So, disclosures upfront: RJ is a friend. My review policy remains unaffected by friendship, and works as it always has; with very rare exceptions, I only review work that I finish and enjoy. And I enjoyed this a great deal. Still, being upfront, do with this information as you will.


Second, this is not a horror novel, it’s a crime novel. Y’all are probably sick of me banging on about the porous nature of genre and how everything’s really horror if you stare hard enough; I’m not gonna unsay any of that now, but it’d be dumb not to acknowledge that by the standards of almost everyone who isn’t me, this is obviously crime fiction.


And we’re back with Mal (fraudulent psychic medium, and absolutely not a private detective, despite what his new sign says) and Jackie (Mal’s best friend, landlord, protection money extorter, and the guy who put up the new sign over Mal’s repeated protests) and the residents/denizens of Blade’s Edge and surrounding environs. A direct sequel to A Numbers Game, though it would work as a stand-alone novel, Incy Wincy sees Mal getting dragged into a series of apparently unconnected cases involving a missing teenager and an ex-army buddy of Jackies. Fairly soon, he’s wading into the local drug trade (and in particular a short-lived street drug called ‘clown’ that seems to have set off some kind of turf skirmish), homeless shelters, Trolley Mick (gang boss of Blade’s Edge), the local Russian mob, well funded American evangelicals running a suspect homeless outreach program, UFO sightings, and the local landed gentry (and ex-army Captain). Oh, and the hyper-local racist Yorkshire Rose Party.


And, yeah, it is a lot.


Early in the story, a lot of the pleasure comes from Mal’s bafflement; like the reader, he can see vague connections begin to emerge, but the big picture is satisfyingly opaque. And Mal really isn’t a detective, private or otherwise; consequently, we are frequently treated to what amounts to a layperson perspective on a crime story. This approach played out to good effect in A Numbers Game and was, for me, even more effective here, bringing home the mundane horror of genre staples such as the children’s street gang or the inevitable autopsy scene. It's not that Mal is naive, exactly; he’s a product of his environment too, an ex-Blades Edge citizen and ex-drug addict, and his knowledge of the streets enables him to make connections, and talk to people, that a more removed investigator wouldn’t. At the same time, that closeness to his environment makes it personal, which manages to deliver a sense of genuine pathos throughout the story.


This is also, to a large degree, Jackie’s story, as people connected to his past life in the armed services start to resurface in inconvenient ways. Dark has a fine line to walk, here; Jackie is a fascinating character, but at least some of that fascination comes from the mystery of who he really is, and while a story like this basically had to happen at some point, there’s always a risk that doing so will detract from that unknowability. Luckily Dark is clearly alive to the pitfalls because Incy Wincy does a great job of telling me more about my favourite ex-armed services bisexual sheikh ‘local businessman’ whilst generating glimpses of even more tantalising depths. Jackie is a fantastic creation, deplorable and loveable in equal measure, and putting him up against racist drug dealers is an inspired decision; to misquote The Commitments, we get to enjoy the wish fulfilment of ‘yeah, he’s a psychopath, but he’s our psychopath’.


That said, things do not all go Mal and Jackie’s way. Indeed, in the final quarter of the narrative, things very quickly spiral completely out of control. Again, it’s very deft writing; Dark creates in us a sense of invulnerability around Jackie that feels like a safety net… only to shred that in fairly dramatic fashion, as the narrative ramps up to its conclusion. What follows is a finale that is, simply put, everything I look for in a crime fiction novel; unbearably tense, with a palpable sense of threat, and the dreadful/wonderful sinking feeling that things cannot possibly end well for our heroes, or really anybody.


In short, Incy Wincy is another triumph from Dark; a genuinely thrilling street crime novel that takes in poverty, politics (but I repeat myself), bigotry, and what passes for street justice and ethics, but whose fundamental focus is telling an absolute belter of a story that’ll keep you turning the pages way past bedtime. I loved it, even more than I loved A Numbers Game, and I cannot wait for the next instalment.


KP
23/3/22

Malachite Jones is a pretend psychic medium and an unwilling detective.

He certainly doesn't want anyone bringing him a missing persons case.

Definitely not two.

When the a body turns up he knows life is only going to get harder.

Blades Edge premier gangster, Trolley Mick, owes a favour to a family who’s son, Daniel Jerrings, has vanished. He wants Mal to pay it. Jackie’s friend from the military, Spider, is also missing. And though Jackie doesn’t really do friends, he does do loyalty and that means Mal does too.

