Night Mask By William W. Johnstone

Night Mask
By William W. Johnstone
1994 Zebra
Paperback, 350 pages

                There have been a few homicides of late in La Barca, California and the victims’ faces are missing! That’s right, their faces have been flayed off and taken. This revolting turn of events has a somewhat familiar ring to it, so detectives Leo Franks and Lani Prejean start a cross-country investigation to get to the bottom of it. And how does it tie in to La Barca’s easy listening radio station?

 

                Johnstone really puts the pedal to the metal in this one, delivering mind-melting gore and over the top cruelty, but always keeping his sense of humor intact. The body count is staggering, and the two detectives do everything they can, legal or not, to get to the bottom of it. It become clear pretty early on that “The Ripper” is likely more than one person.

 

                Of course, most of Johnstone’s usual right-wing bullshit is on display here, in fact, he spouts off more than usual. Guns are good, heavy metal is evil, the gay community are freaks, and only God can really be trusted. Whereas that usually adds to the camp charm of a Johnstone book, it gets to be a little too much in Night Mask. Don’t get me wrong; denouncing heavy metal as the work of Satan is never not fun but the gay bashing gets quite irksome.

 

                The scope of the book gets a little too big after a while, as well, and the cozy little killer-thriller starts to get a little long in the tooth. The kill-pits and the disenchanted (heavy-metal) teen followers of The Ripper gets silly. He had a nice little, gory potboiler going but went and made it too big to truly satisfy. Still, I enjoyed this book a lot. Huge print, lots of breaks, gallons of blood, mounds of rotting corpses, and a compelling story (to a point) had me blowing through this one in just a couple of days. There are more twists and turns than needed but dig in, check your brain at the door, load your gun and genuflect… you’re in for a fun ride.

 

               

The Millfield Terror By John Monsees

The Millfield Terror
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback, 210 pages

                I received an advanced review copy to… review. So here I go!

 

                The Millfield Terror fits in comfortably with the books released by Hamlyn and New English Library in the Seventies and Eighties but also offers a heavy dose of good ol’ American corruption. It turns out that, even with all mod cons like cellphones and the interwebz, you’re still fucked if mutated nature gets a taste for human meat.

 

                The brain trust in Millfield, Ohio cut corners and hire a shady clean-up crew to take care of a closed chemical plant but their method makes the local centipedes into human hunting, organized giant monsters. Not willing to admit a mistake was made, the councilman who made the call and his brother, the sheriff, initiate a cover-up, despite what locals have seen. The town is sealed off, dooming the citizens, while a group of four believers with evidence (foreman on the clean-up, a doctor, a former scientist and a paperboy) become wanted criminals because they believe in telling the truth. It’s a mad race to stay one step ahead of the rapidly evolving centipedes.

 

                That’s the story in a nutshell but this is a multi-layered story with a town rife with corruption and full of really bad choices, really flawed people trying to save themselves and the town, and intelligent bugs who are far smarter than their prey. Monsees’ science all looks and sounds pretty spot on; my own knowledge is with reptiles and amphibians, not etymology, but it all reads plausible to my eyes. A great deal of writing about the town and its legal (and illegal) dealings also ring true. Obviously, a lot of research went into this and the reader is rewarded with an intelligent and more or less believable tale of giant, mutant centipedes feeding on a small town.

 

The author is a remarkably gifted wordsmith, enjoying some excellent turns of phrases in the vein of Raymond Chandler-meets-Ramsay Campbell. His main characters are all well-formed, behaving believably and the quartet of “good guys” are really worth cheering for. I’m happy to say that, like in our beloved nasties from the past, we get a few small characters introduced just to be bug chow. While the blood and meat does get splattered about and the action is breath-taking, the story really is more about survival, guilt and penance.

 

                Monsees really deserves to be read by a larger audience. It’s tough for an Indy author to gain traction and his writing really has style and panache that should be seen and enjoyed. Give this one a shot and thank me later. The author is responsible for the cover art as well.

Joyride By Stephen Crye

Joyride
By Stephen Crye
1983 Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 248 pages

                How do you review a book like Joyride? Do you like slasher movies? Then you will like this book. That is exactly what this is, a slasher film in book form. It hits all of the proper points, and it is a shitload of fun because of it. Brutal and unrelenting.

