Cruel Jaws by Brad Carter

 

(pb; 2020, 2024: movie tie-in novel, “based on the [1995] screenplay by Bruno Mattei, Robert Feen and Linda Morrison.” Publisher: Severin Films/Encyclopocalypse Publishing.)

 

From the back cover

“New terror surfaces.

“Something sinister has come to the coastal town of Hampton Bay. Something horrifying and colossal that refuses to stop killing until the white sand beaches are blood red. Now, a renegade shark expert and a down on his luck lawman are all that stand between a genetically engineered killing machine and thousands of blissfully unaware tourists. It’s a race against time, bureaucratic red tape, and the mafia to stop a homicidal shark from turning a holiday weekend into a nightmare of carnage.

“. . . Includes a foreword by Stephen Scarlata, director of Sharksploitation [2023].”

 

Review

Cruel, based on the screenplay for director/co-screenwriter Bruno Mattei’s 1995 film, is a wildly entertaining, story- and character-improving expansion on its silver screen counterpart. The book’s characters are more fleshed out, their often-sleazy motivations more clearly spelled out in a way that doesn’t slow the action of the story or its sleazed-up, abbreviated Jaws rip-off plot points; Carter also smooths out the choppy editing of the film version, makes the story flow better, in a more organic way, its genetically engineered shark storyline (something that isn’t in Jaws) expanded upon as well—with an ending that’s more fleshed out, distinctive and horrifying than the generic finish to the film version.

Yeah, it’s a Jaws rip-off but don’t hold that against Cruel. It’s just Italians doing their distinctive, cinematic exploitation thing and, when combined with Carter’s genre-true, all-around-good writing, it’s a worthwhile summer read for fans of sharksploitation works.

The film version was released in Italy on September 26, 1995. Its official stateside release was on April 28, 2011.

Cruel can be purchased directly from the publisher here.

The New York Ripper 2 by Stephen Romano, Alex Sarabia and others

 

(pb; 2025: limited release, for mature audiences only graphic novel. Graphic novel-only sequel to director/co-screenwriter Lucio Fulci’s 1982 film The New York Ripper. Publisher: Eibon Press/Vinegar Syndrome.)

 

Review

Caveat: spoilers in this review if you haven’t seen The New York Ripper (1982).

Ripper 2 picks up seven years after the grisly, especially nasty and sexual serial murders shown in Fulci’s 1982 source film. The Ripper (Peter Bunch) is officially dead, killed by the world-weary Lt. Frederick Williams near the end of Ripper. Now, it seems someone—a somehow-not-dead Bunch?—has resumed a relentless, similar spate of gut-spilling, crudely surgical killings, sometimes boldly executed in front of the cops even as they’re helpless to stop them. Nobody is safe in this lots o’ nudity, character- and plot-twisty tale, certainly not Paul Davis (the academic psychiatrist who helped hunt Bunch) nor Fay Majors (Bunch’s ex-girlfriend). A new player is equally traumatized by the Ripper’s offal-stench rampage also: Bob Hansen, Williams’ younger, thirty-something partner, whose life is about to seriously go off anything resembling rails.

Ripper 2 is a "for mature audiences"-fun, Times Square sleazy, gory and wild story, with over-the-top extreme horror illustrations (often involving a big knife ripping through red-splatter flesh), one that lives up to the source film’s screenplay, penned by director Lucio Fulci, Gianfranco Clerico and Vincenzo Mannino. This is a “Video Nasties” flick in graphic novel form, worth purchasing you’re into that sort of thing. One of my favorite reads of 2025.

Ripper 2, a limited release, can be purchased (in three package options) here.

The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1984, 2004: fourth book in the Nightworld Cycle a.k.a. the Adversary Cycle. First book in the Repairman Jack series. Re-released in 2004 under its original title, Rakoshi, by Borderlands Press.)

 

From the back cover

“Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn’t deal with appliances: He fixes situations—situations that too often land him in deadly danger. His latest job is to find a stolen necklace, which, unknown to him, is more than a simple piece of jewelry.

