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February 24, 2012

Mr. Softee by Mike Faricy

“Turns out things got a bit more complicated.”
– Devlin Haskell

Complicated was not what PI Devlin ‘Dev’ Haskell had in mind when he was hired by local businessman Weldon Sofmann to find out who tried to run Sofmann’s car off the road. Though Softmann is convinced someone was trying to kill him, Dev figures it was probably just a simple hit-and-run. Man, was he wrong.

Turns out Sofmann, aka Mr. Softee, has a list of people who hate him that’s longer than Dev’s arm. Known for his ice-cream truck empire, Mr. Softee is anything but soft, his hot temper, mean streak, and cutthroat business practices having earned him countless enemies over the years. And those are just the aboveboard suspects.

Apparently fudgesicles and snow cones aren’t the only things available from a Mr. Softee ice cream truck, as word on the street has it there’s a sophisticated bookmaking operation that’s also ready to take your off the menu order if you know what to ask for.

As Dev begins wading through the potential suspect pool a disturbing pattern starts to arise; people who Dev talks to are ending up on the wrong side of trouble. One is found dead, run over by a train, while another has their business firebombed. Probably not a good for the direction the investigation is heading, and that was before the body turned up in the trunk of Dev’s car. Yeah, things just got a bit more complicated. →

February 24, 2012

Devil’s Toll by Malachi Stone

“I hear the Permeance is a gift not from God but from the devil.” – Hope Banfield

Though never charged, Associate Professor of Psychology Steve Toddmann is suspected of having killed his wife, Zoe, and his mentor, the renowned and controversial Dr. LeGrand.

What Steve couldn’t explain to the police is that LeGrand and Zoe were victims of an experiment gone wrong, an experiment into the existence of a fourth-dimension known as the Permeance.

Determined to understand exactly what happened to them, Steve continues the research but doesn’t make much progress with it. Enter Hope Banfield.

Steve’s struck by how much Hope resembles his late wife, as well as by her seriously outdated wardrobe and exceedingly formal manner of speech. When Hope explains that she is, in fact, from the 1870’s and is present via the Permeance Steve realizes the answers to all his questions are finally within reach.

That’s also when things start to get seriously weird. →

February 21, 2012

Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm

That’s the bitch about being damned – things rarely shake out your way. – Sam Thornton

Things haven’t shaken out Sam Thornton’s way for quite some time. Driven by desperation and good intentions, Sam made a very bad decision many decades ago. And you know what they say about good intentions.

Yeah, the road to Hell.

Thing is, Sam didn’t make it all the way down that road, but got detoured into Purgatory and shanghaied into eternal employment as a soul collector. If your time has come and the powers that be have marked you for damnation, it’s Sam’s job to remove your soul and send it on its way to hell.

It’s a rather unpleasant experience for both parties.

Things go from unpleasant to unheard of, however, when Sam is assigned to collect Kate MacNeil’s soul. At first blush is seems like a no-brainer since the young woman was caught red-handed, literally, having just butchered her family. Slaughter three people, go to Hell. Makes sense.

So imagine Sam’s surprise when upon attempting to collect Kate’s soul he’s met with an outpouring of purity so overwhelming he’s convinced she didn’t commit the crime; she’s been improperly marked for damnation. However, one does not simply refuse to collect the assigned soul. It’s never happened in the history of, well, ever. Failure to collect Kate’s soul is sure to seriously piss off the denizens of Hell who’ve claimed it. On the other hand, improperly sending a pure soul to Hell for damnation could touch off a war with Heaven. →

February 20, 2012

Hell is ‘Round the Corner by Chris F. Holm

I’m very pleased to welcome Chris Holm to the blog today. Anyone who’s ever read a short story by Chris knew immediately he was destined for something big, and with Chris’s book Dead Harvest, the first in a trilogy from Angry Robot Books, set to be released next Tuesday, February 28th, it seems big is finally here. Today Chris shares how he found inspiration for the book’s protagonist, Sam, in Hell.

Chris Holm That Dante guy was onto something.

See, I grew up in a Catholic family. Catholic families know from punishment. From month-long groundings to wallopings to threats of violent murder, I’ve heard it all. (My personal fave was my mom’s common refrain of “Come here so I can smack you.” Seriously, is that like some kind of aptitude test? Who snaps to when they hear that ol’ chestnut?) But when it comes to scaring kids straight, the best most Sunday Schools can muster is the old lake-of-fire routine. And sure, it don’t sound good exactly, but for a kid raised on Stephen King and A Nightmare on Elm Street, that hell didn’t hardly impress.

Then I read Dante’s INFERNO. Suddenly, hell had my attention.

Sometime during middle school, this must’ve been. Yeah, I know: I was kind of a morbid kid. But I’d yet to discover punk, so I was all about Poe and King and Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and I figured “Dude gets lost in woods and wanders into hell” was just the sort of thing I should be reading.

Turns out, it was just the sort of thing I should be reading. And, impressionable child that I was, it messed me up a tiny little bit. →

February 17, 2012

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil by Jack Barrow

“Look, we’re not saving the Universe again! It was a really bad trip last time.” – Clint

If you threw Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin, and Hunter S. Thompson in a blender, well, you’d get quite a mess actually. But if you threw a handful of their books in a blender… no, that’d still make a mess. OK, pretend you could magically combine the best of what makes each of those authors unique into a single work and what you ended up with might read something like Jack Barrow’s The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil.

The Three Hidden Masters – two from Hemel Hempstead, one from Bricket Wood (you’ll get that once you’ve read the book) – are pretty low-key, laid-back guys. Of course, all the beer, rum and weed they consume contributes to that. So when their friend Geoff, the Fourth Hidden Master (from Blackpool), contacts them for help it’s rather an effort for Clint, Nigel and Wayne to mobilize for a weekend trip up there to lend a hand.

