Christina was visiting her mother's grave when a nearby headstone surrounded by weeds caught her eye. It saddened her that it wasn't taken care of and kept up like all the others. She decided to clear the weeds and tidy it up. It all seemed so innocent. A good deed, really. But there was more to that grave site than the surname of CHARLES SLICK overgrown by foliage. The Slick family isn't known in these parts by many anymore. Except Frank, the cemetary's custodian. He knows about the family and the dirty secrets they harbor, even after all these years. Poor Christina. All she was doing was a good deed for a family she didn't know. Too bad that good deed would unleash the Slick's family secret on her and her life would never be the same.

 

 

Corpse Rider is a fun, fast-paced tale that keeps the pages turning at a blinding speed. Curran weaves a bit of gothic horror mixed with 1980's B-horror movie fun. The obvious comparisons to the early 80's movie, Basket Case, permeate the story. However, it is not a soulless derivative. Curran constructs a great story mixed with some memorable characters that breathes new life into an old classic. Very much worth your time.

 

 

5 Belials out of 5

 

 

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https://kenmckinley.wordpress.com

 

http://intothemacabre.booklikes.com

 

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5919799-ken-mckinley

 

A few years ago, thanks to the Horror Aficionados group on Goodreads, I discovered a new-to-me author when it was suggested I check out Dead Sea by Tim Curran. I don't remember which awesome reader suggested it, but I owe that person a huge, hearty thank you. I devoured that book and instantly bought a bunch more of Curran's titles to add to my TBR, and have been a fan ever since.

 

His latest, Corpse Rider, is a hearty ghost story that exemplifies the notion that no good deed goes unpunished. While visiting her mother's grave, Christina picks away the weeds from an older, long-untended headstone. This minor act upends her life, connecting her with the spirit of something hideous. While it's certainly bad news for Christina, it's a lot of good for readers.

 

Curran has remarkable skill at crafting disturbing scenes of grotesqueness and violence, and a few of the visuals he stuck in my head here will be with me for a while. Christina makes for a nicely flawed heroine, and the story surrounding her is rooted in an appropriately creepy historical context. Mostly, though, this is just a cool, gory, little ghost story (it comes in at around a smidge over 100 pages), and if you're looking for a breezy read to help kick off some October scares leading up to Halloween, this is a great place to start.

“So kind. So caring. What a fine mother you shall be.”

Christina does a good deed. While typically, I am a fan of trying to do good deeds, in this particular case it just didn’t work out for Christina because she just attached herself to something evil that wants to call her Mommy. Damn you, good deeds!

A creepy and uber descriptive ghost story that wastes very little time with fluff and just takes off and steamrolls you to the finish line.

Curran is an absolute master when it comes to gag inducing descriptive prose. The guy is amazing. This passage should be on a Hallmark card. Beware – may be a spoiler, maybe not, but if you haven’t read it yet…be warned. …was living corpse mulch, a writhing, hissing soup of carrion steaming with noisome gases and bubbling with hungry meatflies. She was an eruption of maggots and rivers of yellow pus and puddling black corpse drainage. Her flesh was like dozens of slithering jellyfish intertwining and gushing with putrescence and giving birth to thousands of wiggling graveworms with suckering mouths. And beneath that roiling, repellent decay, she glared out at them with a bulging meat-pink eyeball that was glistening and purple-veined like an unfertilized egg, her mouth a ragged and screaming toothless chasm. She crept. She oozed. She wriggled. F*ck, man. That is awesome. *barfs a little in the mouth*

So, yeah, Curran is a badass. Love his work. There was even stuff in here that I had to go and check out on the internet. Damn you, internet!



Thanks, Tim. Some things you just cannot unsee. Now, you can’t either…

You’re welcome.