“Some might say it’s cursed, others might call it blessed. Jack’s quest leads to a rusty freighter on Manhattan’s West Side docks. What he finds in its hold threatens his sanity and the entire city. But worst of all, it threatens Gia’s daughter, Vicky, the last surviving member of a bloodline marked for extinction.”

 

Review

Tomb, with its realistic-neo-noir-meets-supernatural-thriller elements, is an immediately immersive novel, one of my favorite Wilson books thus far. Like the best thrillers, it’s timeless (in its underlying themes and character motives) and (especially) timely, with interesting and relatable characters (even, initially, its main villain) and Wilson’s dependable, better writing: fast-paced, with salient, not-too-detailed emotional scenes and a main protagonist worth remembering. Excellent fourth entry in Wilson’s Nightworld/Adversary Cycle, one that serves as the first book in the Repairman Jack series as well. Followed, chronologically speaking, by the second Repairman novel, Legacies. (The events in the fifteen-book Repairman series take place between Adversary/Nightworld Cycle’s The Touch, 1986, and Nightworld (1992, revised and republished in 2012.)

The Fifth Profession by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1990)

 

From the back cover

“Two masters of protection.

“Savage, a former Navy SEAL and American state-of-the-art security specialist. Akira, Japan’s most brilliant executive protector and a master of the samurai arts.

“Their mission: the retrieval of Rachel Stone, a beautiful American woman whose ruthless millionaire husband is out to destroy her. But quickly Savage and Akira realize they are trapped in a mission more far-reaching than the protection of one person.

“For they are bound together in a common nightmare, a set of horrifying memories, a terrifying past that never happened., but is somehow inextricably real. Only together can they confront the mystery. Yet when they do, an even more chilling scenario awaits them—one with the power to shatter not only their world but ours as well.”

 

 

Review

 

Fifth is one of my favorite Morrell novels, as excellent and gripping as his Abelard trilogy (1984-1987:The Brotherhood of the Rose; The Fraternity of the Stone; and The League of Night and Fog). Like them, Fifth is a top-notch action/conspiracy thriller, with interesting, deeply realized characters (I especially liked Akira, whose Japanese background was fascinating). Morrell’s use of and respect for Japan’s history is also evident, with Akira and his home country adding new and exotic layers to Morrell’s oeuvre. This is a stunning read, the work of a culture-expansive author, a standalone novel worth owning, and one of my favorite reads of the year.

Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout

 

(pb;1940: seventh book in the forty-six book Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the Amazon site description

 

“Over My Dead Body. . . first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine. By the time it was published, the Wolfe/Goodwin books had become an established series but Wolfe's background had never been explored. Here Stout starts to do clarify Wolfe’s youth by bringing in in a number of characters, including some from Montenegro.

“Carla Lovchen and Neya Tormic, two young women from Montenegro, come to Wolfe's office asking for help. Miss Tormic has been accused of a theft of diamonds from the locker room where she works. She claims the accusation to be false and cannot afford to pay Wolfe’s fee, but she has a document that shows Wolfe adopted her when she was an infant. Although he has never seen her since, Wolfe agrees to undertake the investigation. As Archie is dispatched to investigate, murder is discovered. In the end Wolfe gets the main characters together in his office and, in the manner typical of the series, he will expose the murderer and the motive.”

 

Review

As mentioned in the above description, Over expands on what has been previously revealed about the titular character’s past. Not only that, there’s a strong pre-WWII outbreak/political intrigue aspect which darkly underscores certain character motivations, murders and elements present within Over’s series-continuing storyline. Its middle section, as is Stout’s wont, is a bit chatty, but it—like much of Over—is mostly entertaining, often humorous, erudite (Wolfe) and sarcastic (Goodwin), or (in a word) worthwhile. Another great entry in the Wolfe series, it’s followed by Where There’s a Will.