It seems strange things are afoot in Blackpool. Initially it appears to be confined to the model village Geoff is building, where figures are moving around of their own accord and, even more disturbing, figures Geoff didn’t even make for the village are appearing out of nowhere. If that was the only strange thing happening it could be written off as voodoo gone wrong, which has been known to happen to Geoff on an occasion or two.

It quickly becomes apparent, however, that there are larger forces at work in Blackpool. Is it simply that the local council has disturbing plans to turn Blackpool into the Las Vegas of England, or is something more sinister at work, something that could threaten to tear a hole in the fabric of the Universe? Well, whatever it is, the Hidden Masters have to wrap things up by Sunday night… they do have to be back at work on Monday after all. →

February 16, 2012

Stagger Bay by Pearce Hansen

I always figured at a minimum you should remember the names of people who die because of you. – Markus

Given the life he’s lead, Markus may need a notebook to keep track of those names. A childhood scarred by violence lead Markus to a youthful life of crime, one which was only enhanced by his “training” in the “gladiator schools” he was routinely incarcerated in as a result of his criminal activity.

Older and wiser, Markus has remade himself into an upstanding citizen, having moved with his young family from the crime-filled Oakland area to upstate California, to the seemingly idyllic Stagger Bay. His past comes back to haunt him when he’s wrongfully arrested and convicted of the horrific murder of an entire family and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

When he’s finally exonerated by DNA evidence after seven long years, Markus returns to Stagger Bay to find his brother dead at the hands of the police and his wife the victim of her own addictions, having OD’d not long after Markus went to prison. His son, now seventeen and a virtual stranger, wants nothing to do with him, neither do the town’s residents despite Markus having been cleared of the crime. Seeing no reason to stay where he’s not wanted and there’s nothing left for him, Makrus heads out of town… and that’s when his life really gets crazy. →

February 15, 2012

Water Sports by Paul Johnston

OK, right from the jump this one requires a disclaimer: I am not a regular reader of poetry, therefore reviewing it is not my forte. Having said that, I was sufficiently moved by Water Sports, a collection by author Paul Johnston, to give it a go. So… here I go.

Johnston is best known as the author of three fiction series featuring the characters Matt Wells, Alex Mavros, and Quint Dalrymple. I have reviewed books from the Matt Wells (Maps of Hell and The Nameless Dead) and Alex Mavros (The Last Red Death) series, and have also been fortunate to have Paul guest post here on two occasions.

Though both of Paul’s guest posts are well worth reading, it is his first, “On Death – Not Necessarily Terminal, Not Necessarily Red,” that should definitely be read in conjunction with Water Sports. In that post, Paul talks frankly about a serious health scare he had, one which required a nine-hour operation and follow up chemotherapy. That experience is the most obvious fuel which stoked the fire of Water Sports, and the ways Paul has addressed such a life-altering event, and questions of mortality in general, via poetry are quite moving. →

February 15, 2012

Slam Dancing in the Mosh Pit by Pearce Hansen

Very pleased to welcome Pearce Hansen to the blog today. Pearce is the author of the books Street Raised, Gun Sex (free today only!), and Stagger Bay, which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow.

Pearce Hansen I was born in the middle of the post war paperback boom, when more books were printed, sold and read than at any time before in history. Those rickety rotating pocket books stands were everywhere I went with my family: drugstores, bus stations, supermarkets, even barber shops. Those pulp covers fascinated me: lurid colors and vibrant composition – blazing guns, big breasted women in swooning peril, and a granite jawed hero going toe to toe with either a sneering villain or a tentacled monster.

The smell of those books was great too. I’d see them at rummage sales and flea markets and I had to riffle the already crumbling pages, smell the scent of decomposing cheap paper. I loved them.

Through the years books were always my friends. I was a book gypsy for Moe Moskowitz of Moe’s Books on Telegraph in Berkeley – he taught me to spot first editions and books of value at yard sales, then bring them to him and sell at a profit – he made his pile to be sure, but it was hardly an unpaid internship on my part. Eventually I became a book merchant in my own right buying low and selling high at the Alameda Penny Market – one of the craziest ‘thieves’ markets’ in history I’ll bet, coming in at a time when the hippies were segueing into the drug dealing culture, and when the Angels and the Black Panthers still dominated the East Bay subculture like the T Rexes in Jurassic Park →

February 14, 2012

The Next One to Fall by Hilary Davidson

“Lil, you got some dark thoughts runnin’ through your head. I understand why they’re there, but you got to push them away when they start crowdin’ in on you. Otherwise they’ll take over.” – Jesse Robb

Still reeling from the devastating events that occurred in series debut The Damage Done, travel writer Lily Moore has been coaxed into going on a trip to Peru to hike the Inca Trail with her best friend, photographer Jesse Robb. Jesse figures that a combined vacation / work outing is just what Lily needs to help drag her out of the claws of grief and depression. Unfortunately, fate has other plans for Lily.

She and Jesse are enjoying the misty early morning views at the famous Inca city of Machu Picchu when they overhear an argument, followed a few minutes later by a scream cut ominously short. Upon investigating, they find a severely injured woman lying at the bottom of a steep stone staircase. Jesse goes for help while Lily tries to comfort the woman, who is obviously near death.

While going in and out of lucidity the woman tells Lily she was forced by her boyfriend, Len, to drink something that made her sick and disoriented, then pushed her down the stairs. When the woman dies shortly after help arrives Lily tells the police what she said, but the authorities seem perfectly happy to write the death off as an accident. Lily isn’t willing to let it go at that, however, and her subsequent poking around uncovers a very disturbing piece of information; the woman at the bottom of the staircase isn’t the first to end up dead after being involved with Len. →

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