Blog Archives
sI have been reading Robert Bloch for over forty years. I never wrote to him like I did to Fritz Leiber, Donald Wandrei, Carl Jacobi, and Hugh Cave. I first discovered him in that all so influential anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. I still like rereading a story by him from Weird Tales here […]
I enjoy a good weird western. Somehow Richard Matheson’s Shadow on the Sun got past me when first released in 1994. The odd part is I was reading the Richard Matheson westerns and enjoyed them. Journal of the Gun Years was great, The Gun Fight was competent but nothing special, the collection By the Gun […]
Howard A. Jones’ second book in the Hanuvar series has come out. I covered Lord of a Shattered Land in September. City of Marble and Blood is the next book in the series, a November release in hardback, 528 pages. The first book was a fix up of previously published stories. This book is divided into […]
Cosmic horror is a term generally applied to H. P. Lovecraft and his circle. My reading of cosmic horror has been either the Lovecraft circle (Donald Wandrei, Clark Ashton Smith) or those influenced by Lovecraft. That segues into William Sloane’s To Walk the Night which I finally set time aside to read. I had heard […]
I read The Best of Manhunt 2 the past six or so weeks. Like volume 1, this is in trade paperback format, 223 pages, 35 stories ranging from 3-4 pages to novelettes. Authors include Fletcher Flora, Richard Deming, Helen Nielsen, Frank Kane, Jonathan Craig, Donald Westlake, Jack Ritchie who were to be found in volume […]
There is a type of adventure story that is an off-shoot of the western set in Mexico in the early 20th Century during the Mexican Civil Wars. Frank O’Rourke’s The Professionals might be the first of those. Originally published as A Mule for the Marquesa in 1964, it was filmed as The Professionals in 1966 […]
Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s The Last Legion is a stand alone novel from 2002. This is a 425 page novel set in the late 5th Century A.D. The novel starts in late 476 in Italy. Warlord Odoacer makes his move to remove the last Roman emperor, the young Romulus Augustulus. Standing in the way is the […]
My introduction to horror fiction was through Robert E. Howard. I began reading his horror in collections such as The Book of Robert E. Howard and The Howard Collector. Then I moved on to H. P. Lovecraft and then the Lovecraft Circle. My horror reading still tends to be Weird Tales centric. Personal favorites include […]
One of the library book sale finds was a pristine paperback of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon. This is the thriller novel that put serial killers on the map. The book was first published in 1981. There were other novels that had serial killers (James Ellroy) but Harris took it to the next level. The mass […]
October: The leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter, the temperatures are getting colder. I generally set aside more blood and thunder fiction and read weird/supernatural/horror until Halloween. A series that has really grown on me is Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural. This series started in 2006 and lasted until petering out […]
True Believer is the second novel in the James Reece series by Jack Carr. Again, a description that is better than what I can do: “When a string of horrific terrorist attacks plagues the Western world during the holiday season, the broader markets fall into a tailspin. The attacks are being coordinated by a shadowy […]
I covered Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a history of British thriller novels a few weeks back. The thriller novel is alive and well. A friend of mine tipped me to the “James Reece” series by Jack Carr. Carr is a former Nany SEAL with 20 years in special warfare including being a sniper and counter […]