Trailer Park Noir by Ray Garton

 

(pb; 2022)

 

From the back cover

"Welcome to Riverside Mobile Home Park, where there is plenty of shade but no escape from the heat.

"Marcus Reznick watched the love of his life blow her brains out and then dove to the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Now he’s living in Riverside Mobile Home Park and trying to pull his life together ... until a powerful temptation comes his way. Steve Regent is an internet pornographer who has moved to Riverside Mobile Home Park to work on a new website, Trailer Park Girls. He is looking for beautiful women ... but instead, he finds something very ugly.

"Sherry Manning is a drug addict living in the trailer park with her boyfriend, Andy Winchell, who is a dealer. When a friend of a friend ODs in their trailer and turns out to be the son of a powerful politician, the truth about his death is covered up in the media. But Sherry and Andy know that truth ... and she fears what might be done to silence them.

"Anna Dunfy is trying to make ends meet by doing temp jobs and stripping at night to support her mentally handicapped daughter, Kendra ... an astonishingly beautiful girl with a woman’s body, a child’s mind, and a dangerous urge to do something naughty.

"It is a run‑down little trailer park in northern California, but it could be anywhere in the United States. It is unassuming, unremarkable, and looks like a million other trailer parks. But do not let the sleepy appearance fool you. It is a nest of dark secrets, boiling lusts and murder waiting to happen."

 

 

Review

Trailer is an excellent, immediately immersive and tightly edited neo-noir with well-developed characters worth caring about and/or hissing at, a palpable-build-toward-tragedy-and-bloody-violence pace, and constant, vivid descriptions of locations, motives and especially near-X-rated sexuality. In short, it has all the makings of a top-notch Garton book. (Trailer, in its own weird, great way, put me in the mindset of William Friedkin’s 2011 film Killer Joe.)

The only thing that prevents me from listing Trailer as one of my favorite reads of 2025 (and of Garton’s work) is the near-third act transformation of one of its key characters, who goes from being a decent character wrestling with his personal devils and tragedies to an unrepentant exploiter/blackmailer. It feels forced (even with all that character’s baggage and stuff that’s going on); this hard turn into pitch-black darkness stands out all the more in Trailer because of everything else that works in this otherwise stunning-in-its-execution tale. Worth owning, despite that minor character-shift nit.

Tribe of the Dead by Gary Brandner

 

(pb; 1984)

 

From the back cover

“Quintana Roo means death.

“Ignoring this grim warning, Johnny Hooker plunges deep into the tropical jungle in search of a missing millionaires. And then the horror starts.

“For Quintana Roo means danger from venomous snakes, lethal jaguars, alligator-like caymans—and a thousand different lurking insects.

“Above all, Quintana Roo means the lost city of Iztal, and tales of human sacrifices. . . and walking dead.

“But, as Hooker discovers, the terrifying reality surpasses the worst legends.

“For Quintana Roo means far worse than death.”

 

Review

Tribe, a fun, hard-to-set-down jungle adventure novel, set in 1939. It's a relatively fast, sometimes spooky read, with its bar-loving hero (Johnny Hooker) and a few of his adventure-sharing friends facing off against Indios sublevados (rebellious, deep-in-the-jungle and possibly cannibal tribesmen), dysentery and muerateros (undead) and, of course, Nazis.

The prose is tight, its action, barely-there character development and twists are solid and fun, with its eve-of-WWII Men’s Adventure inspired storyline. Great subgenre book from a consistently entertaining writer, both worth reading, possibly owning if you need to own your thrills.

The Avengers by Julie Kaewert

 

(pb; 1998: movie tie-in novel, based on Don Macpherson and Sydney Newman’s screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“She’s Dr. Emma Peel, an auburn-haired beauty clad in black leather and boots. He’s John Steed, the immaculately dressed dandy with the trademark bowler and umbrella sword. Together they’re the hippest, sexiest, and oh-so-deadliest duo of secret agents the world of international espionage has ever produced. They are. . . the Avengers.