But it seems that there are plenty of other people out there looking for Spider, and everything is spiralling down the drain in a wash of designer drugs, UFOs, racists, violent youth gangs and a group of evangelical Americans with their own agenda. Somehow, it all involves a missing teenager but nothing adds up, and violence lurks around every corner.

Discovering the truth means sinking deeper into the grimy world of organised crime where dangerous people have an awful lot to lose, and a way out for Mal and Jackie is getting harder and harder to see.
​
Incy Wincy picks up where A Numbers Game left off. Gritty, good hearted and laugh out loud funny. Mal and Jackie are back!

Aphid is a book as humorous as it is dark that involves The Grim Reaper, apples from the garden of Eden, God, The Devil, and some other slightly more meaningful characters.
​

Talent vampires. That’s what this book is about. I’ll put that front and center because, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s such a terrific concept that you’re allowed to approach the first page with a little anxiety. If the author gets it right, you’re in for a fun ride with (most likely) a helping of satire on the side. If they get it wrong, on the other hand, there will be twice the disappointment: it’s not just a failed story but a missed opportunity. Jerry Wheeler’s debut novel Pangs falls into the former, getting-it-right category.


Told from main talent-vamp Warner’s point of view, Pangs starts out as a sort of tug-of-war with another vampire for access to Wade, a young country musician endowed not only with once-in-a-generation talent but with smoldering good looks and a great physique. This second vampire, Seth, is a longtime frenemy of Warner’s: there has been conflict between them over the centuries, yet they maintain a certain mutual respect. The magnitude of Wade’s talent will be enough to sustain one of them for decades without actually damaging the young man and his potential career. Thus, the game begins, the two vampires posing as producers in order to keep him close at hand. However, there’s a lot more going on in Pangs than a supernatural tussle over possession of a budding musical genius who is yet to work out whether he prefers men or women in bed. There are different types of talent vampire, for one thing: some go after musicians; others are more literary. And one of Wheeler’s authorial gifts is in his layered characterizations. To an almost noirish extent, no one is quite who they seem. There are murderous agendas, and there is also a deftly handled undercurrent of regret and even anguish at times: Warner is not at entirely comfortable drawing sustenance by obliterating talent, because unlike the blooded victims of conventional vampires, his own victims go on living but are empty wrecks when he’s done with them.


Wheeler is well known as the editor of a number of anthologies, author of the collection Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits, and founder of the LGBTQ-focused book-review website Out in Print. He has also worked as an editor for a number of independent presses over the years, and he maintains a professional editing practice. It only takes reading a couple of pages to ascertain what a confident and capable writer Wheeler is. His exposition has a quietly authoritative quality, an interlocking precision I don’t often see even in bestsellers from major publishing houses. Yet Wheeler is also clearly having fun here: he has the experience to know all the rules and conventions, and the chops to send the plot on unexpected-but-essential pivots that shouldn’t work but do.


I should mention a couple of things I kept noticing, and then acknowledge the Catch-22 in so doing: here and there, the dialogue became expositional, with the characters explaining things more for the reader’s benefit than their own. I also had the occasional qualm about the voice Wheeler used for these centuries-old vampires. On the one hand, well, yes, they were supposed to sound ancient, and did. But I’m not sure they needed to. Both of these choices make sense, depending on how you look at them: in the first case, Wheeler had some complex world-building to do and dispensed with it efficiently rather than mindlessly adhering to the “show, don’t tell” dictum writers are supposed to live and die by; in the second, he made an effective stylistic choice and deployed it consistently. The only reason I bring these two points up is to highlight the contrast with the strength of his own prose. And that’s the conundrum: when Wheeler is writing as Wheeler, he’s excellent, and these two choices read almost as if he doubted his own (considerable) abilities to pull these aspects of the story off in his own voice.


In the end, though, there’s a lot of fun to be had here. This isn’t a horror novel in the most traditional sense—these are sexy vampires in the Anne Rice tradition, but unlike Rice’s literary creations, Wheeler’s talent-vamps can have sex and often do—and the tension comes less from scares than from concern about what’s going to happen to a character you like. But this is very much the work of a writer who knows the horror genre well. There are nods to Anne Rice throughout, as well as to Stephen King, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, and even Lovecraft. In fact, this could almost be a long-lost Brite novel from before he moved away from horror and wrote Liquor and its sequels… which in itself is plenty of reason to justify tracking it down and checking it out.

