The Whisperers commences with a brilliantly written and cleverly deceptive chapter set in Baghdad’s Iraq Museum in 2003, wherein looters remove some ancient treasures under the cover of a gun battle between US forces and the Fedayeen. Among the items taken is a box, and in that box is another box, and within that box something ancient waits…

Nine years later Parker is asked by Bennett Patchett, a Maine-based restaurant owner, to look into the activities of Joel Tobias, an ex-soldier who appears to be living beyond his means since his return from Iraq and mis-treating one of the waitresses who works for Patchett. Parker’s work uncovers an ex-military-run smuggling operation moving stolen artifacts between Canada and Maine. Patchett admits the real point of the investigation is to see if Tobias is linked to the suicide of his son Damien, another ex-Iraq veteran. And Damien is not the only veteran to have killed himself recently.

This is the novel that moves Charlie Parker firmly and definitively into the realm of the supernatural. Connolly makes no concessions whatsoever about his detective’s dark mythical backbone. Flying in the face of traditionally accepted marketability, these books now need to be more accurately subtitled as Charlie Parker Supernatural Thrillers, as myriad glimpses of what waits on the other side are hinted at in foreboding prose. Otherworldliness drips from the pages as the despicable Herod, a man so sick with cancer he deteriorates before our eyes with each scene, is accompanied by a spirit he calls The Captain as he searches for the box. Herod is a man with esoteric tastes who intends to unleash demons when he acquires the object that whispers to those who own it. And circling around the periphery, waiting to strike and claim what he feels is his, is The Collector, an old adversary of Parker, who is more than just man, and collects more than artifacts.

The Whisperers is an observation on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the effects of combat on soldiers, (Connolly has said so himself). He’s crafted an intricate, humbling and respectful tale weaving damning fact and fanciful hypothesis: the minutiae of military warfare, the everday pressures for returning veterans in an alien civilian world; Sumerian and Mesopotamian culture, artifacts and language; the dusty basements of museums and the eerie world of macabre artifact collections; demonic possession as one manifestation of post traumatic stress disorder.

After Louis and Angel’s tale in The Reapers, and the wrapping up of several elements from Parker’s heritage in The Lovers, The Whisperers does feel like a bridging novel in the mythos of Charlie Parker – another tense, clue-filled dirt track on his personal excavationary road-trip to hell, or heaven, or somewhere else in between. But this is necessary. We’re getting closer to some sort of end, but only Connolly knows how long it’ll take.

Long may the Charlie Parker mythos endure.

Those years of whispering silence have been fruitful as his second novel, Apartment 16 (plus a third, in-progress), have been picked up by publishing giant Pan MacMillan – an occurrence that (hopefully) has all sorts of positive implications for the genre in this country. A BIG UK publisher buying titles by a UK author? Not something that’s happened since, well, since the days of Clive Barker, and before him, Ramsey Campbell and James Herbert (synchronistically Nevill’s stablemate in horror at Pan MacMillan). From that ‘golden age’ and all that’s gone between (most of it not so nice if you’re a UK-based horror fan or writer) to now is a big gap in time, so whether you like it or not, these facts make Apartment 16 an important novel, and Adam Nevill an important writer who, I’m happy to say, establishes his status amongst today’s outstanding creators of speculative horror with Apartment 16.

Banquet for the Damned is a tale of drop-outs, demonology, shamanism and anthropology, and Nevill parades his influences proudly with every dark paragraph: Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James and Arthur Machen amongst others; and the book’s setting in the grounds of St. Andrews University in Edinburgh allows Nevill to indulge in the arcane atmosphere that academia lends to stories of this nature. In Apartment 16, Nevill again arms himself with these unsettling influences but this time embeds them brick by brick within the (on the surface) classic setting of an apartment block in central London, Barrington House, and then allows them to infiltrate the local environs.

Barrington House brings together two young people from completely different worlds. Seth is a frustrated artist who has taken the job of night porter; a role that naturally appeals to those with a creative bent: not much responsibility beyond sitting at a desk and patrolling the corridors at regular intervals and trying one’s best to ignore the irritating residents – the intervening time spent ‘creating’. (And on reading, it will come as no surprise that Nevill spent a good few years doing just this when he was writing Banquet for the Damned). Seth and the residents of Barrington house are haunted by the noises echoing down the corridors from the depths of apartment 16.