 

                Robert Atchinson was a high school outcast. Recently orphaned, everybody made fun of him and mentally abused him. Too bad he had such a crush on pretty, blonde Carla. One day, he would muster up the courage to give her the gift he’d bought for her, some bright red hair ribbons. But everything changed after the accident that disfigured him.

 

                Present day, a group of teens are looking to party in the cemetery. They break in and find a remote spot and do the drinking and smoking thing that all high schoolers do. The characters are cookie cutter slasher film fare; the horny ones, the sensible one, the fat one, and the younger brother who tags along. Little do any of them know that the cemetery has a caretaker names Cleats, formerly known as Robert Atchinson, and he has a serious grudge against all of them for what happened in the past. Except one, a pretty blonde who he thinks is Carla.

 

                The story takes place all in one night with flashbacks to Robert’s shitty school life. Crye gets some good atmosphere in the graveyard and the kills are gruesome and memorable. As a groundskeeper, he has many garden tools on hand and puts them to very good use. None of the characters are particularly likeable so we’re all really on Cleats’ side. BEWARE: the first chapter depicts a very gruesome and brutal murder of an innocent dog. It really has nothing to do with the story, it just shows how messed up Cleats is. It’s incredibly disturbing and if you skip right to Chapter 2, you might thank yourself for it.

 

                Is it original? No. Is it well-written? Well, it’s not poorly written. But it’s a blast, a fun page turner full of gore and mayhem. Isn’t that what we all want? Go, Cleats, GO!

 

                On Will Erickson’s brilliant Too Much Horror Fiction blog, he reviews Joyride and got a response from the author’s ex-girlfriend that is full of wonderful information. Crye is Ron Patrick, who was an editor that thought he’d try to write a book just as a goof. This was the result. Evidently, he was a handsome, partying, fun-loving dude who just did it “as a lark”. Under his real name, he also wrote Beyond the Threshold, a title that is in my TBR pile. Sadly, Patrick is now deceased.

 

                And YAY to Pinnacle Books for crediting the cover artists, Somja Lamut and Nenand Jakesovic on the Copyright page!

    Fathom Press released a nice reprint in 2026. Here is the cover:

Siege on Dome 17 By Nick Young

Siege on Dome 17
By Nick Young
2024 White Mountain Pub.
Paperback, 239 pages

    This is Young’s debut novel and it’s fair to say that he’s off to a fairly auspicious start. The many characters’ (some are super unsavory) actions all have an effect on each other in one way or another and the story is multi-faceted, but that’s not to say that Young doesn’t know what we’re here for. Gore and bodily fluids flow and splash aplenty. Blood, plasma, claret, urine, vomit, pus, jizz and entrails leave bodies in every chapter… and there are 41 chapters!

    Ten years have passed since the bombs dropped and the world is a dead, radiated desert and the surviving humans live in steel domes. Dome 17 may well be the last dome with anyone alive. Some remaining humans have become mutants, covered with boils and pus-filled sacs who become crazier over time. Taft is the man in charge of killing the mutants once they lose their humanity. A shitty job indeed. Three housing blocks are in Dome 17 and the A-block is all mutants. The survivors are running out of everything and things are breaking down, including the dome’s retracting roof. It’s turning into a war between the humans and the A-block and things are about to get even worse.

    Giant insects are getting into the dome and the car-sized ants and huge wasps don’t care who they’re killing and eating. One vengeful mutant is feeding victims to a massive spider. The humans have to find a way to curb the insects and the mutants and save their asses, but the rag-tag team of heroes seem like a very unlikely crew to handle the siege. Descriptive violence ensues and the viscera is knee-deep in no time. As with the 80’s pulp horrors that this book is inspired by, inappropriate sex is also graphically depicted.

    Young has a ton of fun with his killings, with guts sliding out of impaled bodies and the above-mentioned fluids spraying far and wide. The characters include a pedo/ child-murdering reverend, a mourning mom, a German co-worker of Taft’s that I pictured looking like Ted V. Mikels, a useless, dog-killing Dome Mayor, a mutant with revenge on his mind, the mayor’s very capable wife who become Taft’s main squeeze, and a plethora of folks, both good and bad, who are trying to survive. They are all worthwhile characters that help push the story along.

