Jeff Strand

Jeff Strand’s Wolf Hunt has been described to me as a horror comedy. Well, I don’t like horror comedies. With me it’s either or. Therefore, my first instinct was to pass over Jeff Strand’s Offering. But then I remembered having enjoyed reading Strand’s “Blisters” and decided to give this a chance. Within minutes I was hooked. Its comedic elements are delicate and well placed witticisms owned by the characters themselves; fortunately, the plot itself is kept free of parody or satire. From start to end, the protagonists, a duo of charming thugs, crank out a cornucopia of taunting remarks towards each other and their supernatural antagonist who skillfully returns the favor with character fitting ripostes of the macabre kind that are no less funny. For all of this, the author doesn’t forget to inject the plot with just the right amount of deadly seriousness. After all, our thuggish yet lovable heroes have to make it their business to hunt a werewolf whose razor-sharp claws and quips are equally vicious.Summa summarum, this is a solid hands-on werewolf story sans over the top fantasy elements that so often plague the genre; its noir-style dry humor only adds to it.… (more)

Fans of Very Bad Things might enjoy Graverobbers Wanted: No Experience Necessary

What starts off as an innocent meeting over coffee between friends turns into an unusual job proposal from a woman Andrew and Roger have never met. The gig? $20,000 to dig up a coffin and find a key.

Seems simple enough. The coffin isn’t buried that deep, it is in a private place, and they don’t have to do anything with the body. Just find the key and rebury the coffin. Except when they unearth the pine box, the man inside isn’t dead. At least not immediately, and suddenly, $20,000 doesn’t seem like enough.

Crossbow darts fly. Someone gets knocked unconscious. Andrew and Roger end up in a secluded cabin, bag over their heads, potentially eavesdropping on a murder. Flash forward to the ditch they are dumped in, their hitchhiking misadventures with a man called The Apparition, and the ultimate cat-and-mouse game that ensues, and Andrew and Roger wish they had never involved themselves with the likes of Ghoulish Delights, a choose-your-own-horror-adventure company whose real product is much darker than amateur horror films.

This story is a super-fast read that I knocked out in three sittings. One of those books where the plot twists go from bad to worse. I had to know what was going to happen next as poor Andrew Mayhem’s life gets dismantled over the course of a few terrible days. He’s a lovable loser as characters go, and I mean that in the best possible way. The guy just doesn’t win a lot. He means well. He loves his wife and kids, but if something can get screwed up, it feels like he’s the man for the job. He tries so hard to uncover the identity of the killer in this gore-fest amateur sleuth mystery akin to Saw or Hostel in horror intensity.

Probably not for the squeamish, this one involves a lot of dismemberment and still manages to be mildly clever. I’ve been on a horror-comedy run with Jack Townsend’s Tales from the Gas Station and now Jeff Strand’s Graverobbers Wanted: No Experience Necessary, which feel a little like Max Booth III’s How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers only in the escalating bumbling of inept-but-comical main characters. If you like the horror-comedy mashup, you can do worse than any of these books, of which Graverobbers Wanted holds distinction as most gruesome.

A fun read and the first in a five-book series featuring Andrew Mayhem, Graverobbers Wanted: No Experience Necessary earns a solid four-star rating and is recommended for fans of the genre with stronger constitutions. I can’t wait for book two, already cued up on my Kindle.
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Casket for Sale (Used Only Once) is the third in the Andrew Mayhem series and the first featuring Andrew’s wife, Helen Mayhem, in her own voice, which I really enjoyed. She could have her own series about what it’s like to be married to such a trouble magnet and I’d probably go along for that ride. This time, Helen, the Mayhem children, their pug, Roger, and his new squeeze Samantha head out for a little group R&R.

Rest and relaxation is never on the menu when Andrew Mayhem is involved so it is no surprise when their RV camping trip takes the worst of wrong turns leaving the group, again, at the mercy of a band of lunatics.

Much like Single White Psychopath Seeks Same, the story is a sort of a hack-and-slash rampage across a town where pretty much no one lives, works, or travels through. Each car that takes this road leads the travelers to a nasty fate. There is no police presence to speak of and there are traps everywhere. A few times, I just shook my head.

Plot holes aside, this book is creatively demented in the same way the previous installment was. If you like to read about crazy people doing implausible things to folks who survive everything, and you’re not averse to your goons being named things like Goblin, Witch, and Medusa, then hey, Casket for Sale is a good time.

I went back and forth on rating this one 3 or 4 stars and settled on 3.5 rounded up because the characters of Samanta and Helen brought something new to the table. These are smart, capable women. Not victims. I liked that. Not much of a plot here and I don’t love children getting hurt, but it’s horror, and there are definitely a few cringe-worthy scenes that straddle the line between gut-wrenching and sort of hilarious. Recommended for fans of sadistic psychopathy.… (more)