Apryl is an American staying for a couple of weeks to tidy up the affairs of her Great Aunt Lillian who recently passed away, leaving Apryl and her mother the substantial inheritance of an apartment in Barrington House. Apryl soon becomes obsessed with Lillian’s story, beautifully depicted in the mementos and memories she finds in Lillian’s flat, the clothes left behind, and a series of notebooks that painfully and mysteriously describe her last days, and of her heartbreak at her husband’s death:

Highgate and the Heath are entirely lost to me now. I have accepted this. I went there to remember so many of the walks we took together. But they will have to live on in memory alone. And I haven’t seen St. Paul’s in at least six months. I cannot get near the city. It is too difficult. After my episode on the underground, I have sworn off travelling below ground. The breathlessness and anxiety may be acute outdoors in the street, but they are doubly so below ground in those tight tunnels. Even my afternoons at the Library and British Museum in Bloomsbury are in jeopardy.

Nevill fluently depicts the supernatural atmosphere and how it has manifested across the years in the psychological and physical breakdowns of Barrington House’s stubborn and scared elderly residents (lending them and the House a colourful history that captures the antiquity of the genre we love so much within the very souls of the residents), and how it does so in the rather desperate lives of those younger characters who serve the House’s ageing population, the porters.

His writing shows an almost perfect melding of the old and the new: the raw atmospherics of Blackwood, the subtle and oh so terrifying nearly-glimpsed horrors on the periphery of M.R. James’ and H.P. Lovecraft’s imaginations; the masterly development of buildings and environments as characters and vessels, (much in the same way as Stephen King’s infamous Overlook Hotel’s room 217 channels Jack Torrance’s psychological deterioration in The Shining); and a cutting contemporary miserablism describing everyday urban hopelessness that is as grim and inevitable as the spiral into which Seth and Apryl find themselves descending. Put simply, he writes damn unsettling prose:

And after he gathered his breath, his balance, his shaky sense of place and self, he noticed the background in which the figure was suspended. This peformance of violence and fragmentation was nothing without the depths behind it. Baboon-snouted and eyeless, but horribly twisted in the vestment of a floral housecoat, bloddied and still moist, the figure hung upon complete darkness. A total absence that still managed to transmit the cold of deep space and the ungraspable length and breadth of forever.

Apartment 16 is a deeply disturbing hypnotic experience exploring obsessions taken to extremes and beyond, and Adam Nevill has an imagination that rends itself into pure darkness for our reading pleasure.

Read Joseph D’Lacey’s in-depth interview with Adam Nevill at Horror Reanimated which also provides more information on Banquet for the Damned.

To this reader, Bestwick is amongst the frontrunners of the niche world of the macabre ghost story; his A Hazy Shade of Winter was the first Ash Tree Press title I bought. Not only did his tales of contemporary hauntings, both in the mind and of the land, take a firm hold on me, they also alerted me to that publisher’s high quality catalogue. His latest collection, All the Pictures of the Dark is available from Grayfriar Press – I’m three stories in and have no hesitation recommending it on the strength of those alone. Plus Bestwick’s up for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novella with The Narrows in September at the Fantasycon in Nottingham. Now he’s been given the chance to write a mass-market paperback and the tantalising possibility of him lending his powers of atmospheric suggestion to a full-blown zombie apocalypse was one I could not deny mself, and I applaud Abbadon for adding him to their roster.

Tide of Souls is first and foremost an environmental apocalypse, of which zombies are an integral element. The seas rise and engulf the United Kingdom, (and most likely the rest of the world), but the action is set in Northern England where Bestwick lives. The book is cleverly divided into three parts, each told by a different narrator, each narrator linked to each other by circumstance. Katja Wencewska is a Polish immigrant who has been tricked into a hideous world of sex slavery, her passport taken and all her money gone.

We first encounter her locked in a top-floor room in the brothel where she ‘works’ as the waters devour Manchester. Making it to the roof Katja watches as groups of survivors huddle on other rooftops as the rain continues to fall, and group-by-group they’re picked off as drowned and now mysteriously reanimated corpses with green-glowing eyes emerge from the depths to feed. Fighting desperately, Katja is encouraged by the memories and words of her deceased father, a member of the Special Forces, who taught her to look after herself – weapons, martial arts, that sort of looking after yourself.