    As with most small press books, it could have used another pass by an editor. A character named Arthur become Albert after a few pages and there are some typos throughout but overall, in that respect, this book is in better shape than 90% of the self-published/ small press books that I encounter. Young sent me a review copy with a barf-bag that he thoughtfully included as a bookmark. I didn’t have to use it but I can see where some might! The splatter is heavy, the gore is plentiful and the sick bastards that live in this book just might make you puke! On a side note, I wonder if Young’s idea for the domes came from Skydome in Toronto.

                                              It's a barf-bag! It's a bookmark! It's a barf-bag bookmark!!

Roadkill Girls By John Monsees

Roadkill Girls
By John Monsees
2025 Grindhouse Horror
Paperback and Kindle, 132 pages

                                             

    It’s not every day that I get a review copy of a book but I’m honored to have received the first book from Grindhouse Horror. I know John Monsees primarily as an illustrator but his move into writing is a lucky thing for lovers of pulp horror. He gets it, he’s good at it, he understands what readers want, and he delivers it in a big way.

    Jinx. Spider. Viper. Roxy. Four women on motorcycles, fleeing from the police after a bungled robbery leaves a dead body. The desert roads offer them no respite so they go way offroad, lose the pigs and find themselves at a diner in the middle of nowhere. But the people running the diner are cannibals! They soon learn that their problems are just beginning. There is something else there. Something monstrous. Something underground. Something that wants to eat them.

    That’s right, things pile up for our anti-heroes quickly. We want the kitchen sink and Monsees gives it to us. The characters are beautifully developed; Jinx is the small gang’s leader, an ex-con and the one with the most level head, though she’s feeling she is in over that level head. Spider is an ex-military tech specialist, also a convict, and has the ability to work gadgets to the gang’s advantage. Viper is nuts, no worries about her own life or death and is responsible for the murder that put them into hot water. Roxy is just a kid; 18 years old and running away from an abusive home, joining the others and feeling like she has her first real family. I developed a lot of feelings for these badass women in the short running time of this book.

    Of course, we’re here for the pulp sleaze and Monsees lays the gore on thick with slicing, dicing and biting, from both a drug-addled Viper and the massive underground worms that are the ultimate challenge for the gang. The worms are part Tremors (Ron Underwood, 1990) and also they reminded me of the annelids in Peter Tremayne’s hard to find book The Morgow Rises (Sphere, 1982). They’re tough to kill but easy to be killed by. But Monsees offers far more than a gorefest. As mentioned, the main characters aren’t just fodder. When anything happens to them, we care.

    There are also plenty of brilliant, Raymond Chadler-esque passages that made me stop reading and go back to reread and admire the line. This novel wasn’t just banged out; it was lovingly created. Not everything is perfect (two Harleys and two Kawasakis become four Harleys later on and they evidently got a fill-up at the diner, but I didn’t read it) but this is a highly recommended debut. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention the cover. It is tweaked Artificial Intelligence and I promised myself that I’d never promote something (book, movie or record) using AI, but it’s not an egregious use of it (like that shitty, shiny, cartoony garbage) and Monsees only takes the illustration gig away from himself, so I’ll turn the other cheek here. This review copy also includes a sneak peek at Monsees’ next release, a “shameless love letter to Guy N. Smith” and yes, it will be crabs. I am beyond excited for that one!
    
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Cannibals By Guy N. Smith

Cannibals
By Guy N. Smith
1996 Sheridan
Paperback, 208 pages

Artwork by Les Edwards

    This is top-shelf GNS all the way. Filled with detestable people that have horrible, gory things happen to them. You really can’t ask for more.

    Invercurie is a tiny village buried in the Scottish Highlands. The people there like… no, demand their privacy and plan on keeping outsiders out. Doug Geddis decides to build a few chalets on his property, much to the consternation of his fellow villagers. You see, Invercurie has a secret living up in the mountains, and they’d like to keep it hidden. But, of course, tourists do start to show up to Geddis’s chalets and despite warnings from the short-tempered locals, the outsiders hike up into the mountains. And that’s where the cannibals live.

    A man and his 19-year-old arm candy, a dysfunctional family of four (and their doomed dog), and a young couple making their first getaway: these are the folks who rented the chintzy chalets and might live to regret it. The mutated cannibal folks visit in the night and yum, that human meat is the tastiest of all. Smith doesn’t shy away from anything in the telling of this tale. The gore is nauseating (i.e. wonderful), and you can almost really smell the caves that the cannibals dwell in.