“It’s called the Prospero Project: an ultra-top secret program conducting weather-control experiments with contributions from the eminent Dr. Emma Peel. Now someone has sabotaged the project, aiding a sinister group of conspirators who hope to control the weather as the ultimate weapon of world domination.

“The saboteur: one Dr. Emma Peel. Agent John Steed has been summoned to the Ministry by Mother to infiltrate the ominous Wonderland Corporation. To do so, Mother has assigned to Steed the most dangerous of partners: the irresistible Emma Peel. Is she suffering from a split personality? Or, even worse, does Emma Peel have an identical double, an exact replica who will use her lethal beauty for pure evil? Steed and Peel have only forty-eight hours before the detonation of massive weather bombs in every major city will signal the beginning of the end of the free world. With time already running out, the Avengers must learn the shocking truth before they themselves are terminated by the diabolical leader of the Wonderland Corporation. . . or by Mother Herself!”

 

Review

Avengers (1998) is a whimsical, flirty spy-action movie tie-in read with a touch of the strange, keeping with the tone and structure of the original 1961-1969 television / ITV show. Lots of unspoken heat between Dr. Emma Peel and John Steed in this iteration, with Kaewert providing plenty of their interior emotions behind their cool, sometimes icy dialogue. Unfortunately, the editors of the theatrical version didn’t see fit to put Don Macpherson and Sydney Newman’s screenplay up on the screen; it might’ve made for a better film, helped update Avengers for then-modern audiences. Solidly written and fun, this movie tie-in might appeal to fans of the show and/or the 1998 movie, who want to see what the filmmakers originally intended for it (its original running time was 115 minutes; the theatrical, only available version was trimmed to 89 minutes).

 

#

 

The source film was released stateside on August 14, 1998. Jeremiah S. Chechik directed the film from a screenplay by Sydney Newman and Don MacPherson. The theatrical film was a studio/Warner Bros.-cut version of film at 89 minutes; its original running length was 115 minutes. According to the film’s Wikipedia page, “Warner Bros. has no plans to release a director's cut or special edition in any form, despite the fact that director Jeremiah Chechik has offered to recut the film for free.”

Ralph Fiennes played John Steed. Uma Thurman played Dr. Emma Peel. Sean Connery played Sir August de Wynter.

Patrick Macnee, who played John Steed in the original television / ITV 1961-1969 series, played “Invisible Jones.” Jim Broadbent played Mother. Fiona Shaw played Mother. Eddie Izzard played Bailey, one of de Wynter’s thugs. Black Grape/Happy Mondays vocalist Shaun Ryder played Donavan.

Escape from New York: Volume Two by Christopher Sebela and various artists

 

(pb; 2016: second graphic novel in a series of four. Collects issues #5-8 of the limited-run Escape from New York comic book. Publisher: Boom! Studios.)

 

From the back cover

“After making it through the madhouse of Florida, Snake Plissken gets on a plane, only to be thrown out over Siberia, returning him to a battlefield he thought he left behind. Continuing the story that picks up right where the classic film left off, writer Christopher Sebela (High Crimes, Welcome Back) and artist Diego Barreto (Iredeemable) drop the classic antihero into the middle of a brand-new Cold War.”

 

 

Review

In the also titled Escape from New York: Escape from Siberia, Snake is dropped (with a parachute) into all-too-familiar, war-torn Leningrad, site of his previous, pre-crime military assignment. There he is forced to join a U.S. military unit led by Major King, an icy and sly woman who takes an instant dislike to Snake. Not only that, the helmeted and metal masked soldier known as Texas Thunder, with his spiked metal suit, is in the unit as well. Who is Texas Thunder? (Read and find out!).

When Snake winds up in Tunguska, site of a famous meteor crash, he and his reluctant and sociopathic scientist fellow traveler (Bulgarov) encounter a dangerous cult, whose goals and upcoming ceremony may prove fatal to Snake and Bulgarov.