The middle section of the book follows Robert McTarn, a former Sergeant, who’s been forced to re-enlist due to the rapidly deteriorating situation. At Fullwood Army Base in Lancashire his team are briefed as they watch footage of an SAS squad being ripped apart by green-eyed monsters. McTarn’s been recruited to find maverick scientist, Dr. Benjamin Stiles a specialist in marine biology who’s retired due to ill-health, and the insistent voices in his head, the voices of the dead. On his last diving trip he’d suffered the bends in a rapid and panicked ascent. Stiles’ last know location is a small village in North East lancashire: Barley. As Katja’s fight for survival and McTarn’s mission puts them on a course towards each other, Bestwick forces them to traverse a submerged and deadly landscape: Katja in an old narrowboat more used to sedate canal journeys than the storms battering the waters that swirl with the swimming dead; and McTarn and his squad as they fly across the county, unable to stop and help the survivors on high-ground – survivors who will have much more to deal with than rising waters…

The last section revolves around Stiles, explaining the circumstances behind his accident and why he might just be the reason for, and have the solution, to the chaos. It’s here that Bestwick excels, giving Tide of Souls a unique place in the zombie sub-genre. Bestwick has clearly thought long and hard about the genesis of his zombies and their raison d’etre is explained in satisfying detail – something of a rarity in this sub-genre. Unique biological, behavioural and entirely logical traits are exhibited by the ‘nightmares’ (as they’re referred to, and truth be told they’re not strictly zombies in the Romero tradition) but Bestwick manages to keep that degree of separation at exactly the right distance from us; when a zombie evolves it usually turns towards the human once again. Not so in Tide of Souls, as Bestwick’s grounding in the classic supernatural and weird tale ensures the nightmares recall the eery dripping ghosts of John Carpenter’s The Fog, and the relentless, gnarled Nazi zombies from Shockwaves, rather than the running athletes of the Dawn of the Dead remake.

We were about ten yards up from the farmhouse when Akinbode pointed down the slope and shouted.
They stood in the shallows below the farmhouse. It lapped around the knees of the two adults and the waists of the the two older children. The toddler clung to its mother. They stared at us with their slack, empty faces and glowing eyes, but they didn’t move.

SPOILER ALERT: As mentioned, this tale is primarily a global environmental apocalypse. The rising waters are a result of climate change, but the undead are urged on by an elemental force, (similar in its collective consciousness to the yrr in Frank Schätzing’s sf-eco classic, The Swarm), evolved from the emotional and physical pollution of human activity across the world’s oceans. This force gradually develops a degree of awareness as it seeks to regain something it has lost. Bestwick’s nightmares are its eyes and ears, its collective learning, and its ravenous undead aquatic army. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

As this awareness grows Tide of Souls flows into something else, something entirely unexpected and relatively unexplored within zombie literature: a hauntingly atmospheric love story set amongst scenes of breathless battle, heroism, self-sacrifice and Lovelockian speculation.

Tide of Souls is recommended without reservation.

Everything else is put aside as the latest developments in the dark world of Charlie  Parker unfold in beautifully plotted suspense. The Lovers is the seventh Charlie Parker book in what can be called a series to date, and the ninth to feature him; so that’s about sixteen waking days of my life given over to this man, and he’s worth every damned minute of my time.

Charlie Parker is a Maine-based private investigator who seems to attract evil. That evil may be a curse that Parker is destined to combat throughout his life, possibly in retribution for things he has done in the past – for Parker is a man who thrives on his own guilt. His veiled background influences everything that occurs in this tight, sad story, and it’s almost impossible to review The Lovers without paying courtesy to preceeding events.

Parker’s a man haunted. Haunted by his wife and child who were brutally murdered by a serial killer known as The Travelling Man. (I am in awe of the serial killers Connolly consistently creates). Haunted by those he’s crossed and those he’s killed, deserving and undeserving. In The Lovers, he’s haunted by his father’s apparent suicide after killing two seemingly innocent teenagers, and the absence of his girlfriend, Rachel and her young daughter, Sam, who have relocated to Vermont, unable to put up with his unsavoury lifestyle and the characters it brings with it.

