Joe McKinney (1968–2021)

I love a good zombie story told well. I don’t read a ton of them and a lot of them are simply not very good. The best stories recognize that it’s the other characters that are the key and zombies are just part of the background or the landscape. Joe McKinney is a good writer and Dead World Resurrection is a great collection of short stories.

The stories in this collection are largely set in McKinney’s Dead World. Some are more directly tethered there and a couple are completely show more untethered from the setting. I expect more unevenness from a short story collection, but Dead World Resurrection is uniformly good. Very good. Two or three of the stories are slightly disappointing. “Bug Out or Hunker Down” is more of a musing of what you would do in a real crisis. “Sabbatical in the Ohio Methlands” is also sort of a philosophical tale that strays a little closer to reality. “Two-and-a-Half-Graves” likewise is more of a personal tale. While these stories are a little weaker than the rest of the collection, none of them are really clunkers and all are well written.

“Jimmy Finder” is a great zombies versus robots story. “Dating in a Dead World”, “The Day the Music Died”, and “Ethical Solution” were among the standouts in the rest of a great collection.

Joe McKinney was one of the authors at the forefront of the more recent rise of zombie popularity and he remains one of the best. He understands that you can’t tell a good zombie story without a good story. He creates characters you care about. His characters are challenged physically, mentally, emotionally and morally. It’s the character journey, not just the exciting plots and action scenes, that make these stories stand out.

Not all writers are adept at both the long-form novel and the short story, but McKinney clearly proves he is a master of the latter in Dead World Resurrection. This is a great collection both for fans of the series as well as a great entry for those unfamiliar with it. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book. show less

I love short horror stories and these 22 dark tales will make you wonder whether abandoned places are really as empty as they appear.
My favorites were The Storybook Forest by Norman Prentiss in which a small group of friends gather in an abandoned children's theme park for a few beers and a night of terror. Along that same theme was Lullaby Land by Mark Onspaugh. A once crowded theme park long since closed after a tragedy... but children still manage to find their way there as kidnappers show more Mitch and Del are about to discover. The Theater by Dennis Copelan finds Leonard Brown, taking a bittersweet final walk through of his movie theater before signing the final sale papers.
Drive-In of the Damned by Michael Arruda was another of my favorites. Three paranormal investigators stake out a haunted drive in hoping to gain enough popularity on their YouTube channel to get a tv show. Bodies Without Souls by L.L. Soares finds Michael about to give a beach party while his parents are away, when an empty yacht mysteriously floats into easy reach. What's the worst that could happen if he turns his beach party into a boat party? Emily by JW Schnarr is the story of a missing girl and what happens to two friends who joined her search party in the woods.
High Desert by Lisa Morton finds Kara seeking shelter from the heat when Tadd goes off for help after they have car trouble in the desert while checking out an area where a religious cult mysteriously disappeared. Dream Home by D.L. Snell is not exactly about a haunted house, but a house that will haunt you. The Pressboard Factory by Peter N. Dudar was my absolute favorite. Billy and Ryan grew up together, but were not much alike. Ryan was picked on, belittled and bullied not just at school but abused at home right up until the day he just couldn't take it anymore.
All of the above, for me were the 5 star stories in this collection.

I received a complimentary copy for review. show less

In Dodging Bullets, Joe McKinney presents a very fast moving and violent story about a small-time dealer, Peto Hurst, who works for the Mexican Mafia in San Antonio. Peto and his girlfriend thought they would be free from the drug-dealing life and the Mexican Mafia when Peto stole eighty thousand dollars, three bricks of heroin, and the accounting books that detailed the fortune that his girlfriend’s father, a criminal defense attorney who worked for the Mexican Mafia, had embezzled from show more the Mafia. However, they very quickly learned that you do not steal from the Mexican Mafia, without horrible consequences. Their theft resulted in an all-out reign of terror that Peto and his girlfriend, and several others with whom they associated, tried to endure. Unfortunately, some did not survive. At the beginning, I thought this book would be a quick read and provide lots of entertaining action. That turned out to be true, but I was also pleasantly surprised that the book is very well written. I found the characters in this novel to be very interesting and, as far as I could tell, they seemed to be an accurate depictions of a drug-dealing community. I found Peto to be an especially interesting and complex character that engendered my sympathy. I enjoyed Dodging Bullets very much and I intend to read some of McKinney’s other novels. show less

The gulf coast of Texas suffers five hurricanes in three weeks, leaving thousands dead and displacing even more. San Antonio was thankfully spared much of the devastation, but even so, Office Eddie Hudson and the rest of the police force face a busy night with the influx of survivors...and something else. During a routine call about a possibly burglary, Eddie and his partner Chris spot a lone woman, disoriented, moving slowly, with something spilled across the front of her shirt. As they show more watch, a few more people stumble out of a nearby building, with the same slow movements, but they don't notice the officers. Then, Eddie and Chris call out to them, and the group shambles toward them, paying no attention to the officers' calls to stop. They fire bean bags rounds at the advancing group without so much as slowing them down and soon find themselves surrounded.

The situation goes from bad to worse when Chris is knocked to the ground by a woman who begins clawing and biting him. With some effort, Eddie frees his partner and they manage to escape for a time. All the while, Chris begins to show signs of sickness and quickly deteriorates. It's only when he dies then comes back to life that Eddie realizes how truly horrific the situation is.

Racing against time -- and a horde of the waling dead -- Eddie's only thought as he fights his way across San Antonio is for his wife and newborn son's safety.

"Dead City" is full of a relentless (and gruesome) zombie goodness. Just when you hope Eddie's safe, more of those slow-moving terrors somehow rat him out of his hiding hole, and you wonder right along with him where the hell they keep coming from. The story moves at an incredibly fast pace, keeping me riveted at this one night in the life of Eddie Hudson trying to reach his family. And I wouldn't want to run into Eddie -- any survivors he found wound up as zombie food.

If you're in the mood for a quick zombie fix, this is a great book to satisfy your cravings. show less