​"Cinematic and seductive from start to finish! A wholly unique addition to vampire mythology--one dripping with darkness and gay majick."-Tom Cardamone, author of the Lambda-award winning speculative novella Green Thumb and Night Sweats: Tales of Homosexual Wonder and Woe


Unlike their blood brethren, Warner and Seth are vampires who subsist on talent. They have been enemies for centuries, competing to feed on artists with the most prodigious musical gifts, and country blues singer Wade Dixon is no exception. But the pursuit and capture of Dixon unleashes unexpected forces that carry these combatants from the earthly realm to a dangerous land of eternal night where they must work together or die alone.


"There's magic in the pages of Jerry L. Wheeler's Pangs, and it's not just the paranormal goings on that taunt, tease, and push his characters deeper into adventure. The prose enchants, exposing the reader to bleak wonders and radiant dread, while sparks of humor crackle through the narrative. With a charming and fresh voice, Pangs lures the reader from the intoxicating streets of New Orleans across a shimmering threshold into another, fantastical realm. The story offers the erotic and the horrific, the vicious and the sublime. It is entertaining in every way." - Lee Thomas, Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award winning author

I don’t know if The River Through the Trees is David Peak’s finest work. I don’t even know if it’s representative of his broader project. I’m writing this review because I came across this 2013 book almost at random, as a discount offer in one of those dangerously addictive ebooks-on-sale newsletters. This nags at me as a personal failure, given that I’m such an afficianado of the style he works here with such elegance, which I would call “post-industrial cosmic realism.”


This is a nominally Lovecraftian strain of horror, dealing with cults and deep time and dark gods – but those tropes are put in service to a deeply grounded recognition that the famously indifferent and all-destroying threat of the Old Gods is not so different from the bleakness of the world we pass through every day. That abstraction is done with such subtlety that the book could be fully enjoyed as a cosmic-horror-cultist romp, but a broader reading shows it has just as much in common with the street-level wallowing of Charles Bukowski (though minus the humor).


Peak, for reasons that can’t have anything to do with the taut-wire skill on display here, still seems shadowy in the mind of the same reading public (itself pitifully small and misanthropic) that laps up similar Galenic diagnoses by Matthew Bartlett or Laird Barron or Blake Butler or, dark daddy of them all, Thomas Ligotti. These talespinners create deliriously awful visions of the pedestrian overtaken by bad humours, of the degenerate ascended, within a frame of real-world decline. The essence of what they do has been captured in the terrifying sixty seconds of the infamous “dumpster monster” scene of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, but their work dives even deeper into the utter degeneracy that lurks just beneath the surface of our pantomime of normality.


Peak’s iteration of these themes is distinctive most of all for its restraint. I doubt it’s accidental that his title lightly echoes The Place Beyond the Pines, a film released the year before this book and sharing much of its fallen-rustic setting, meticulous pacing, and threat of violence held mostly off-page. Peak’s fringe characters are part of a cult whose practices draw with brutal directness from the drug-addled reality of many former East Coast or North Country mill towns gone to seed.


But in contrast to the bloodthirsty punk ciphers that move like interchangeable shadows through Blake Butler’s 300,000,000, these cultists are resolutely real people, flawed and thoughtful and – a move that amps up the book’s anxiety considerably – only violent with a human eye to the same necessity we all weigh before taking extreme actions. In short, their actions make a degree of sense that only turns proceedings even more nightmarish.


That realism grounds the book’s core creative turn, one that I’m increasingly personally fond of. While the book’s characters constantly gesture at the occult, and ultimately create the evil they believe they desire, the book never truly tips its hand to any supernatural event whatsoever. In this, it seems to bring the delirious nihilism of Lovecraft home: the signature conceit of the Old Man of Providence was that the universe is uncaring and indifferent. The River Through the Trees strikes just enough notes of cosmic horror in the course of its tale of nightmarishly human trauma to drive home the point that we all carry more than a little of the Old Gods’ indifference within us. If there is a better potential basis for a slow, atmospheric, A24-style cinematic take on the Lovecraftian ethos and mythos, I haven’t read it.


That cosmic indifference, and its deep rootedness within humanity, is represented here by Bicycle Bob, a half-mythological figure believed to lurk in the woods and kidnap children. At the heart of the book is a character who at least believes she has been subject to Bicycle Bob’s worst transgressions, and all the characters constantly swap tales of this dark figure.