Recovering from the events of the previous novel, The Unquiet, Parker is working in a bar, deprived of his badge and unable to take on any cases. Intrigued by the teasing words of the mysterious Collector (again from The Unquiet) he decides to look into his father’s last days, and in the process discovers facts about himself and his parentage that most people would be unable to handle, so fantastic are the implications. But, this is Charlie Parker, and he knows how to handle destructive self-revelation more than most. If there’s one thing that can be said of Parker, it’s that he has an open mind.

Parker’s investigations lead him to cross paths with a girl, Emily Kindler, who is seemingly on the run from her own past, rather than racing to confront it head on Parker-style; and a hack-biographer, Mickey Wallace, who has had his eye on Parker for a while, unable to understand how he ends up in so much trouble, so regularly, and getting away with it. As Parker traces his father’s now retired work colleagues, Mickey dogs him every step of the way, opening up other paths of inquiry and letting other darker and deadlier memories leech through into the daylight… the eponymous lovers.

In the latest Black Static, Peter Tennant speculates on the current state of the Horror fiction market, some pundits declaring that ‘it has gone underground, insinuated itself into other genres…’ Since the first Parker title, Every Dead Thing, was published back in 1999, Connolly has been delivering what this reviewer considers to be the absolute pinnacle in atmospheric detective fiction with a difference – the very difference, or esssence, that Tennant has spotted slyly manifesting on the bookshelves: ‘…there are times when I stand in the Crime/Thriller section of a big bookshop and scan all these portentous titles with their minatory cover art, read back cover blurbs that tell of serial killers and their atrocities, it seems to me as if, while eschewing the H word, this younger, hipper genre has reinvented and repackaged itself with all the trappings of its older more illustrious predecessor’.

Tennant is actually writing the introduction to a review of Bad Things by Michael Marshall, quite justifiably referring to the author as a ‘master of ’stealth fiction’, of mixing and matching genres, constantly blurring the boundaries, presenting the reader with one thing that eventually turns out to be another…’ And it’s to this currently small band of stealth fiction writers that Connolly belongs, if not leads, as over the last ten years or so he has fearlessly and increasingly introduced hints and suggestions of another world that surrounds this one, and that of Parker. Whilst previous titles may have left such phenomena and cirumstance open to intepretation (although certainly not in my eyes), in The Lovers, Connolly removes the ambiguity once and for all, and the book is stronger, kindlier and more poignant as a result.

The Charlie Parker stories have laid down their shadow-strata over each other across the years since Every Dead Thing, marking each tale that’s gone before with ghosts, memories and emotions, with all that it is to be a father, husband, lover and killer. Connolly’s prose seeps with Maine’s atmosphere, with threat and with empathy. Parker knows the dead do not forget, and so he does not forget.

Never have I read a series of books that so depend on the past of one man to determine his future and that of those around him, both friend and foe. Parker has a fascinating and terrible history that I am confident will continue to unravel seamlessly, just as his unsettled present and unpredictable future will play out in one way or another. (The next Parker novel, The Whisperers is due next year).

Readers new to John Connolly beware: before sitting down with The Lovers, you must go back into Parker’s past yourself, starting with Every Dead Thing.

As Rachel and Sam have discovered, living with Charlie Parker is not easy. For the reader, however, living with him, killing with him, loving with him is a monstrously dark, horrific (with a capital ‘H’), sad and wonderful experience.

By setting the events about 15 to 20 years after the outbreak, Ryan is able to introduce an established belief system, a quasi-religion, to the lore of the zombie. Mary lives in an isolated village, surrounded by fences that keep out the hungry undead that wander the landscape. The village is in the middle of a huge forest that seemingly goes on forever. Or at least that is what the children and teenagers are told, for this village is governed by the Sisterhood, a group of elder women who maintain the status-quo through strict tutelage of the Scripture, a regime of hard work and constant vigilance, and a societal set-up that ensures the best possible chance for the continuance of the family line.The villagers live in fear of breaches of the fence by the Unconsecrated, and the maintenance of these defences is the responsibility of the Guardians, the healthy young men of the village. Mary is sure there is more to the world than just the village, for her mother has told her of the ocean. She questions the teachings of the Sisters and is unable to rid herself of the selfish urge to leave what she has come to consider the prison she has lived in all her life, to explore the world beyond the forest, regardless of the risks.

