Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

“You have made a brand of your image and now I am going to redesign you.” – Mr. Glamour

In the world of the über rich it’s all about image. Wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, dining at the right restaurants, being seen at the right hot spots and vacation locales. The fabulously wealthy know they are constantly being watched; that’s the point. See and be seen, the more conspicuously the better.

If only they knew he was watching them. Studying them. Photographing them. Obsessing over them. Mr. Glamour knows what matters to the jet set, understands their slavish dedication to brands and image. He understands because he wants it as well. And what better way to obtain what he wants and hurt those he despises than by taking it from them? He will build himself up by tearing them down and taking everything from them… including their lives.

When the bodies of London’s jet set being turning up murdered and mutilated, Detective Chief Inspector Flare and his partner Inspector Steele find themselves investigating what evolves into an increasingly horrific string of murders. And though it seems obvious the killings are linked, Flare and Steele are met with a wall of silence from those closest to the victims, the very people who may be next on the killer’s list.

Now Flare and Steele must deconstruct the pathology of a diseased mind in order to stop the gruesome killings. What they don’t realize is that doing so will also require them to look deep into the darkest corners of their own minds, and what they find there may be even more disturbing than what’s in the mind of the killer. (more…)

People out in these parts can take hold of religion like it’s a drug, and they don’t want to give it up once they’ve got hold of it. – Sheriff Clem Barefield

Nine-year-old Jess Hall is caught between two worlds, those of childhood wonder and adult responsibility. Growing up in a small, rural town in the foothills of western North Carolina he and his older brother, Christopher, play in the streams and woods, getting up to the sort of mischief you’d expect of typical young country boys.

Except Christopher isn’t typical. He’s autistic, and his total lack of verbal communication has led to him being given the nickname Stump. Despite Jess being the younger brother, he’s fiercely protective of Stump and feels it’s his responsibility to make sure Stump’s path through life is as smooth as possible.

When things go horribly wrong during an attempted “healing” of Stump by Pastor Carson Chambiliss at the local evangelical church, life changes irrevocably for both boys and nothing about their small town will ever be the same again.

The events of Wiley Cash’s spectacular debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, are relayed through the perspectives of three different narrators, Jess being one of them. Weaving back and forth in time, Cash also adds the world–weary voices of longtime Sheriff Clem Barefield and town/church elder Adelaide Lyle to help flesh out his Southern Gothic tale of religion gone wrong and the destructive power of secrets. (more…)

“You’re a tough guy, Matt, a stoic, but you’ve got a lot of friends.” – Jade Lee

Manhattan prosecutor Matt DeMarco is going to need every ounce of his toughness and every one of his friends to get through the nightmare he finds himself plunged into in Gods and Fathers, the latest thriller from author James LePore.

The failure of his marriage sixteen years ago bothers Matt, but what really kills him is the wedge that was driven between him and his now twenty-two-year-old son, Michael, when Matt’s ex-wife married an extremely wealthy Syrian businessman who showered Michael with anything his heart desired.

Reduced to seeing Michael on the odd weekend here and there, Matt finds his son to be both a stranger and a disappointment. But when Michael is arrested for the rape and murder of his girlfriend, Matt’s fatherly instincts kick into high gear. His son may be a disagreeable, spoiled punk, but he’s no rapist or murderer. Matt’s sure of it, and will stop at nothing to prove it.

When people close to the case, both investigators and witnesses, start getting killed Matt realizes there are forces at work that go far beyond his son’s arrest, forces that are as determined to remain in the shadows as Matt is to drag them into the light. Now Matt’s racing to uncover the truth and exonerate his son while trying to stay one step ahead – and out of the crosshairs – of an alphabet soup of government agencies including the NYPD, FBI, CIA, UN, and SMI (Syrian Military Intelligence). (more…)

“I’m not from around here, and I’ve been places you’ll never want to go. Unless you’re even stupider than you look.”
- Trouble

Charlie Sherman’s been accused of worse things than being stupid. His wife, in fact, kicked him out of the house for being a failure as both a writer and father, though that porn he inadvertently set as the desktop on his computer certainly didn’t help matters.

