Wasted In Life, Useless In Death: Nancy A. Collins’ Sunglasses After Dark

A little background before we get to the meat . . . Vampire fiction found a foothold in the American fascination during the 1970s thanks to four books. In 1975, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot brought the creatures to small town Maine and set them loose. These vamps were the real rotten sorts, the bloodsuckers without […]

Movie Mondays: Color Out of Space

Synopsis: The Gardner family is not having an easy time with their relocation to the wild hills west of Arkham. Their satellite communication back to the world they left is a bit potchky, impacting matriarch Theresa’s (Joely Richardson) career as a financial advisor. Patriarch Nathan (Nicolas Cage) is trying his best to hold the family […]

The End of the Road: Kenyatta’s Last Hit

For his fourth and final adventure featuring the badass Kenyatta, Donald Goines makes every effort to impress. It has all been leading here, the capstone for his thrilling crime fiction quartet. What better location to kick off events than Los Angeles? This is perhaps Kenyatta’s most cinematic adventure yet, a gleefully visual stew of imagery […]

Empathy for Monsters: Gemma Files’ Spectral Evidence

I treasure the authors who can draw giggles from me with their humor, describe new visions of the fantastic, evoke a new shade of the macabre, or deliver a shock profound enough to make me want to drag my feet up onto the couch or chair where I am reading so they are nowhere near […]

Movie Mondays: Machhli Jal Ki Rani Hai

Although Trista and I were thrilled to be reviewing world cinema’s contributions to horror and suspense in our monthly (or sometimes more often) Alamo Cinema Massacre column for the Cinema Knife Fight site, we were not quite ready for the first offering we were to catch from India. At that point, we were versed in […]

I Said “Up Yours,” Baby: Kenyatta’s Escape

Death List, the second book in Donald Goines’ four-volume Kenyatta series, ended with the police closing in on the ghetto chief’s holdings. Kenyatta himself was on the run, looking for a fast way out of Detroit. As the third volume’s title might betray, Kenyatta’s Escape is all about the efforts Ken takes to get his […]

Into the Ocean, End it All: Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep

Mira Grant’s fiction often straddles a line I enjoy, finding the time to explore the science behind her horrors as well as the emotional states of the characters. A couple of years ago, I read Grant’s Subterranean Press original novella, Rolling In The Deep, and enjoyed it immensely. A fun take on mermaids as seen […]

Movie Mondays: The Transfiguration

Synopsis: Fourteen year old Milo (Eric Ruffin) has some serious issues. His father died when Milo was eight, following a protracted illness he first developed when Milo was six. Milo’s mother later killed herself, and Milo’s brother Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten) kept him from the funeral. Milo has since developed a rather unhealthy relationship with […]

There Goes the Neighborhood: Donald Goines’ Death List

Picking up with the finale of Crime Partners, Donald Goines’ second novel in the Kenyatta series focuses in on some of the bigger players in the previous book and picks up some of the threads left hanging in that book. This time around, series character Kenyatta gets to strut around on center stage. He is […]

Any Law Against That?: Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer

There are relatively few stories, which take a hammer to a reader’s spirit, shattering it to the core. These are as often as not published under a horror imprint. These works leave us emotionally gutted. Everyone has their own list of such works, though a few titles are likely to crossover. Jack Ketchum’s The Girl […]

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Month: February 2020