Mary’s mother is Infected, bitten as she gets too close to the fence, having glimpsed the wandering corpse of her husband nearby. Mary allows her mother to make the ultimate decision: to be beheaded, or be allowed to turn and released into the forest at the moment of death, to Return Unconsecrated. Her mother decides to be with her husband and to fulfil her marriage vows. Mary’s brother Jed will not forgive her decision to allow their mother such a choice and bars her from his house. Seemingly abandoned by Harry, who had expressed a desire to take her to the Harvest Celebration, and in love with his brother Travis, who has chosen hr best friend Cass, Mary is brought under the wing of the Sisterhood – for such is the fate of all unbetrothed young women. Within the thick stone walls of the Cathedral, a place of locked doors, shadowy tunnels and whispering Sisters, Mary discovers not all is as it seems – an Outsider has come through one of the gates.

The Forest of Hands & Teeth brings to mind the closeted, superstitious environment of M. Night Shamalayn’s The Village, with its reliance on ritual in daily life to hold back the unknown threat at its periphery, and possibly even at its very core. But there the simliarity ends as the Unconsecrated are absolutely recognizable, (‘they are us’, remember), and it is this closeness that creates the quandries that Mary and her friends must overcome to ensure their own survival once their secure existence becomes a desperate flight along the strange paths that lead outwards from the village through the forest.

Geek bits! Ryan, in keeping with tradition, has left the reason for the outbreak vague: with some hearsay and a few brief sentences from the Scriptures. She pays homage to the Romero films by having Mary come across an old New York Times with the headline: INFECTION SWEEPS THROUGH CENTRAL STATES: CITIZENS URGED NORTH; and the The system of ropes, gates and pulleys that manage the village’s gates, echo those seen in Day of the Dead. Her zombies are traditional shamblers that deteriorate over time through their own exertions, rather than through decay; and there’s the odd fast-paced zombie, which are seen as anomalies and possibly, an evolutionary step.

The Forest of Hands & Teeth has many strengths: in the landscape in which this tale is set; in the details, beliefs and history hinted at, or left unwritten and unspoken; and, crucially, within the first-person perspective of Mary. A girl who is forced to grow into a woman torn, trapped between a responsibility for her people, her village and a certain way of life; her passionate need to win the man she loves, and her equally romantic dreams of escape and discovery, of the ocean. A female author is somewhat of a rarity in this particular sub-genre, as is a female protagonist, so I believe Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands & Teeth will come to be seen as a unique, evocative and savagely poignant take on the post-apocalyptic world of the zombie.

And get this: it’s a young adult title. So buy one for yourself, and one for your Infected child who you keep locked up in the shed…

Red is a contemporary take on the classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. Far removed from the quaint childhood we imagine for the little girl in the original tale Rachael Daniels, an aspiring actress, lives in a grey urban environment, just about making a living as a careworker whilst enduring the frustrations she understands will come her way at the onset of her chosen career. Already a little jaded, she’s recently broken up with her boyfriend, and dreads walking the streets after dark as the city is a threatening place wit its hoodies and vast concrete estates, such as the Greenham Estate which is where her favourite client lives, the 80 year old Miss Tilly Brindle.Rachael’s right to be cautious there’s a serial killer stalking the streets of the city. Not your average stalk’n’slash weirdo, this character has a long, long history and a grudge to match. Kane subtly provides insights into his thinking, his geneaology, whilst evoking the years of killings as he sits and observes the hussle and bustle of the city, choosing his next victim:

Sitting on a bench, he surveyed the shoppers on this busy Friday afternoon. In the old country, he could have just picked one off as they walked by, but populations had dwindled where he used to operate so very long ago, mainly due to his antics – it had to be said. And trackers wishing to make a name for themselves had come looking for him back in those days. For their insolence (there was no greater hunter than him, he was the king), he’d sent them away with their tales between their legs – if indeed he’d left them with any tail at all. But all good things came to an end, and when he was forced to move on, he found it was actually a blessing in disguise. It was a big, wide world out there. And who was going to notice what he was up to when mankind took such a great joy in doing the very same thing to itself, time and time again? The perfect playground. The perfect hunting ground.