While at a diner trying to figure out exactly what his next step is Charlie meets a mysterious stranger known only as ‘Trouble.’ Despite that ominous moniker, Trouble actually hooks Charlie up with a job finishing the massive, jumbled manuscript a recently deceased local professor never quite completed.

As a bonus, Charlie can also live in the basement of the professor’s widow’s house while working on the project. Life may have handed Charlie lemons, but he’s found a way to make lemonade. Yeah, if only it was that easy.

First there’s the matter of the manuscript’s topic, the horrific events of 1912 in which the whites of Forsyth County, Georgia engaged in intimidation, arson, and lynching to drive the black population from their homes. Much of the resulting “vacant” property was subsequently seized by white families, one parcel of which is now worth nearly $20 million dollars in the highly upscale – and lily white – Forsyth. When in the course of working on the book Charlie discovers the rightful heir to that property things get seriously complicated, with Charlie put in the position of either walking away or opening an enormous can of worms.

There’s also the highly disturbing fact the contract Charlie signed regarding the book project seems to be changing on its own; he doesn’t remember there originally being a clause in there about the project being a success or he would forfeit his life, and he’s damn sure he signed in ink, not blood. What has Charlie gotten himself into? (more…)

The first edition of Pulp Modern was an extremely pleasant surprise, populated with an array of short stories by both authors I knew as well as introducing me to a few new treasures to pursue, like David James Keaton.

The followup lives up to its predecessor, with editor Alec Cizak once again assembling a quality assortment of stories from established authors and relative newcomers alike that span crime, fantasy, and the Old West. As always, there were a few that particularly stood out for me.

I don’t think there’s an author currently working in crime fiction/noir who more consistently forces readers to go to uncomfortable places as does Matthew C. Funk, and “Breed Out the Bad” is no exception. The matter-of-fact way in which Funk tells the story of a young man done wrong’s Biblical solution to ridding his small town of the ‘evil’ represented by the Tarwater family, starting with the sisters, is as deeply disturbing as it gets.

“The Aerialist” by Stephen Eoannou is a wonderfully understated tale of love, betrayal, and revenge. It turns out Spence and Blind Charlie share more in common than an affinity for placing bets at the OTB, and as the two journey across town to watch an aerialist attempt to walk between the two Statue of Liberty replicas atop the Liberty Building one of them will also discover the aerialist isn’t the only person making a perilous journey and poised for a disastrous fall. (more…)

We weren’t never bad kids, we just didn’t have nothing to hold on to, that’s all. – John Sissons

John Sissons is a working class kid growing up in London’s East End during the mid 1970’s. His family doesn’t have a lot, but they do have tremendous love for each other and an undying passion for football (that’s soccer for the American crowd).

Kenny Montgomery is the strange kid who lives across the street. Overweight, socially awkward, and uncommunicative to the point one could mistake him for mute, it seems to be Kenny’s lot in life to be the butt of jokes and target of bullies.

Turns out Kenny’s abuse doesn’t end when he gets home from school. As John learns firsthand one frightening afternoon when he stops in for tea, both Kenny and his mum are the victims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Kenny’s alcoholic father.

A good kid at heart, John takes Kenny under his wing and the two form an unlikely friendship, one that grows for several years until their lives are irrevocably changed by two outbursts of violence.

The first finds all the pain Kenny has suffered and repressed throughout his life erupting in spectacular fashion, while the second results when John, now a dropout, and some friends plan a holdup that goes decidedly sideways. The fallout from those events sends John and Kenny down separate paths in life for the better part of a decade. When they’re finally reunited they discover that the more things change, the more they stay the same. (more…)

Ed Kurtz is a busy man. He recently started the publishing imprint Redrum Horror, and the company has already released three titles: The Red Empire by Joe McKinney, Attic Clowns by Jeremy C. Shipp, and Deadbeat by Guy N. Smith.