But the demon himself never appears directly on the page, and Peak constantly toys with the reader’s understanding of Bob. Does he exist, or is he simply a projected myth? If he exists, is he simply a predatory hermit, or something stranger? Bicycle Bob is, in this and other ways, a clear reference to Lynch’s other BOB. Both are shape-shifting menaces who either plants the seeds of evil, or simply provide a convenient focal imaginary for the evil of the world around his victims – or, the most interesting possiblity of all, both at the same time.


This is really the quandary at the center of The River Through the Trees, probably the quandary of all great horror writing: the oscillation of trauma between circle and line, the pain of its continuation and the impossibility of its ending. The work returns us again and again to the truest and most hackneyed pillar of any horror work that aspires to status as Literature: that man is the real monster. Peak gives us a vision of abandonment and betrayal of the human, and spreads the blame around plenty. There is no monster here, only monsters, plural, all playing out a script that is ultimately more sad than brutal, more neglect than transgression, a retreat into self-interest that is all too familiar.

Decades ago, Dan and Grace Robertson encountered a horror of childhood legend: Bicycle Bob.
Some say he's an insane drifter with a taste for blood. 
Others call him evil made flesh and claim his touch will poison your soul. 
Some say he’s just another country ghost story. 
Now, Dan is a cemetery caretaker and Grace persists as a strung-out addict living on the fringes. 
Under the influence of the Newbert brothers, maniac woodsmen prophets who have seen the truth beyond the nighttime stars, she has put a desperate plan in motion. 
Her brother Dan is the only one who knows the root of her madness, and he alone can uncover the unholy monstrosity hungering beneath the surface of a dying town.

David Peak's The River through the Trees is a grotesque of impoverished rural life, a life of quiet acceptance broken only by drugs, death metal, desecration, and the teachings of an ancient book. Combining the pacing of Dennis Lehane, the cosmic terror of Lovecraft, and the defunct modernity of Ligotti, it is a taut, disturbing story whose haunting images bring to mind the dark places we do our best to ignore.
Meet Bicycle Bob today!

Review by David Watkins


Joe Lansdale should need no introduction for regular readers of this website. For the uninitiated though, Lansdale is a genre all by himself. He has written, amongst others, horror (The Drive In), really weird stuff (The Drive In 2), historical (Paradise Sky), loads of short stories, and, of course, the series of books featuring Hap and Leonard. You never quite know what you’re going to get with a Lansdale book, although cracking characters and wonderful dialogue are present and correct in every one. He’s a hell of a writer, one of my favourites, just to let you know upfront how the rest of this review will go. 

Hap and Leonard are possibly his most famous creations and feature in around a dozen novels, many short stories and novellas. They even got their own TV series that ran for three seasons (it was on Amazon Prime but is not currently free - in the UK at least). 

This new release collects previously released novellas: specifically, Coco Butternut, Hoodoo Harry, Sad Onions, The Briar Patch Boogie and Cold Cotton. As each have been available previously, the value of this book will depend on whether you’ve purchased any. I hadn’t, so when this excellent collection became available for review it was an easy decision. 

I had to force myself to slow down and savour each story – this is binge worthy stuff! It’s like having old friends come to stay (as Lansdale alludes to in his introduction) – you have a moment of panic when you’re not sure you have anything in common anymore, but before long, the beers and vanilla cookies are flowing and you’re into great dialogue and jokes. This is absolutely the case here - I haven’t read Hap and Leonard since The Elephant Of Surprise (released nearly two years ago) but Lansdale absolutely nails the good-natured arguments and banter between old friends (one white, one black, one white, one straight, one gay, one Democrat, one Republican, one who avoids violence and the other welcomes it – and it’s not the way round you think). 

My favourite story was The Briar Patch Boogie. It has great dialogue throughout, but especially in the opening section, and is full of despicable people doing despicable things. Events do not go smoothly for our heroes, and whilst it is a little too obvious that nothing too bad will happen to them, a large part of the fun is seeing how they will get out of the situation. In fact this ‘plot armour’ is the only negative about each story – you know nothing too bad is going to happen to the heroes, but this is a criticism that can be levelled at any long running series. 

If you are a fan already, this is easy to recommend. If you only know H&L from the TV show and are looking to get started on the books, then this is a fine place to start. However, if you’re a complete newcomer, you might miss the bond between the characters and so would be better off with one of the longer books. Bad Chilli is superb, but really, any of the early novels would do the job. 