It’s during this scene that the beast notices Rachael as she walks past. Lost in the sea of shoppers, it uses its one instinct that still remains effective in today’s ambiently-deafening society: it smells her, and her blood reveals itself to have a particularly personal and shared history…

Kane cleverly uses the various characters and victims as visceral pathways and bridges for the beast. He plays with both the reader and Rachael, lulling us as it engineers its course towards her, circling her literally through the flesh and blood of those she encounters in her daily life. As it shapeshifts it takes on their personas as best it can, convincingly over short time spans (which is normally all the time it needs) it charms and confuses, until ultimately it is unable to hide its true nature as its century-spanning hunger and lust for revenge explodes from behind the thin facades it creates in scenes of bone-crunching ferocity.

As with the beast, so with the book: over 70 impactful pages, and without wasting a word, Paul Kane has enriched the werewolf mythos with a seamless re-imagining of a hypnotically suggestive fairy tale, embellishing it with the harsh, alluring scent of an ages-old psychosexual predator who easily rivals that other undead villain from Eastern European folklore, the vampire.

A relentless and grisly fairy tale for dark times, Red is filled with the blackest blood from the deepest parts of our bodies, and is thoroughly recommended.

Red is published by America’s Skullvines Press so might be a little difficult to obtain over here, but go directly to their website or get in touch with the author, and I guarantee your efforts will be rewarded.

A brutal 190 page-turner readable in a couple of hours, Lines wastes no time immersing the reader in the lives of  his main characters, the Davies brothers. Jeff is coming to terms with the news that his father, Guy, has died. Taking time off from his job in London he mulls over the realisation that he never had much to do with his father whilst he was growing up, and neither did his brother Peter, always the younger, quieter of the two.

Peter is a convicted paedophile, (for a relatively minor offence, he insists), and his relationship with Jeff and his sister Jennifer has deteriorated completely. Out of prison on parole with a job in a fish and chip shop, Peter is trying to rebuild his life and resist urges which have never truly gone away. The scene is set for the brothers’ return for their father’s funeral, and an uneasy reunion with Jennifer who still lives in the Gloucestershire village of Broadoak where they grew up.

Not all is as it seems with the Davies family, and the villagers of Broadoak. The brothers learn that Guy Davies drowned in the River Severn and was with a young girl from the village who has not been seen since that night. A disenchanted schoolgirl, Sarah Hobson, finds a severed hand on the banks of the Severn, and in a morose moment, removes a strange ring, detailed with two intertwined serpents, from one of the frozen fingers.

Filth Kiss could stand upon uneasy ground with elements and characters of its plot as Peter and Sarah move closer together, much of it at the youngster’s insistence. But Lines shows us a convincing portrayal of a paedophile as a weak-willed and somewhat desperate individual, and crucially, one that makes no excuses for himself or his actions. He knows what he feels is wrong. This must be one of the most difficult tasks a writer could set themselves, but I think Lines succeeds as the reader is left feeling sympathetic towards both parties in different ways, and with a full appreciation of the motivations involved.

The loss of their father is relatively simple to handle compared with the  struggle to manage their relationships with each other and the attitude of the locals towards Peter, an attitude which Jennifer is only too happy to encourage. The 1980s Broadoak is brilliantly evoked through the eyes of its bored, disenfranchised youth, naturally railing against the mundanity of everyday village life, the pottering of the elderly, the lack of diversity of its shops, and the apparent refusal to adopt change that the Davies brothers witness on their return, justifying their distate for the place. But behind this rather stereotypical front of closeted rural calm is a system of heirarchy designed to feed the darkness that lurks within all of us for a higher and utterly Devilish end.

In Broadoak the villagers keep one eye on their post, for when a black envelope containing a tulip pops through your letterbox the time is near for the next sacrifice. In the hills above the village, on Symonds Yat there is a sacred place where something is growing… Think Hot Fuzz without the humour, swirling in a bowl of virgin’s blood, mixed with Dennis Wheatley’s black magic rituals, the disquiet of youth and several scenes of graphic, very imaginative demonic sex, and you have Filth Kiss.

