Swamp Monster Massacre By Hunter Shea

 

Swamp Monster Massacre
By Hunter Shea
2017 Severed Press
Paperback, 138 pages

After reading The Montauk Monster, I started looking up Hunter Shea books online to see what else I needed to read by him. A two-sentence review by “Nick” on Goodreads ("The fucking bigfoots were throwing alligators at them!" If that sentence makes you smile, then this book is for you.) had this in my Amazon basket before you could say Gator Bombs!

This book does exactly what is says on the tin; Swamp Apes in the Everglades attack a swamp-tour boat that was hijacked by an arms dealer and happens to run over a young Bigfoot in a crash. The airboat’s passengers are the characters, not much more than fodder, but we don’t ask for much; we just want the bloody massacre, and we get it.

Shea once again writes his own cryptozoological rules and gives a lot more Skunk Ape lore than was previously known. Their smell, their underwater prowess and hunting skills are given a great deal of detail and their hatred of the interlopers is well deserved.  With the short page count, I could barely put the book down, especially with Shea’s propensity for ending chapters like “And what happened next would change everything...” I mean, you just have to go on and keep reading!

Hunter Shea gets it. Nature strikes back in a bloody tornado of body parts. I will keep reading his output. He writes for me.

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The Unholy By John Halkin

The Unholy

By John Halkin

1982 Hamlyn
Paperback, 158 pages

 

When I think of John Halkin, my mind goes immediately to his trio of Slither, Slime, and Squelch and, to a lesser extent, Bloodworm. All worthwhile reads, especially Slither which is a masterpiece of the genre. Little did I know that right after that book, he’d written another horror novel; not about slimy, killer worms, but about a mummified, severed arm that crawls to life, attaches itself to poor, unfortunate victims and possesses the fuck out of them.

 

It’s the ol’ religious artifact thing again, but the possession angle is new and modern-day Paris is fucked. The surprisingly spry, lifeless arm squeezes its victim at the elbow, hard enough to pop it off, then grafts itself on, taking over the mind and body of the new host. Pages and pages of bloody killing ensues. Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down. Just how I like my 80’s pulp horror.

 

At 158 pages, the book has no chance to get boring. The pace is rapid, the characters are good enough to hold your interest and the gore is plentiful. The ending is a kind of abrupt and there’s a bit more religion than I usually go for (being a religious relic, the arm needs to be explained a little bit, I guess) but I wholeheartedly recommend this one for fans of grisly horror paperbacks.

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Killer Pack By Albert Herbert and Roger Myers

 

Killer Pack
By Albert Herbert and Roger Myers
1976 Manor Books
Paperback, 221 pages.

 

                “This book is really poorly written,” thought Mike as he read Killer Pack.

 

                It really is. It took two authors to write this one and they obviously didn’t have the heart to tell each other that neither one of them could actually write. One of the most jarring things for me was the endless quotation marks for inner thoughts. I was all like, who are they talking to? Oh… it’s a thought. Now, that’s not technically a writing error but it is endless and really could (should) have been done differently. Choppy sentences abound, as well. A sentence for every action… He got into the car. He started the car. He drove the car to the store. He got out of the car. He chose a shopping cart. He went into the store. He selected his groceries. He went to the checkout. The total for his groceries was $20. (That’s only a slight exaggeration.)

 

                OK, this book came out the same year as David Fishers’ infinitely superior The Pack and shares the springboard of vacationers getting dogs for the summer, then abandoning them when vacation is over. That’s some sick shit, but it makes for some good killer dogs.

 

                A vacation town in Long Island is having a problem with a pack of rogue dogs. People are getting killed. What is everybody going to do about it? That is the crux of this story; not the killer dogs but what the town officials are planning to do about it. Town Supervisor Diana Wentworth is tough as nails and won’t budge on her No Leash Law. An up-and-coming candidate for her job wants to enforce one. (He’d get my vote… leash your dogs in parks, asshole.) Obviously, as attacks happen, Ms. Wentworth’s platform goes to shit.