Vol. Two/Siberia, like Vol. 1/Florida, is an excellent, tone- and character-true (thus far) follow-up to the original Escape (1981), with its wild characters, humor. The artwork is good as well. This is a fun, fast-moving and bursting-with-action read, one with a cliffhanger finish. Followed by Escape from New York: Escape to New York.

Jack: Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2008: first book in the Young Repairman Jack trilogy, 2008-2010)

 

From the back cover

“Ever come across a situation that simply wasn’t right—where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but you didn’t know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he’s learning how. He’s discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances—situations. . .

“It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse—the victim of a ritual murder—in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn’t want them revealed?

“Jack’s town, the surrounding Barrens, his friends, even Jack himself. . . they all have. . . Secret Histories.”

 

Review

Set in 1983 (Return of the Jedi is in its first theatrical run), Histories is a fun, well-written, era-specific and humor-laced paranormal-flirtatious mystery surrounding the New Jersey Pine Barrens and Jack’s usually quiet hometown. When he and his friends discover a strange box—which leads to the discovery of a corpse—and other secrets, many of them held by those close to Jack, Weezy and Eddie.

Histories might run a bit long for genre-familiar and/or older readers (I’m part of that group), but considering it was written for younger readers (according to Amazon, grades 6—9) and that it has two direct sequels (and numerous older-Jack sequels) its length might be appropriate. Anyhow, it’s a good, hints-at-Jack’s-powers-and-acumen prequel to other Repairman Jack books, unnecessary but worth reading if you’re into this type of book, a fan of Wilson and/or his Repairman Jack works, and don’t mind an ending that explicitly teases further character interactions and mysteries connected to Histories’s events. Followed by Jack: Secret Circles.

The Night House by Jo Nesbø

 

(hb; 2023: YA novel. Translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith.)

 

From the inside flap

“In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. His sleuthing leads him to an abandoned house in the Mirror Forest, where he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear. . .

“She’s going to burn. The girl you love is going to burn. There’s nothing you can do about it.

“When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence—and preserve his sanity—as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursing his destruction.

“Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.”

 

Review

House starts with a horrific, reader-hooking and icky-slurp bang and, with its tightly written and horror-effective set pieces, maintains that character-building (and sometimes twisty) pace throughout the book. The key twist at the end, noted in the book’s cover-flap description, likely won’t surprise seasoned genre readers, but it works and Nesbø makes fresh use of it in House. Set around 1990—filmmaker/FX artist Tom Savini’s remake of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) has recently been released— Nesbø’s House is a great, truly horrific-at-times coming-of-age read, one worth owning for those who appreciate turned-on-their-head terror tropes. Fans of Stephen King's early work, Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, 1962) might especially enjoy House.

The Touch by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1986: third book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka Adversary Cycle. Originally published as a standalone novel, later incorporated into said Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“After a dozen years of practicing medicine as a family physician, Dr. Alan Bulmer discovers one day that he can cure any illness with the mere touch of his hand.Although he tries to hide his power, word inevitably leaks out, and soon Alan’s life begins to unravel. His marriage and his practice crumble. Only rich, beautiful, enigmatic Sylvia Nash stands by him. And standing with her is Ba, her Vietnamese gardener, who once witnessed a power such as Dr. Bulmer’s in his homeland, where it is called Dat-tay-vao. Ba knows too well that the Dat-tay-vao always comes with a price. And Alan has only begun to pay.

(This edition includes the short story ‘Dat-tay-vao,’ prequel to The Touch, which tells the story of the events bringing the Dat-tay-vao to the USA.”)

 

Review

Touch, the third thematically (and later character-)linked book in F. Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle, is an excellent fiction read/thriller, with its vaguely supernatural/warm humanity Good versus violence/darkness theme, fully realized/complex characters, sly humor, warmth and steady-build, vividly described situations and physical locations. Touch doesn’t begin to come together until three-quarters of the way into it, and when it does, it truly pays out, with a few instances of brief splatterific gore and violence.

