Review - HEART-SHAPED BOX, by Joe Hill

Judas Coyne is an aging heavy-metal rock god who seems to be the very cliche of the over-the-hill rock star, from the requisite dead band members, to his interest in the bizarre and the freakish, to his succession of doomed relationships with female groupies whose ages are getting farther and farther removed from his own.

Jude lives on a farm in upstate New York. His "career" now consists of writing and recording songs for his own benefit - hiding them away like he hides himself away, letting his personal assistant handle the minutiae of real life.

When his assistant mentions he's run across the opportunity online to purchase a dead man's ghost - by way of the corpse's suit - for a thousand dollars, Jude jumps at the chance. What else would he do? What else would his fans have expected him to do?

The suit arrives at Jude's door a few days later, and almost immediately, strange occurrences begin happening. Frightening visions. Trance-like states of hypnosis, with blackouts and worse. Then things move quickly from bad to worse, and before you know it, Jude and his girl - a flavor-of-the-month goth chick nicknamed "Georgia" - are running for their lives, trying to outdistance an angry spirit.

I'm not going to run down the plot any further, partly because so many other reviewers already have, and partly because by now you've already decided whether HEART-SHAPED BOX is your cup of tea or not. In some ways it's a very traditional ghost story and in others, not so much.

HEART-SHAPED BOX was originally published in 2007, and I never bothered reading it because, quite simply, I didn't give author Joe Hill a chance. The fact that he was Stephen King's son was supposed to be some kind of big secret, but it was about the worst-kept secret since, well, some other really badly kept secret.

I figured here was the classic example of a guy making money and gaining fame off his father's name, and the fact that he was writing under a different name made it somehow worse. More cynical and calculated, or something.

Boy, was that a mistake, and not just because it shows what a shallow asshole I can be at times.

Joe Hill can really write. He takes a story that's been told around a million campfires and lifts it above the commonplace and into something special, developing a gauzy, southern-gothic atmospheric tension when the story moves from New York State to Georgia, on to Florida, and finally ending in Coyne's boyhood home, a dilapidated farm in Louisiana.

While I resisted reading Joe Hill's work because of his family name, it seems almost comically ironic to note that HEART-SHAPED BOX contains much of the stuff that made me such a die-hard fan of Stephen King's early work, most notably 'SALEM'S LOT and THE SHINING:

- The ability to create characters we may not like but can't help rooting for, maybe because we see ourselves in these people who so often act out of self-interest and personal greed, but who - we hope - have the chance to redeem themselves in the end, perhaps because we hold out the same hope for ourselves.

- The ability to insert humor into the narrative in the unlikeliest places and at the unlikeliest times, without taking away from the suspense, and even, as impossible as it seems, enhancing it.

- The ability to draw the reader into the world he's created, so by the end of the book you're not just watching Judas Coyne and Mary Beth try to fight their way out of the mess they're in, you're right there with them, experiencing the horror that is the relentlessly vengeful Craddock McDermott and his smoke-blue pickup truck.

If you're smarter or more perceptive than I am, maybe you'll see where the book is going before it gets there, and if so, good for you. But I didn't see it coming, so when Hill wraps up the mystery of why Judas Coyne had been chosen - and he was chosen - for haunting, it's a satisfying resolution.

Of course, there's still the pesky question of how - and even whether -the aging rock star and his troubled, three-decades-younger girlfriend will survive, but if you haven't read the book yet, you're going to have to do so to get the answer to that one.

I owe you an apology, Joe Hill. I'm sure you don't care one way or the other, but I didn't give you a chance, and it was my loss missing out on one outstanding horror novel for six years.

Great book. If you love horror - not blood and guts and gore, but real psychological horror - and you haven't read HEART-SHAPED BOX yet, go get it. You won't be sorry.

Review: THE HUNTED, by Dave Zeltserman

When Dan Willis finds himself out of work, his sales job eliminated, he's like millions of other Americans - a decent person victimized by the country's steadily-rising unemployment rate.

But Dan Willis has skills unlike most other Americans. A veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq during the first Gulf War, Dan jumps at the opportunity for steady employment when offered a position within the brand-new, highly secretive Homeland Protection department.

Dan learns America is locked in a war against an insurgency unlike any other in history, a life-and-death struggle being fought daily against literally thousands of enemy combatants right here in the USA. After undergoing intensive training, Dan is unleashed into the fray, receiving his assignments from an anonymous Internet bulletin board and terminating enemy combatants.

But along the way, Dan begins to get the uneasy feeling that perhaps something is not quite right. He begins researching these enemies before eliminating them, discovering that in virtually every case, they seem just like him - normal, everyday people with little or no evidence of being enemy combatants in some shadowy insurgency.

Dan confronts his bosses, discovering a horrifying conspiracy on a massive scale. He knows his life will never be the same, but knows also he can't simply turn and walk away. Something must be done. And he's going to do it.

THE HUNTED is a quick read, the first in a planned series of HUNTED novellas serializing Dan Willis's quest. Will he be able to get to the bottom of this conspiracy? I have no idea, but I hope it takes him a while - I want to follow along.