Everyone should have a little Hap and Leonard in their lives.

Heartily recommended. 

When you meet him, Hap Collins seems like just a good ol' boy. But even in his misspent youth, his best pal was Leonard Pine: black, gay, and the ultimate outsider. Together, they have sort of found their way as partners in crime-solving--and at least as often, as hired muscle.

As Hap wrestles with his new identity as a husband and father, and Leonard finds love in a long-term relationship, the boys continue their crime-solving shenanigans. They grapple with a stolen stuffed dog, uncover the sordid secret of a missing bookmobile, compete in a warped version of the Most Dangerous Game, regroup after Hap's visit to the psychologist goes terribly awry, and much more.

So sit yourself back and settle in--Born for the Trouble is East Texas mayhem as only the master mojo storyteller Lansdale could possibly tell.
​
About the Hap and Leonard short story series
Hap and Leonard
Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade
The Big Book of Hap and Leonard (digital only)
Of Mice and Minestrone
The classic Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series began in in 1990 with Savage Season. Hap and Leonard made their screen debuts in the three season Hap and Leonard TV series, starring Michael K. Williams (The Wire), James Purefoy (The Following), and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men).

Ahhhh, a vacation. To get away from the crushing rat race of the workaday world, to trade the million-and-one soul-corroding frustrations of modern life for exotic shores, white sandy beaches, blue skies, surf, sun, good food and plenty of umbrella-accented cocktails. To bask on your lounge chair, relax, and let your troubles slip away, steadfast in the knowledge that the ravenous horde of brain-hungry undead devouring the other beach combers will never get to you.

Wait, what? A zombie apocalypse on this beautiful tropical isle wasn't highlighted in the brochure at the travel agency. Is it too late to consider a refund?

As every self-respecting horror aficionado already knows, getting away from it all, whether it be Jack Torrance's retreat to the isolated Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's classic novel, The Shining, or a group of rowdy Westerners seeking cheap Slovakian accommodations and even cheaper thrills in Eli Roth's Hostel films, isn't always the soothing, restorative enterprise it should be. As in real life, strange encounters and terrifying ordeals can twist the most pleasant of resort stays into nightmares from which one will never awaken, and tapping into that ever-lingering traveler's fear of the unknown is the first volume in DarkLit Press' dual set of themed, multi-author endeavors, Slice of Paradise, a collection of seventeen short stories, subtitled A Beach Vacation Horror Anthology, that's sure to unsettle anyone seeking to book that long-desired Caribbean cruise.

Doomsday looms as a father and his nine-year-old daughter slip through shallow waters to the edge of a deathly dimension in Mark Towse's perfectly ominous opening tale, 'Secret Beach'. Precise detail regarding scuba diving and its related equipment paired with a frightening monstrosity enhance 'Night Dive' by Drew Starling, while ravers fall prey to voracious, sentient 'Phosphorescence' in Denver Grenell's grisly tale. The gore continues in 'Paradise Lost' by Sherri White, when a businessman relays the skin-liquefying scenario that befalls his secluded hotel in a story reminiscent of the 1977 B-Movie The Incredible Melting Man, and Philip Fracassi's 'The Guardian', which details the plight a group of sun-worshipping Westerners encounter on a remote island beach infested with flesh-eating parasites.

The book's mid-section is framed by two flash fiction entries, 'Of Murder and Mermaids' by Kelly Brocklehurst, and Jack Harding's 'She Waits', that cleverly twist perspectives about undersea creatures both real and imagined. A beautiful Italian setting is devastated by (possibly) alien invaders who replicate the identities of the deceased in order to attack the living in Ashlei Johnson's gripping should-be film, 'Astorgos', while a couple entombed with a skeletal platoon of Revolutionary War-era soldiers fight to survive the 'Curse of the Cache' by Alyson Hasson.

'Shakespeare never wrote that love is just the label we give to not wanting to die alone' serves as the grimly ironic mantra to Craig Wallwork's 'Misery Guts', a quick shot of squirming body horror involving a cheating boyfriend who contracts the worst possible case of traveler's diarrhea, just as another philanderer unwittingly discovers the true nature of a curious native delicacy in 'Beach Snakes' by Aiden Merchant. Guilt haunts some protagonists: regret over a past inaction leads a man and his husband to a place of sacrifice in Spencer Hamilton's riveting 'Out of the Shadows, Into the Sun'; a pair of ghostly newlyweds attempt to enjoy their resort 'Honeymoon' in Simon J. Plant's subtly spectral story; and a siren's sinister call spells disaster for a family in turmoil in 'That Look When They're Leaving' by Scott J. Moses.