GNS does his usual expert job on setting the stage. The village is a very real place and the mountains around it are very easy to put yourself right into. The sketchy chalets couldn’t keep out a raccoon, much less a pack of hungry cannibals. Despite the spacious outdoor setting, a real sense of claustrophobia is achieved. Those cannibals are stealthy. I wonder how many readers would agree with me that GNS purposely set up this narrative with a Psycho-like structure.

Cannibals was first published in 1986 by Arrow Books with a somewhat dull cover of what looks like a dog’s snout. When they reissued it in 1988, they wisely changed it over to a great Les Edwards painting, one that respectfully depicts the cannibals as described in Smith’s prose. That cover was retained for Sheridan’s third printing, I’m happy to say. Smith plus Edwards equals perfection. This one comes highly recommended.

The less effective cover for Arrow's first edition.

Full Brutal By Kristopher Triana

 

Full Brutal
By Kristopher Triana
2018 Grindhouse Press
Paperback, 256 pages

 

                I consider Kristopher Triana to be one of the Big 3 Splatterpunk authors currently at the top of their game, alongside Aron Beauregard and Daniel Volpe. Those three get consistently high ratings in book love and book hate, happy readers and disgusted readers, and mentions within the horror book community. This was my first Triana offering.

 

                Kim White is a cheerleader, a popular, pretty girl, an excellent student, and a bored virgin. At 16, she has it all; money, looks, popularity, a trusting but often absent father, and smarts. When her best friend tells her that losing her virginity was “life-changing”, Kim sets in motion a plan to change her own life. To do the deed, she chooses one of her teachers. Y’see, the boys her own age are drips and the teacher, well, he could give her so much more. And we’re not talking just sex.

 

                She not only successfully seduces the teacher, but she slowly and incrementally breaks him down, threatening him and making him fuck her again, abusing him to make him wish he had never seen her. In an act of extreme cruelty, she also befriends his daughter Caitlin, who is a grade behind her in school. Getting in tight with his family, she tutors the gullible girl to be a cheerleader and gains the youngsters trust completely. Then, she starts work on destroying Caitlin, little by little. Kim doesn’t give a shit. About anything, not even herself. She’s bored and wants to die. Perhaps that is where I related to her so much.

 

                Unbelievably, I was laughing while enjoying the total decimation of the family at Kim’s sadistic hands. She was just so devious and cruel. Poor little Caitlin, her life was falling apart. Mr. Blakeley’s eventual death (Kim did it) seals the deal and Caitlin eventually succumbs herself. Man, that was some rough stuff. But that’s just the first half of the book.

 

                In all honesty, if the book ended right there, it would have been one of my favorites of the year, anyway. The second half is fun, but in my opinion, unnecessary. What could Kim possibly do to make herself even more of a beast. The second half concerns what she does to control the little fuck-demon in her belly. Yup. Ol’ Mr. Blakely knocked her up and her attempts to miscarry were a failure. Human flesh seems to satisfy the little mistake. So, the second half is full of gore and mayhem.

 

                The second half is fun but, like I said, if the book ended after the first half, it would have been a very powerful story of torment and sadism. I look at the second part as kind of a sequel to the first part. At any rate, I give this one my highest marks and I’ll always feel that Kim spoke for me, even if just a little bit.

Talia By Daniel J. Volpe

Talia
By Daniel J. Volpe
2021 Self-published
Paperback, 211 pages

 

Blood makes the best lube!

                Evidently, Talia is a prequel to Volpe’s 2020 book Billy Silver, but I didn’t know that going in and it certainly made no difference to me, the reader. If you haven’t read that one yet, you’re still good to go.

                Talia is a midwestern gal transplanted in New York searching for fame in the bright lights of the big city. Well, she finds fame (of a sort) after being taken under the wing of Mike (never a name one should trust!), an underground specialty pornographer. She performs her jaw-dropping sleaze on camera for Mike and his psycho henchman Sally with no complaints until it gets bloody. Y’see, Mike has started to make snuff-porn. And if you don’t like it, Sally’s razor has something to say.

                Volpe lays the sleaze on thick and the fluids and depravity flood from the pages. The porn is gratuitous as fuck but we’re not reading Bambi here, kids… this is Splatterpunk Supreme. I mean, the first line in the book is “The strap-on dildo was nearly the size of a fire extinguisher”. Not just blood is splattering here, either. Once it does, however, the story became a lot more interesting for me. In my horror eyes, blood > cum.