 

                Yep, that’s pretty much what the book is about. The dogs become secondary. But despite the absolutely abysmal writing and lackluster action scenes, it’s really fairly enjoyable. It was good to see a strong, if fallible, woman in a position of power and thoughtfully constructed gay characters. Both of those things are rare in Seventies pulp horror novels.

 

                I almost want to read this duo’s other book The Last Survivor just to see if it’s as badly written. I would also probably read Myers’ solo release from 2010, Werewolf: A Gay Romp. Just because.

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Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ By Mendal W. Johnson

 

Let’s Go Play at the Adams’
By Mendal W. Johnson
1974 Bantam
Paperback, 282 pages

 

                This novel is inspired by the Sylvia Likens murder case, as was Jack Ketchum’s later work The Girl Next Door (1989). Thanks to Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, this book has had a resurgence in interest, driving already high prices even higher. Vanguard has reprinted it under the PfH banner. Perhaps that is why I found an original at a good price. I took the plunge.

 

                While the Adams are vacationing in Europe, they have their responsible baby-sitter Barbara minding their two children: 13-year-old Bobby and 10-year-old Cindy. All is rosy until Barbara wakes up to find herself tethered to her bed. She comes to learn that it is a “game” being played by the Freedom Five, the two Adams kids and their friends, 16-year-old John, Dianne, almost 18, and her brother Paul, also in his young teens. They consider her, at 20, to be an adult and, though they like her, she is one of them… a grown-up. Now the kids were in power.

               

                Naturally, things ascend, though they happen at a slow pace. There were times that I was afraid I was going to give up on it (a la Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game, a book I found so desperately boring that I didn’t finish it and haven’t read a King book since), but the prose made me stick with it, for better or worse. As the story progresses, so do the children’s cruel ambitions, and Barbara is methodically stripped, raped, and tortured. Much of this made me angry. I’m like, come on! You’re bigger and smarter than they are… make it stop. But this was just all a part of Johnson’s mastery of storytelling.

 

                Every character’s point of view is explored, from the 10-year-old right up through to the captive Barbara. In parts, I couldn’t tell if I thought it was wildly misogynistic or if that might just be how certain characters felt about the situation. At any rate, it made me very uneasy for much of the book’s length, but I had to keep going. Such is the strength of this narrative.

 

                The book absolutely kicked my ass.

 

                It took a few days (weeks?) to come up from the lows this book made me feel. It is said that Johnson’s wife blames this book, the author’s only published work, for killing him, driving him into deeper drink and depression. I can believe it. The attention to detail put into the psyche of each character makes everyone’s motives and beliefs crystal clear. And that makes it all even more horrifying.

 

                My wife has read Ketcham’s book and said I should avoid it, that it would make me mad. I have also heard that Adams’ is a “lighter” take on the same subject. I shall definitely be avoiding Ketcham’s book. Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ absolutely kicked my ass.

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Mastodon By Steve Stred

 

Mastodon
By Steve Stred
2022 Black Void Publishing
Paperback, 254 pages including Afterword and Writing Playlist!

                Seventeen years to the day of his mother’s disappearance, Tyler’s father’s plane goes down in the exact same spot of Canadian wilderness where Mom vanished. That leaves our 17-year-old hero to head out to search for his dad, although the area is restricted. Military owned. Off limits. Verboten. But thanks to years of hiking and survival lessons with his Pop, Tyler is ready to break the rules and go off to search for his parents. If the number of years sound similar to you, that’s right. Tyler has never seen his mother.

                Once Tyler is past the perimeter of the restricted area, the book alternates between his survivalist skills, his stealth, and his fears. It turns out the area is not safe at all. There are strange beasties afoot in the woods. With the help of a Mountie who is on a similar mission to get to the facility deep within the woods, Tyler discovers a military/ scientific conspiracy that could end his life if he gets too close.