My favorite character in Touch is Båo, whose devotion to those he cares about as well as his balancing of light and (sometimes violent) darkness provides the balance I wish other characters in this book had, e.g. Alan Bulmer, people-dumb and addicted to dat-tay-vao (“the Touch”) who’s so naïve, he almost makes Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) look cynical. At several points, I mentally retitled Touch as Mr. Smith Gets a Healing Power.

While reading Touch, I didn’t see any specific links to the first two Adversary novels The Keep and Reborn. One reddit user (schlam16) has noted that “the [Adversary] finale, Nightworld [1992] also draws in Repairman Jack from The Tomb [1984], and characters from The Touch.”

Great read, The Touch, worth owning. Followed, story-wise, by The Tomb.

The Brave by Gregory McDonald

 

(hb; 1991)

 

From the inside flap:

“Rafael’s world is a place where armed guards patrol a dump to prevent poor families from foraging through the garbage. With his family, Rafael lives on the edge of the refuse heap in a forgotten corner of America’s Southwest.

“Desperately poor, he is determined to give his family some respite from their dire poverty, even if it means trading his own life to do so.

“Rafael finds a man who says he will pay many thousands of dollars in exchange for his life:  so he agrees to ‘star’ in a snuff film.”

 

Review

Brave, with its stark language, grim-flat tone and likely doomed characters is a work of horrific beauty, with Rafael (a simple, largely illiterate young man) willing to sacrifice his life to improve those of his family and his also-impoverished community. No words wasted in this fast-moving, taut-emotions-between-the-lines (and relatively short) novel, its third chapter—which comes with a foreword/warning from Mcdonald—fairly (possibly) stomach-churning for those not used to bluntly stated inhumanity and potential horror (in a weird way, Brave put in the mindset of director/co-screenwriter John McNaughton’s 1986 film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). This is one of the best books I’ve ever read in any genre, up there with Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959) and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), and highly recommended for fans of Cormac McCarthy and Richard Stark’s twenty-four-book Parker series.

#

 

The resulting 1997 film, directed, co-scripted by and starring Johnny Depp, was not released stateside. Depp was upset by the negative reaction of U.S. film critics and refused to release it in that country. It debuted at Cannes Film Festival in May 1997 and was released in other countries throughout the remainder of that year. (Brave’s co-screenwriters also included Paul McCudden and D.P. Depp.)

Depp played Raphael (not spelled “Rafael” as it is in Mcdonald’s source novel). Marlon Brando played McCarthy, a snuff filmmaker who spells it out for Raphael. Marshall Bell played Larry, McCarthy’s shifty nephew.

Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman played Raphael’s “Papa.” Luis Guzmán played Luis, Raphael’s older brother. Pepe Serna played Alessando, Raphael’s other brother, who whines a lot and is an especially doomy do-nothing.

Frederic Forrest, Brando’s co-star in Apocalypse Now (1979), played Lou Sr. Clarence Williams III played Father Stratton. Max Perlich played Lou Jr. Iggy Pop played “Man Eating Bird Leg.”

Scary Book: Insects by Kazuo Umezu

 

(pb; 2003, 2006: second volume in Umezu’s Scary Book manga series. Japanese-to-English translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian; lettering and retouch by Kathryn Renta. Followed by Scary Book: Faces.)

 

From the back cover

“Kazuo Umezu, ‘The Stephen King of manga,’ returns with the second frightening volume of Scary Book. In ‘Butterfly Grave,’ a young woman, Megumi, is paralyzed by an inexplicable, devastating fear of butterflies, a phobia brought on by the mysterious and untimely death of her mother when Megumi was still an infant. Upon visiting her mother’s grave years after her death, Megumi becomes haunted by a black butterfly that only she can see and which seemingly causes waves of destruction and misery to Megumi’s family and friends wherever it appears. But when Megumi’s father decides to remarry. Megumi begins to fear that her new mother is turning into the very thing she dreads most.”