                Admittedly, with little backstory on Talia (maybe there is some in the previous book), she sure seemed to get into the swing of things in the heavy-porn scene for such an innocent farm-girl. But she is badass and after a run-in with Sally, she gets even more violent. The book takes a supernatural turn that leaves the pages dripping with gore and satisfying revenge.

                Talia is filled with various bodily fluids, rape, murder, torture, gore, and nihilism… just exactly what you want when reading an extreme horror book. This one can be torn through in a sitting or two. Volpe is a heck of a nice guy in person but has one fucked up and twisted imagination. Soon to be a certified National Treasure.

                This edition has a nice, eye-catching cover by Mr. Michael Squid.

Scorpion: Second Generation By Michael R. Linaker

Scorpion: Second Generation
By Michael R. Linaker
1982 New English Library
Paperback, 158 pages

 

                New English Library unleashed Linaker’s Scorpion in 1980 and evidently, it sold well enough to warrant this sequel. Well, I thank my lucky stars for that! This book is by-the-numbers nature-strikes-back hokum and for that, I love it. Fast, no bullshit, gore, sex, and nastiness… what more could I ask for?

 

                A few years after the initial scorpion menace, another Cornish resort town is seeing a rise in death and dismemberment, not to mention some nasty envenomation. Sounds like our old pals the scorpions weren’t completely wiped out after all. And they have evolved: this second generation are bigger and meaner than their boob-munching counterparts from the first novel. They are also dying from an infectious disease that can be passed to humans. Cornwall is, once again, fucked.

 

                This is the Guy N. Smith crab novel you never read. Linaker merely swaps in scorpions for crabs and scuffling, scratching sounds for click-click-clickety and there you have it. This is a quick, gore-splashed mutant scorpion book that does exactly what you would want it to. Linaker probably knocked it out in a couple of days and, if you have the time, you can probably enjoy it in an afternoon.

 

                Linaker was (is?) an extremely prolific author who specialized in actions thrillers, notably a slew of Mack Bolan titles, as well as a number of Westerns. I’m not sure how or why he came to NEL’s attention for a few horror novels but thank goodness he did! This book is a perfect antidote to a shitty workday. Just picture your boss getting his bones snapped and his skin split by a four-foot scorpion, his innards slipping out onto the floor. Hell to the yes!

Clickers By J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams

Clickers
By J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams
2011 Deadite Press
Paperback, 271 pages

 

                Originally published as an eBook in 1999, this novel has gone through a few incarnations before Deadite Press released this author-approved edition. It still looks like it could still use a little editing and it is a bit overlong, but the book definitely satisfies anyone looking for a gory Creature Feature. I’m not a big fan of Dave Kendall’s cover art, though.

 

                A horror author heads to a coastal town in Maine to work on his next book. He meets a slew of underdeveloped characters (and, really… who cares? We’re here for the mayhem) and before too long, the beaches erupt with large crabs who also happen to have venomous scorpion tails. What transpires is pure a Guy N. Smith and H.P. Lovecraft mash-up. The gore gets ladled on heavy, and nobody is safe.

 

                Mercifully, Guy N. Smith does get name dropped in the text. It’s only fair because Smith’s trademark “click-click-clickety-click” is lifted for these crabby imitations. I mean… the main character (a fairly unlikeable writer named Rick) dubs them Clickers. It’s the title of the damn book! Original or not, the book delivers what it promised; a gore-filled B-movie of a story. My favorite passage, after an old woman is stung by the crab-scorpion; “Her body expanded and blew up like a hot water balloon, inflating to almost double her size before the skin split and reddish, meaty goo splashed all over the crabs, drenching them in Old Woman Sauce.” The fact that “Old Woman Sauce” is capitalized makes me very happy.

 

                No, it’s not a really well written book but it tells the story admirably and despite going on a bit long, it’s just what the doctor ordered when you need mindless, gory sludge. Gonzalez wrote three more entries in the Clickers canon, all of them with fellow horror author Brian Keene. Gonzalez passed away in 2014. Mark Williams died in 1998, a year before Clickers saw print.

 

                I never even mentioned the Lovecrafty stuff! Dig in! There’s more than just stinging crabs on the menu!