Slice of Paradise is a fast-paced tome; pages flip by with paper-cut inducing speed. Editors Ben Long and Andrew Robert smartly gathered stories short enough to be individually consumed in one comfortable sitting, and it's easy for readers to binge multiple yarns in a single smorgasbord literary feast. Yet if the collection has a weakness, it's one of repetition. The chosen tales, while each entertaining in and of themselves, share a similarity in structure and setting that dulls with monotony as one plows forward through the volume, and the over-reliance on blood-and-guts several authors utilize for shock effect only enhances the collection's overall feeling of sameness. This may be simply due to such a specifically narrow theme: there are, after all, places to vacation besides a beach (Disneyland and Alpine ski resort horror could offer new subgenres ripe for exploration), and a more balanced mix of setting, splatter and nuance would likely appeal to a broader reader base.

That being said, the heart of the book has nothing to do with location, but relationships; behind the bloodshed lie character-driven pieces focused on realistically illustrated couples of all types--straight couples, gay couples, squabbling couples, cheating couples, murderous couples, couples in love, couples on the brink, couples over the edge, couples fighting to stay alive, couples who lost that fight long ago--that enrapts an audience's attention more than any creature from the black lagoon. To that effect, three entries deserve special mention: A young thrill seeker mourning his late girlfriend struggles for life after an accident on a 'Zipline', Nick Kolakowski's enthralling and moving meditation on survival, loss and overcoming adversity. A local resort employee uncovers the true secret to staying young in Kay Hanifen's outstanding 'The Fons Juventutis', a story filled with local details, fine, dread-inducing prose and strangely beautiful poignancy. The standout story in Slice of Paradise, however, may be Rowan Hill's delightfully tense 'They Eat People, You Know?', a tale that basks in a sun-drenched Australian setting, cool 1980's retro nostalgia and an authentically blood-chilling role-reversal.

In the end, this is one anthology that offers more than the initial sum of its parts suggests, so the next time you need a book to pass the long flight to some gorgeous foreign locale for a few days of fun, reach out for a Slice of Paradise, which earns a respectable 3.5 (out of 5) on my Fang Scale. And if you can't get enough vacation-themed horror, find satisfaction in the fact that DarkLit’s companion collection, Beach Bodies, is currently available as well.

An unknown danger lurks beneath the sand at a secluded beach. A couple encounters a deadly creature during their nighttime dive. A father fights to save his daughter from a harrowing nightmare.


​ A newlywed’s honeymoon is interrupted by the apocalypse. A maid discovers a shocking secret at the exclusive resort she works for.

Beach vacations are meant for relaxing and unwinding away from the drudgery of normal life. The sparkling sun, shimmering on cresting waves. A light breeze as you sit with toes in the sand, a cold drink in one hand. Utopia on an island. But what happens when that paradise suddenly becomes a purgatory of pain?

What will you do when the beaches fill with bodies and the waters run red with blood? When creatures crawl the coastline and the jungle teems with terror. How will you survive when a tropical respite becomes an arena of peril?

Slice of Paradise is an all-original anthology featuring fifteen shocking stories of beach vacation horror. For even more scares, check out the companion anthology Beach Bodies out now from DarkLit Press.
​
This anthology includes stories by Craig Wallwork, Philip Fracassi, Scott J Moses, Mark Towse, Spencer Hamilton, Aiden Merchant, Drew Starling, Ashlei Johnson, Rowan Hill, Simon J. Plant, Alyson Hasson, Sheri White, Denver Grenell, Kay Hanifen, and Nick Kolakowski.

I love novels which play out along the open highways, stories that are immense journeys of both distance and human experience. There are very few novels out there which both combine these factors better and are as off-the wall crazy as A Black and Endless Sky where the empty landscapes morph into living characters and the dead-end diners or bars, which act as pit-stops, become hives of activity after long periods of road emptiness. The open highway might not be the most obvious setting for a horror novel, but in his second outing, Matthew Lyons converts a long journey across the American southwest into a highly gripping nightmare trip into hell.