                I came to this book as a creature-feature recommendation from the good ol’ Books of Horror Facebook page. It isn’t something I would ever have discovered on my own, and I enjoyed it, so… thank you. The tension stays high throughout the journey through the woods and gets notched up even higher as Tyler nears his goal. The creatures in this feature are many, with the scientists playing Dr. Moreau and creating hybrid, mutated monsters that now fill the woods.

                Stred is a fine writer and keeps the pages turning at a rapid pace. My only gripe would be that it is very much a boy’s book… a son searching for his father. There isn’t much estrogen in the story. If I had had a stronger relationship with my own father, perhaps it would have resonated with me more. Shit, if my father went down, I’d just say, “oh well… bummer” and move on.

                All in all, this is a fun book that hits a lot of the right notes. I’ll check out more of this author. I like his style.

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Bonegrinder By John Lutz

 

Bonegrinder
By John Lutz
1980 Berkley
Paperback, 232 pages

 

                No, perv, this isn’t a porno, it is an early novel from John Lutz, who went on to be a very successful mystery writer, author of Single White Female and an Edgar Award winner. Like so many animal-attack books, it came in the wake of Jaws, and it certainly wears it’s influence on its sleeve.

 

                There seems to be a monster in the lake in a small resort town in the Ozarks. There have been a few gory deaths and sketchy descriptions and that is enough to cause a lot of excitement in this remote setting. Tourists, news people and gawkers crash the scene, hoping to get a glimpse of the newly coined “Bonegrinder” or, better yet, one of the monster’s bloody victims. That’s more than Sherriff Wintone can take, and he struggles to maintain the peace and his own life in the midst of this Crypto-Craze.

 

                I don’t know. I guess this was a pretty good book; certainly, it is well-written, but most of the characters are somewhat annoying. The sheriff is pretty much likeable, though he’s written with such a laid-back delivery and colloquialisms that I struggled a few times. Of course, he is the Sherriff Brody of the story, but I kept picturing him as Richard Farnsworth in Misery (1990) due to the writing of the character. Of course, Farnsworth was far older than Wintone was supposed to be, so it made the love interest scenes a bit jarring. And, like the sheriff, I wanted to smack the town drunk in the face.

 

                All in all, the book felt a little overlong for me and the holding off (and holding off and holding off) on the reveal of the monster made me impatient. I can see how Lutz became adept at mysteries. I figured out one side-plot quickly, so I was pleased with myself. It’s not a bad book and I don’t regret the time I spent with it, but it didn’t completely satisfy me.

 

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The Fog By James Herbert

The Fog

By James Herbert

1975 Signet
Paperback, 275 pages

 

I’ve voiced my opinion that James Herbert tends to over-write in the pages of Midnight before, so I’ll just leave that here and shut up.

 

The Fog is Herbert’s first follow-up to his masterful The Rats and the first half of the book is pure, batshit crazy Herbert greatness. A fissure erupts in the middle of a small town, sucking half of the buildings and inhabitants into it. If that’s not bad enough, the rift also releases a yellowish fog, a mist that when it comes in contact with a person, it makes them insane. Suicide, murder, rape and all sorts of nasty behavior is lovingly depicted, and the fog grows bigger with every mind it destroys. Naturally, it’s headed toward London.

 

The set-up to this story is superb and the descriptions of the fog’s effects are gruesome and horrific. I’d have been happy with another 100 pages of just that. I don’t need an explanation or any science; just give me the mayhem. But we do get the reason behind the fog and the main character (a survivor of the fissure), and his crew of bigwigs try to solve the dilemma. Herbert is a good enough writer where he won’t leave you high and dry while they seek answers. There are exciting and dangerous treks through the fog while the crazy Londoners who are out of control lurk around every corner.

 

Herbert revisited some of this idea in his later book The Dark, though that had a supernatural bent. This one gets a little bogged down in the second half, but is still a highly recommended classic. I have the attention span of a tsetse fly and that might be why I started to lose interest while I awaited the finale, but for those of you with more brain in the pan than I, it might be (or become) a favorite.HerbertH

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