Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Ten scary good horror novels

At Bloody Disgusting, Meagan Navarro tagged ten scary good horror novels, including:
Meddling Kids – Edgar Cantero

In 1977, the teen detectives of the Blyton Summer Detective Case and their Weimaraner cracked open a significant case that leaves a costumed culprit behind bars for a very long time. Cut to thirteen years later, and the gang has long split up. None of them faring well in adulthood. Police want one of the members across multiple states, another battles alcoholism, and another has spent many years in Arkham Asylum. Nightmares and the suicide of the fourth member bring the gang back together to retrace the steps of their last case; there was something much worse than a masked man behind it all. Something otherworldly and Lovecraftian, and it wants free. Cantero remixes the Scooby-Doo setup with Lovecraftian terror, merging light-hearted horror with Dagon-like beasts. He avoids the pitfalls of oversaturating the prose in pop-culture references in favor of earnestness and action-horror.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Meddling Kids is among Max BoothII's top ten crime books with supernatural elements and comedy, Sam Reader's top ten "books that cast forests in their proper light: dangerous, dark, and deep" and Jeff Somers's six books that will rearrange your childhood memories.

--Marshal Zeringue