 

Review

As with the first Scary Book (Reflections), manga/J-horror fans may easily find much to enjoy in this second volume of Umezu’s Scary Book trilogy. The artwork is mainstream manga-realistic, plausibly slipping into its characters’ visualized mindsets and realities (veering between horror, silliness and bloody violence), its writing mostly solid, entertaining, at least until its last third.

Unlike Insects, this second volume is one 227-page story (“Butterfly Grave”), a mix of The Babadook (2014; director/screenwriter: Jennifer Kent), J-horror manga and Alfred Hitchcockian psychological mystery and intrigue. It’s Babadook-esque in that Megumi is often irritating and bizarre in her loud, violent constant-panic-mode behavior (like young Samuel in Babadook). It’s Hitchcockian in that as the story progresses, it seems Megumi’s off-putting behavior might be justified by the seeming intentions of some around her, who might not wish the best for her.

As noted before, Insects has a good, entertaining, steady build storyline for the most part. Near the end Megumi’s seemingly irrational flights of nightmare and its Reveal/climax scenes run a bit long. Still, it’s a fast, worthwhile read, one worth checking out. Followed by Scary Book: Faces.

Nightlife by Thomas Perry

 

(pb; 2006)

 

From the back cover

“When the cousin of Los Angeles underworld figure Hugo Poole is found shot to death in his home in Portland, Oregon, homicide detective Catherine Hobbes is determined to solve the case. But her feelings, and the investigation, are complicated when Hugo simultaneously hires Joe Pitt. As Joe and Catherine form an uneasy alliance, the murder count rises. Following the evidence, Catherine finds herself in a deadly contest with a cunning female adversary capable of changing her appearance and identity at will. Catherine must use everything she knows, as a detective and as a woman, to stop a murderer who kills on impulse and with ease, and who becomes more efficient and elusive with each crime.”

 

 

Review

Nightlife, like Perry’s best writing, is a near-impossible-to-set-down, tautly penned and edited police-procedural thriller, with well-developed characters worth rooting for or hissing at (even the emotionally immature/defensive, cold-blooded killer,Tanya Starling, aka Charlene Buckner, aka other names, can be sympathized or at least understood, given her fully realized backstory). That Perry provides effective character motivations imbues the resulting violence, all of it masterfully edited and written, with an impressive, reads-fresh, character-sourced intimacy, even as he sidesteps certain action-thriller tropes, and an ending that deftly blends key-character trepidation and hope into a “would love to see these characters again” finish. Top-notch book, top-notch author.

The Town of Pigs by Hideshi Hino

 

(pb; 1983, English translation 2022: manga)

 

From the back cover

“One night, under a blood red moon glimmering with demonic beauty, a group of devilish creatures armed with axes and spears came riding into a quiet city on horseback.

“One by one, they loaded the villagers up into cages and carried them off without any explanation. . . I barely managed to escape alive.”

 

Review

This 185-page manga, with little-to-no explanation for its immediate, violent and gory events and its bizarre, character-centric end-twist, is a blast of a read, with great artwork, a confident tone (it doesn’t spoon feed anything to its readers) and overall impressive delivery. Great read, might be puzzling for those who aren’t big on reading between strange lines.

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

 

(pb; 2020: YA novel. First book in Frendo/Clown in a Cornfield trilogy. Followed by Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives!)

 

From the back cover

“Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it to graduation, but she might not make it to morning. When Quinn and her father moved to a tiny town with a weird clown for a mascot, they were looking for a fresh start. But ever since the town’s only factory closed down, Kettle Springs has been cracked in half.

“Most of the town believes that the kids are to blame. After all, the juniors and seniors at Kettle Springs high are the ones who set the abandoned factory on fire and who spend all their time posting pranks on YouTube. They have no respect and no idea what it means to work hard.