By the way, if you hurry, you can get this first installment - currently the #1 Hardboiled Mystery in the Free Kindle Store, #43 overall, FREE for your Kindle...

Review - APOCALYPSE ISLAND, by Mark Edward Hall

Strange things are happening to Danny Wolf. Imprisoned for a murder he claims he did not commit, Danny is tormented nightly by horrifying dreams; nightmares filled with death and destruction and chaos. Bizarre fugues torment him, during which time he becomes violent and uncontrollable, remembering nothing afterward.

Offered an opportunity for early release from prison subject to intensive psychological counseling, Danny eagerly accepts. But the minute he hits the streets of Portland, Maine, a series of ritualistic murders begin occurring. The common thread? Each of the victims is a young female; all have slept with Danny Wolf.

The nightmares intensify and Danny begins to doubt his own sanity. Perhaps he really is a homicidal madman. When young female detective Laura Higgins is assigned to the case, with instructions to get close to Danny in order to gather evidence, things begin to spiral out of control, leading to a shocking conclusion in a secret underground lab, far beneath a small island with a horrifying history off the rocky Maine coast.

APOCALYPSE ISLAND is an ambitious thriller, written by the talented Mark Edward Hall, an author I discovered about a year ago. It's a novel not easily pigeonholed: Part political thriller, part police procedural, part supernatural gothic horror and part action-adventure, all rolled into one fast-moving book. There are rogue CIA operatives, dirty cops, ghosts, corrupt church officials and double-crossing colleagues.

But at its heart, APOCALYPSE ISLAND is a tale of one man's desperate attempt to find his identity, when his history is a complete blank and his motives - and even his sanity - are called into question by all, including himself. The tension builds slowly but steadily, until by the end of this explosive book, you simply cannot put it down.

Simply put, APOCALYPSE ISLAND is a winner.

Of Book Reviews and Sock Puppets

For authors who do not sport household names, life's eternal quest is for ways to get your work in front of readers who enjoy the genre you write in but who may not have ever heard of you. I'm no exception, and for months I read and heard that spending time on Kindle Boards was potentially valuable in terms of building exposure.

Well, I've recently been more active on Kindle Boards, not just as a way to raise my profile, but also because there are some truly interesting discussions taking place twenty-four hours a day there, and it's a place where authors and readers can gather to discuss issues surrounding the thing we all have in common - books and the written word.

And it's been pretty enlightening. The subject of book reviews is always one that generates enthusiastic responses, both from authors and readers, but sometimes not in the way I would have expected. Case in point: Sock puppets.

Up until a few weeks ago, if I saw the words, "sock puppet," I would have pictured a Muppet or maybe a Fraggle. But in the world of Kindle Boards, a sock puppet is not a good thing. It refers to an author who convinces his friends and family to write flattering reviews - or even worse, who generates accounts under false names and writes reviews for his own work - on Amazon or Goodreads, with the intention of artificially inflating the book's appeal and hopefully gaining increased sales.

The practice is distasteful and dishonest and pretty much universally decried by both authors and readers alike, and for good reason.

The thing I find interesting, however, and which I've wondered about in the back of my mind as the reviews have come in for my newest thriller, THE LONELY MILE, is the fact that many posters on Kindle Boards feel they have a sharp eye and are quite skilled at picking out "sock puppet reviews." It's easy, they say. Find a book with universally good reviews and there's a decent chance many, if not all, are sock puppet reviews.

Here's why I've wondered about that: The reviews for THE LONELY MILE have been universally good. On Amazon, to this point, the book has received nine five-star reviews, with four four-star reviews mixed in, and no threes, twos or ones.

And I can't help wondering, is that fact costing me sales with people who have never heard of me? Has anyone checked out THE LONELY MILE's Amazon page because he was considering buying it and then shaken his head, clucking and smug, and passed on trying it out because the reviews are simply too good?

I hope not, and not just because I would like to sell as many copies of my books as I can. I believe in doing things the right way, and I hope you won't think I'm hopelessly naive when I tell you it would never have occurred to me to open multiple Amazon accounts for the purpose of reviewing my own book. My mind doesn't work that way.

In fact, I've expressly discouraged my family and close friends from reviewing my work precisely because I wanted to avoid any hint of dishonesty. I believe in my work and I'm confident that most people who try it, assuming they enjoy a good thriller, will feel they've gotten their money's worth when they reach the end.

Now, this is not to say THE LONELY MILE hasn't received reviews from people who have been introduced to my work either through FINAL VECTOR or POSTCARDS FROM THE APOCALYPSE, my short story collection, and enjoyed them so much they went on to read my other work and then review it.

Also, I'm nearing the end of my second blog tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tours, and many of the reviewers of THE LONELY MILE are the same book bloggers who reviewed FINAL VECTOR when I toured for that book. They enjoyed my first book so much they were anxious to review my second, and I'm not about to apologize for that; just the opposite, in fact. I'm proud that my work prompted people who read books all the time to want to read more of my work!

But sock puppetry? Not here. I wouldn't even wear socks except it gets darned cold here in New Hampshire.