Back in the day all Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Hunter Thompson and company, who were all partial to the odd open road trip, had to contend with was drug withdrawals, lack of booze and running into the occasional backcountry hick. A Black and Endless Sky is considerably darker and takes the spirit of the Beat pioneers and shakes it with a heavy mix of alcohol and the supernatural. The empty roads of Utah and Nevada are probably the last place one might expect demon possession, but Matthew Lyons blends the open road and the paranormal together incredibly well in what was a very enjoyable, page-turning read in which the 350 pages will be eaten up quicker than the miles driven by the beaten-up old car featured in the story.


I also reviewed The Night Will Find Us (2020) which was the debut novel of Lyons. You can read that here:


https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/the-night-will-find-us-by-matthew-lyons-book-review


This sophomore effort is a significantly stronger novel than The Night Will Find Us which I enjoyed in fits and starts. Overall, A Black and Endless Sky is more polished featuring a story which is very nicely framed and lacks the loose threads which held its predecessor back. I am already interested in what this author has in the works for his third effort and he clearly has the potential to be a big new name in the horror genre.


Firstly, I loved the way A Black and Endless Sky’s chapters were built around the number of miles siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot had to travel. The action starts in San Francisco where they have 1,325 miles on the clock to reach their final destination of Albuquerque in New Mexico. Along the way they pass through Nevada, Utah, and various small towns as they descent deeper into hell in what was a genuine white-knuckle horror-thriller. The siblings have to put aside their personal differences in a fight for both their lives and their souls as running out of gas or a flat tire becomes the least of their worries.


The novel opens with Jonah and Nell about to leave San Francisco, in the wake of his divorce, and return to his home city of Albuquerque where Nell and his father still live. Although the siblings were close as teens, and got into many scrapes together, they have drifted apart and have rarely spoken over the last few years. Although Jonah is an emotional and psychological low point in his life he hopes to reconnect with his big sister and mend their broken relationship along the course of their journey on the open road. 


The believable and moving relationship between the brother and sister was a major strength of A Black and Endless Sky, which is told in alternating voices, whilst skilfully filling in their back stories, reasons for their antagonisms, and Jonah’s previous life as a bar room brawler of some prowess.  Although the story has a genuinely outstanding prologue which gives a prod in the direction the story will take, things take a considerably darker turn after an argument forces them to stop near an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert. After becoming disorientated on the site there is an accident and Nell begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. The strengthening supernatural story combined perfectly with the disconnected siblings who realise the occurring change in Nell, with some of this being given its own ‘inside’ chapters.


The action is beefed up considerably by Terry who leads a biker gang which the siblings have a run in with and is also given his own voice and chapters. These fight sequences, where the Jonah of old resurfaces with bells on, were out of this world and brutally bloody action sequences, and if Matthew Lyons gets bored of writing horror he could comfortably jump genres and become an action novelist!  The supernatural story has another fascinating angle, Nell is being tracked by a weird type of exorcist (but that word is never used) who claims to be able to help her with her affliction, whatever it might be. This is also given a clever backstory and if Lyons ever revisited this story would be perfect for development.


A Black and Endless Sky was a rollercoaster ride which was great entertainment, throwing in feuding siblings, the bleakness of the open road, biker revenge, killer fight sequences, totally messed up exorcists and crazy demon possession at the reader. Reading that sentence back to myself makes it sound very trashy or low rent, but far from it. This novel was skilfully written, has a superb sense of time and place and action sequences which are from the top drawer. Within the context of the novel the demon possession was terrific and was backed up by three (Terry was great too) well drawn lead characters. Highly recommended.


Tony Jones

One of Tor Nightfire's "Horror Books We're Excited About in 2022"!

"Lyons burnishes his reputation as a rising horror star . . . [and] keeps the pages flying with fast-paced chills." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)




From the author of The Night Will Find Us comes a white-knuckled horror-thriller set across the American Southwest.
Road trips can be hell.
Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town twelve years ago, they couldn’t be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque, hoping to mend their broken relationship along the way.
But when a strange accident befalls Nell at an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert, she begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. As their journey through the desolate American Southwest reveals the grotesque change happening within his sister, one thing becomes clear to Jonah: It’s not only Nell in there anymore.
Pursued by a mysterious stranger who knows far more about Nell’s worsening condition than they let on, the siblings race to find a way to help Nell and escape the desert before they’re met with a violent, bloody end. But there are far worse things lurking in the desert ahead... some of them just beneath the skin.