. The guy is just a loser that loves corn dogs, drinking, and playing board games, yet half the world wants to kill him and the other half wants to ask why. His reactions are hilarious even if we know this can’t end well. All of these bad things are happening due to Kelley, but he’s crafted each story so well that we kind of forget we are witnessing a tragedy.

Each of Kelley’s tales in Doomsday Furnace pack a mighty wallop hidden behind a mask of humor. There are some truly great horror stories in here, covering the end of the world, sacrifice, and monsters. It’s the perfect collection to read when you want to be scared but also want to laugh while it is happening.
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Now, will you please go read this so that the curse can leave me alone?