First released in 2007, Filth Kiss has seen a reprinting since that date, proving that there is an appetite for a solid and thrilling story with horrific content from readers. Possibly a crucial factor in the book’s endurance has been its availability throughout Waterstones stores, and a round of applause should go to them for taking the chance on the title and supporting an independent publisher’s endeavours. More of this open-minded approach from booksellers when stocking the shelves would be welcome.

Highly recommended for fans of Shaun Hutson, Guy N. Smith, Richard Kelly, Rex Miller (remember him anyone?) and Clive Barker’s hypnotically and viscerally sexy Books of Blood volumes, C.J. Lines‘ Filth Kiss is a little gift of dark perverse power.

And keep a careful eye on your post…

D’Lacey’s second novel, Garbage Man, takes us straight to the seeds of an impending environmental apocalypse, allowing us to watch as its roots spread intractably throughout the town of Shreve, a town that is just like any other in today’s United Kingdom.

Mason Brand is an outsider, a man who turned his back on society and his once successful career as a photographer. Living in the deepest countryside, with an old farmer as his guide, Brand learnt about himself, about the nature of nature and its relationship with man. He understands nature evolves to survive, that its processes cannot be predicted and that it simply doesn’t sit back and take abuse. He’s heard and responded to ‘the calling’. Now, giving society one last chance before he retreats forever into the wilds, he lives quietly in Shreve, shunned by almost everyone in the town, the town eccentric.

Shreve sits next to a massive landfill site, a noxious influence when the wind blows in the direction of the town. This influence is spreading, the land unable to cope with the rubbish and the poisonous chemicals being pumped into the earth. And when this brew also contains unwanted human matter, and is imbued with malicious intent, guilt and greed, it shouldn’t be surprising that a strange hybridised life-form, the fecalith, emerges from the sticken ground. Mason Brand has seen the signs; once again he’s heard the calling, and this time it’s right on his doorstep, it has a message and a command he cannot deny.

I loved Brand’s character, a figure I immediately found myself able to associate with during these harsh concretised times. After a solid week’s work, go for a walk, out of earshot of traffic if possible, and feel that money/work/time focus flow out of you to be replaced by whatever you allow… It’s a simple thing to do, but there’s certainly the ability for all of us to hear ‘the calling’ in one form or another, no matter where you live, or what your feelings are for the countryside.

D’Lacey’s especially adept at showing us the everyday stresses that afflict Shreve’s teenagers, their blossoming but untrusting relationships, their already jaded world-views, the parental and peer pressure that blinkers their thoughts, reducing their aspirations to the mundane. This frustration and jealousy threatens to overwhelm at times, (but isn’t that just how the real world works anyway?), but D’Lacey manages the trick of energising his characters through these emotions, making us care for them, or at least stay interested in them.

As the garbage crawls and spreads throughout Shreve the lives of the protagonists draw closer together through Mason Brand, the only one who understands what is about to happen, the man who is mainly responsible for that vital evolutionary stage of the fecalith, the struggle for sentience. Geoff Nelder’s already suggested that Garbage Man should have been called Gaia’s Revenge as it most definitely shares an outlook with James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis: the earth as a single organism, everything affecting everything else. As with MEAT, there is a strong moral message; a message of caution that D’Lacey interweaves seamlessly with solid horror plotting, without stinting on the gore and cleverly paced action.

Fast becoming the master of contemporary eco-horror, D’Lacey’s voice is absolutely unique in the field; and the final chapters, depicting an evolution of almost biblical proportions are simply stunning.

Garbage Man is published on May 7th 2009 by Bloody Books.

Joseph D’Lacey and Bill Hussey (The Absence) are celebrating the publication of their second novels with a tour of some haunted locations around the United Kingdom; and with readings and signings at the Wood Green Bookshop on May 6th, and at Borders on Oxford Street in London on May 7th. They’ll also be promoting the Horror Reanimated website, as well as giving away a limited edition Horror Reanimated chapbook, Echoes, to anyone who attends.

Note: I work with Joseph D’Lacey and Bill Hussey on the Horror Reanimated website.