Any attempt to categorise The Ice Lands is pretty much doomed. It’s a skilfully written exercise in edgy ambiguity, tantalisingly open to interpretation. It’s not ‘horror’ of the stereotypical rip / rend / spatter style, yet there’s plenty of blood spilled using most unpleasant methods. It draws on the melancholic mystery and the stark…
An ordinary town in modern-day America, Clifton Heights, hides dark secrets and the stirring of ancient evil. In this collection of linked short stories, author Kevin Lucia quietly and methodically explores the porous zones, those weakened areas where human greed and human need allow Something Other to extend into our reality. The result is an…
These three very different novellas go far beyond the boundaries of backwoods noir into no-holds-barred horror. Gator Bait (which I read first) is maybe the most mature and most conventional of the trio – stylised, snappy prose in the hard-assed tradition of hard-boiled crime. It oozes the atmosphere of the Louisiana swamps to evoke a…
Author of the Killing Sisters and JJ Stoner crime-thrillers, Frank Westworth, is the latest addition to the line-up for next year’s ‘Darker Side Of Fiction’ convention. Hosted by Hourglass Events, this one-day bookfest of all things mysterious will be held in Peterborough, UK, on October 7th 2017. To date, 24 authors have confirmed they’ll be…
This horror / sci-fi novella is billed as a ‘dystopian’ tale, which suggests a bleak futurescape of social or technological woe. Instead, Crossfades uses movie-making language in a supernatural / paranormal setting, to describe the moment between life and death, where a few lost souls get stuck in imaginary worlds of their own making. So,…
There’s a reason why this hardboiled gumshoe detective wears his hat brim low and his coat collar high: he’s got more to hide than most pulp fiction antiheroes. Vitus Adamson isn’t just a three-time loser, an ex-soldier, an ex-husband and an ex-father who investigates the small-change domestic trivia which the police barely even consider crime.…
It’s not the fictional aspects of Lost Girl which will keep you wide awake at night, enduring endless dark hours between sweat-soaked fever dreams. It’s the entirely possible predictions of what might happen in the next 40 years that should snap you out of complacent daydreams. Forest fires blazing out of control across whole continents.…
As the days shorten and the autumn evenings draw in, it’s time to settle down on the sofa for some mystery, intrigue and blunt force trauma. So here’s a selection of cracking crime-thrillers, detective novels, action adventure; mystery, horror, fantasy, and Nordic noir, featuring notables such as James Bond, Jack Reacher and Lisbeth Salander, no…
In an extreme take on urban noir, author Jon Bassoff rips apart the human psyche for our outraged entertainment and potential enlightenment. We get a ringside seat for the transformation of a fully-fledged psychopath. Frankie Avicious goes from being a bitter, whining, booze-bloated no-hoper with a nasty past and a penchant for lazy manipulation, into…
Folks in the UK have a long weekend looming – the perfect opportunity to grab some quality time with your favourite author. Or maybe experiment with new writers, different characters and strange situations. Here’s some suggestions from the MMM TBR shelf: crime-thrillers, murder-mysteries, Nordic noir, cosy crime, sci-fi, fantasy and crossover titles from well-known and…
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