And when he’s not wearing his publisher’s hat, Kurtz is an author himself. His most recent release is Rust & Blood, a collection of nine short stories that are dark, daring, and most definitely not for the timid.

“How dark?” you ask. Well, how about a lovely little tale of cannibalism to start you off? “Hunger” is the story of an extremely overweight young man who, unable to satisfy his enormous appetite with food, hits upon a disturbing solution.

“Sinners” brings allegations of Satanism and ritual child abuse, as well as the devil himself to a small town, while “Slowpoke” shows how far one man is willing to go to ‘avenge’ a loss sustained betting on the horses.

“W4M” finds the tables turned on a man who uses online dating services to find his victims, and is followed by “Pearls,” an incredibly sick little number that will test even the strongest of stomachs. Seriously. Don’t read that one too close to eating, before or after. (more…)

Though Joe McKinney has made quite a name for himself as a novelist, he was a 2009 Bram Stoker Award nominee, his collection The Red Empire and Other Stories was my first experience with his writing.

I’m happy it happened this way, as the eight stories in the collection have given me a nice cross-section of what McKinney’s capable of considering they run the gamut from horror to sci-fi to police procedural and even a non-fiction entry. A solid collection from top to bottom, three in particular jumped out at me.

“The Red Empire,” the collection’s namesake, is actually a novella, and a damn entertaining one at that. In the tradition of sci-fi films of the 1950’s, “The Red Empire” finds a colony of fire ants the military has genetically engineered to be both over-sized and super intelligent accidentally set loose in a remote Texas border town during a torrential storm.

Local Amy Bloom and her daughter find themselves cut off by a flash flood and at the mercy of nature, both natural and unnatural. Further complicating things, a convicted bank robber/cop killer who’s being transported through the area uses the chaos of the storm to escape and makes his way to the Bloom residence. The events that unfold leave one wondering just which ‘creature’ poses the biggest threat. (more…)

They all had degrees, and degrees were supposed to pave the way to careers. They hadn’t, and it was time for another solution. – Arthur Pender

Of course, for most people that other solution would be something like getting a second job to make ends meet or going back to school to pursue a more viable area of study. Not so for friends and recent college grads Pender, Marie, Sawyer, and Mouse.

Fueled by frustration and righteous indignation they instead turn to kidnapping wealthy businessmen, and what starts out as a lark – “Let’s try it. Just to see if we can.” – turns into a lucrative career.

The secret to their success is careful research to vet the targets, detailed planning, no violence, and not getting greedy; they never ask for more than $100k, an amount their targets can easily afford and are more than willing to pay.

Select a target, kidnap, collect a modest ransom, move to a different city, repeat. For two years things run like clockwork, until the day they unknowingly select a target whose wife has connections to the mob. The wife refuses to pay and calls in the hitters, the group’s attempt to return the target goes spectacularly off the rails, and all their efforts to stay low key are blown to hell as both state and federal authorities enter the fray. (more…)

As the title suggests, the stories in Jay Ridler’s short story collection Knockouts: Ten Tales of Fantasy and Noir are thematically linked around fighting. In many of them the fighting is literal – mixed marital arts, bare-knuckle brawling, wrestling – but in others the fighting occurs on a more symbolic level, be it fighting to break free from memories and boundaries, or from the circumstances of life that are trying to drag you down.

As the title also indicates, the stories represent several genres, and Ridler’s writing is equally strong whether penning straight noir, supernatural escapism, or horror-tinged dystopia. And while I genuinely enjoyed each of the offerings in Knockouts, as is always the case there were several that particularly stood out.

“The Savage Games of Peace” is set during the time when Wrestlemania was king and finds a rich kid named Russell staging his own backyard wrestling event, Russlemania. Little do Russell’s wealthy friends realize that the kids from the wrong side of the tracks they’ve enticed with cash to beat each other senseless have something else in store for this year’s main event. (more…)