“For the kids, it’s the other way around. And now Kettle Springs is caught in a constant battle between the old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight looks like it will destroy the town. Until one homicidal clown with a porkpie hat and a red nose decides to end it for good. Because if your opponents all die, you win the debate by default.”

 

Review

Clown is a great, if sometimes overwritten (and sometimes plot-convenient-character-dumb, even for a slasher story) novel.

Criticism first.

I get that many of the characters are emotionally tumultuous adolescents and adults, but some of their melodramatic behavior (not adapting to oh-so-necessary survival mode when they have seconds to live) jarred me out of the otherwise beguiling read. I further understand that this is a YA novel where emotions are writ large in Crayola colors like obvious graffiti on an alley wall, but certain characters seem to be kind of dumb, having to learn the same fatal-for-others lessons over and over.

I also had difficulty buying into one of its central conceits, considering how many single-minded characters feel about others, and the violence resulting from those angry feelings. The sheer number of these aggressors, Frendo-friendly or otherwise, didn’t strike me as realistic, even with what’s going on now in the real world.

And some of the action/kill scenes run way too long, with certain characters getting way too much time to emote. Friday the 13^th (1980) kill-scene concise Clown is not.

It should be noted that for a Young Adult [YA] book, Clown has a lot of profanity, particularly f-bombs—this is not a complaint, merely a caveat for readers not anticipating Cesare’s constant, character-realistic use of profanity.

 

Praise.

For the most part, though, Cesare’s writing flows well, not a full-on horror book until six or so chapters in. It’s often pop-culture/our-current zeitgeist stellar, bordering on addictive, with cinema-worthy scenes—not surprisingly, the resulting film, directed and co-penned by Eli Craig, is scheduled for a stateside 5/9/25 release.

Reborn by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1990, revised in 2005: second book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka the Adversary Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“When an ancient artifact dissolves in the hands of a man calling himself Mr. Veilleur, he knows something has gone wrong. . . terribly, cosmically wrong.

“Dr. Roderick Hanley, a Novel Prize-winning geneticist, dies in a plane crash. His last words: ‘The boy! They’ll find out about the boy! He’ll find out about himself!’ When Jim Stevens, an orphan and struggling writer, learns that he is the sole heir to the Hanley estate, he is sure he has at last found his biological father.

“He’s only half right. The true nature of his inheritance—and the truth about his conception—will crush him. In New York City, a group of charismatics has been drawn together with a sense of great purpose. Satan is coming, and they have been chosen to fight him.

“Mr. Veilleur has been drawn to the group as well, but he realizes it’s not Satan who is coming. Stan would be a suitable au pair compared to the ancient evil that is in the process of being. . . Reborn.”

 

Review

Reborn didn’t thrill me as much as its prequel, The Keep. A big reason for this might be Keep’s setting—I love WWII-era horror novels that waste no time jumping into character-centric action, something Reborn is not. (Please note that I'm not condemning any choices that Wilson might've made with Reborn; I'm merely stating a personal leaning.)

Reborn is a different type of novel. Set in stateside 1968, it mostly focuses on Jim and Carol Stevens, husband and wife, and what happens when Jim—a temperamental, struggling horror writer with mysterious parentage—inherits a fortune from a man he’s never met (Dr. Robert Hanley). In addition to the fortune, though, there are terrible secrets, secrets which may have something to do with the struggle between Rasalom and Glaeken (possibly now going by the name Gaston Veilleur) in Keep.

Reborn, with its relatively slow, steady setup (as well as more characters), is an above average, sometimes clever read from a great writer. When it comes together at the end, it generally delivers, but ultimately, it—like the rest of Reborn—feels like a setup for larger story that does not come about in this book. Fans of Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby (and Roman Polanski’s 1968 cinematic adaptation of it) might especially enjoy Reborn, which explicitly acknowledges the 1967 novel’s influence.

Worth owning, this. According to F. Paul Wilson’s official website, Reborn is followed, story-wise, by F. Paul Wilson’s The Touch (1986).