criminolly
CriminOlly
Crime, pulp, horror, stuff like that
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Drood by Dan Simmons #BookReview
Drood by Dan Simmons #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: A wonderfully rich and absorbing mix of supernatural mystery and biography. 5/5
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Drood is an absolutely fascinating book and a very ambitious one. Like Simmons’ The Terror it’s a vast period novel, that takes historical characters and blends in heavy doses of weirdness and pulpy adventure. At almost 800 pages it’s very long, but Simmons’ writing is skilful and it never…
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Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica #BookReview
Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Fascinating and intelligent dystopian horror. 4/5
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Tender is the Flesh is a fascinating piece of dystopian science fiction that takes an extreme scenario and runs with it. In this case the event that creates the world of the book is a virus that infects animals and makes their meat deadly to humans. Humankind’s reaction to this is to start rearing people as…
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Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata #BookReview
Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: 2400 page manga epic is an entertainingly twisty ride. 4/5
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Death Note is a fascinating and fun, but also flawed, manga series that blends dark fantasy and detective fiction into a compelling tale with an enjoyably pulpy feel. At 2400 pages it’s a beast of a book, but one that managed to hold my interest.
The set-up is entertainingly bizarre. Outside of the human…
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Carry on Screaming: The Fog by James Herbert (1975)
Carry on Screaming: The Fog by James Herbert (1975)
CriminOlly thinks: Horrifically effective set pieces and a chilling central concept overcome a weak plot 4/5
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The year after ‘The Rats’ smashed its way onto the horror scene, James Herbert published his second book. His debut must have been a tough act to follow, but somehow he manages to up the shock factor with ‘The Fog’. I first read it as a teenager back in the 80s, but long before…
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Sick Bastards by Matt Shaw #BookReview
Sick Bastards by Matt Shaw #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Extreme horror which fails to shock or horrify. 2/5
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Every so often I try another extreme horror book and once again don’t enjoy it. Sick Bastards is the second of Matt Shaw’s books I’ve read, and I liked it even less than the first (Octopus). It’s not just Shaw either, I’ve tried other popular extreme horror writers like Jon Athan and Aron Beauregard and come away…
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Cows by Matthew Stokoe #BookReview
Cows by Matthew Stokoe #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Not disturbing, just foul 2/5
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Cows is perhaps the least disturbing “disturbing book” I’ve read. It’s reputation for being off the charts in its extremity precedes it but is, in my opinion anyway, undeserved. It’s certainly disgusting and on a couple of occasions horrifying, but it’s also far too ridiculous to be disturbing.
The book follows a young man, Steven, who…
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Bats by William W Johnstone #BookReview
Bats by William W Johnstone #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: HUGE, SUPER INTELLIGENT, FLESH-EATING, RABID, MUTANT VAMPIRE BATS 3/5
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Bats by William W Johnstone is kind of a hoot. On the one hand it’s terrible – clichéd, aggressively and obnoxiously political, and frequently ridiculous. On the other, Johnstone is clearly having such a good time writing it that it’s hard not to get swept up in his enthusiasm.
The plot centres…
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The Cats by Berton Roueché #BookReview
The Cats by Berton Roueché #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Killer animals have rarely been this dull 2/5
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Feral by Berton Roueché is book that feels like it was published in the wrong decade. Released in 1974 it went up against James Herbert’s The Rats and Stephen King’s Carrie, two books that redefined the horror genre and set the tone for years to come. Whereas King and Herbert were angry young men with a desire to shake…
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Halloween Slaughter by Sergio Gomez #BookReview
Halloween Slaughter by Sergio Gomez #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Thoroughly enjoyable slasher, dripping with suspense and gore 4/5
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Halloween Slaughter is book that’s better than it probably has any right to be. It isn’t terribly original (in fact it deliberately derivative at times), its plot is standard fare, its characters (with one exception) two dimensional and its prose unspectacular. And yet in this book, Sergio…
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Poking Holes by Juan Valencia #BookReview
Poking Holes by Juan Valencia #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Enormously varied and at times staggeringly disturbing debut horror collection. 4/5
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Poking Holes is an extremely strong debut collection from Mexican America author Juan Valencia. It’s horror, but maybe definitely not the kind of horror a diet of Stephen King and Blumhouse movies has prepared the world for. Instead, this is a nightmarish mix of…
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Carry on Screaming: The Rats by James Herbert
CriminOlly thinks: Brutally effective killer animal tale that shook up British horror 4/5
Title: The Rats | Author: James Herbert | Series: Rats #1 | Publisher: New English Library | Pages: 175 | Publication date: 1973 | Source: Self-purchased
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‘The Rats’ burst onto the UK horror scene in 1974, completely unlike anything that had come before. Many of the critics hated it, but the public…
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The Forsaken Boy by Troy Tradup #BookReview
The Forsaken Boy by Troy Tradup #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Expertly crafted blend of coming of age story and werewolf horror is consistently entertaining 4/5
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Troy Tradup’s The Forsaken Boy is a thoroughly enjoyable blend of werewolf horror and coming of age story. It doesn’t set out to do anything radical, but it does what it does so well that really isn’t a problem. In fact, the book’s simplicity ends up being a…
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Dog Meat by Priscilla Bettis #BookReview
Dog Meat by Priscilla Bettis #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Disturbing, dystopian tale of a young man trying to break free from the constraints of the society he lives in. 4/5
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Dog Meat wasn’t quite what I was expecting, and somehow that made it even better. It’s a book that packs a lot into its short length, and one that I’ve reflected on since finishing it.
It’s set in an unnamed country in the 1980s, one that…
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Inner City Hoodlum by Donald Goines #BookReview
Inner City Hoodlum by Donald Goines #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Blisteringly entertaining tale of crime on the streets of 1970s America 4/5
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Donald Goines was an African American author of crime fiction who published a number of novels under both his own name and the pseudonym Al C Clark in the 1970s. I’d not heard of him until very recently, but the covers of his books proudly claim that he is the best selling black…
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A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes #BookReview
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: A wonderfully entertaining crime novel that mixes comedy and tragedy in 1950s New York 4/5
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A Rage in Harlem is the first novel in Chester Himes’ 9 book Harlem Cycle, a series of gritty crime novels written in the 1950s and 60s and set in Harlem. The series features some recurring characters, most notably its two black police detectives, Coffin Ed John and…
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Shiver by Junji Ito #BookReview
Shiver by Junji Ito #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: Marvellously eerie weirdness from the master of horror manga, Junji Ito. 4/5
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Somehow, I’ve managed to go this long without reading any Junji Ito. Given his popularity amongst horror fans that might almost feel like an act of deliberate omission. It wasn’t, just another example of the “too many books” problem. What’s probably less surprising is the fact…
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Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon #BookReview
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon #BookReview
CriminOlly thinks: 1970s folk horror tale is great in some ways, jarringly dated in others. 3/5
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Harvest Home was published in 1973, the same year the classic folk horror movie The Wicker Man was released. Like that film, it features a lead character from the city travelling to a rural setting and encounters weird, folk horror type goings on.
In Harvest Home, the…
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