Category Archives: Mystery/thriller

My apologies for the long delay in writing — the chaos in the world and the busy nature of life has left me rather drained!  But I have managed to start reading some fiction again, and I thought I would … Continue reading →

Life has been rough lately… and by “lately,” I kinda mean the past two years, for various reasons, on and off. Because of that, I’ve struggled to focus on reading fiction, much to my own dismay. However, I opted to … Continue reading →

Insects have long been ready protagonists for horror and thriller fiction.  A few famous examples that come to mind are H.G. Wells’ 1903 story The Valley of Spiders and Carl Stephenson’s 1937 story Leiningen Versus the Ants. In the wild and terrifying … Continue reading →

An ancient Egyptian mummy.  An ominous and deadly curse.  A growing collection of fatalities in the mummy’s presence. It is a familiar, and intriguing, plot for horror novels.  But one of the earliest of such novels has gone unread for … Continue reading →

The British author Ramsey Campbell has long been my favorite writer of horror, and one of his novellas — Needing Ghosts — has the unusual distinction of being the only story I’ve ever read that made me doubt my sanity when … Continue reading →

This post marks a minor personal milestone: with the book featured in it, I have now read all of John Blackburn‘s published works.  I put off reading this one for quite some time for a reason that I’ll explain at the … Continue reading →

In my experience, Nick Mamatas’ novels are not pleasant to read — and I mean that in a good way.  He is willing to dive wholeheartedly into ugly situations in his writing and challenge the reader with unhappy observations about the … Continue reading →

Ever since reading author Basil Copper’s The Great White Space (1974) and Necropolis (1980), both of which were recently reprinted by Valancourt Books, I’ve been binge-reading the works of Basil Copper.  I’ve read two of his short story collections so … Continue reading →