...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Hey, hey! I'm not doing much these days except for working, reading and hanging out on my balcony drinking self-made mocktails, so I don't have much to report until I'll have some vacation next week. So I hope you enjoy the short reviews, there are some nice books out there!

 

Headlights by C.J. Leede

I was waiting for that one kick-ass novel of the year 2026, and I think I finally found it in CJ Leede's Headlights!

 

The book starts off as a sort of detective story about FBI Agent Daniel Stansfield who is weary of everything and only wants to retire and live with a dog. On his last day of work he is tasked with closing a case he left four years ago and so he returns to his former hometown Denver, a city that holds many painful memories for him.

Back then random people were found unconsciously lying on the side of the highway, wearing the skin of victims they don't know and a strand of hair tied around their tongue. The last thing Daniel wants is to dig up old wounds, but when two new people are found, he has to.

Daniel also has a special skill that is tied to The Shining series, making Headlight a nice complementary work in the Stephen King multiverse.

The storyline slowly advances from a detective novel into the supernatural, and even cosmic territory as we're introduced to a strange cult leader and even a weirdly scary alien from a different dimension. An implicit environmental message gives it the final touch.  

This is a fantastic book that combines all the right elements. Especially Leede's command of language is impeccable and this may be the best novel I've read this year. 

Unusual Occurrences by Glenn Rolfe

Rolfe wasn't an author I had on my radar until he reached out to me over Goodreads and made me aware of his surprisingly large body of horror work (and his interesting lifeline as a punk rock singer songwriter who studied creative writing and wishes to have a pet goat).

So I chose his latest publicized book, a short story collection, Unusual Occurrences. The stories are generally a tad shorter than your usual 20 page story, and his range really covers an amazing set of American horror subgenres: vampire, zombies, apocalypse, catastrophes, 90s, creepy small towns, aliens, ghosts, dolls... Most stories have that uncanny "Stephen King/childhood in suburban USA" vibes that I like. I sometimes thought the dialogues were a little superficial and his characters felt like film characters, lacking depth. But still, the collection in general is very worth reading.

I quite liked Jackie Boy which is a creepy kid story, and also Girl by Day in which, as you can guess by the title, a creature that roams around looking like a girl by day but other things at night.  

Come Sing for the Harrowing by Dan Coxon

One of horror's most ambitious subgenres is folk horror, and it is incredibly hard to  do it right and good. So, it's no wonder that a folk horror collection written by one author (I initially thought this was an anthology by different authors edited by Dan Coxon), is quite an amazing feat. But Coxon somehow manages that.

And, of course, his folk horror has many faces: a young man lured into an unholy tradition to be food for the gods, burglars finding more than what they were looking for, a daughter's revenge from her abusive father after his death, things that happen on Samhain, terrifying, mythic creatures in local places, found footage material of nosy influencers, police recordings about the strange case of a rock star who wrote messed up lyrics, mysterious fish men... Coxon really walks the whole range of folk horror. 

My highlights were Bumblehatch in which a girl interacts with the ghost of a bullied boy that only she treated nicely; Clockwork is about a woman reviving her abusive father after his death (or rather re-forming him from a set of objects he buried in his garden while he was alive) just to get her revenge for the times he made her life hell; and finally The Darkness Below in which a father is convinced his son is not his son anymore after a visit to stalactite caves during their summer vacation.

Very creepy collection, highly recommended.  

Crocodilopolis: A Novel by John Manuel Arias

Big family sagas have definitely had a powerful charm on me ever since my formative years in which I used to love and read a lot of endless South American generational sagas from authors such as Allende or Marquez, and Crocodilopolis definitely took me back there.

We follow the stories of the brothers Osario and Seth Oreamundo, both Costa Rican politicians, but one beloved, the other hated and exiled in the USA. They were both born into a political dynasty and raised on a big estate and have been semi-rivals for all their lives, ever since their mother started favoring the younger Osario and neglecting Seth, who then turned to his grandfather. There are lots of dirty secrets concerning this grandfather, and although there are moments of genuine sibling closeness, the cleft between them gets bigger as Seth, after an incident of physical violence against him, leaves the house, and Osario takes it very personal that he left him alone.

Their enmity continues well into their political careers and leads to Seth moving away - until one day he decides that it's enough and returns to Costa Rica with the help of an old powerful friend.

The titular crocodiles play a metaphorical role in this pit full of predators, just laying low to eat and kill each other but that's not all that's offered - revenge, biblical mythologies, masculinity, complex family affairs, political scandals - all this packed into a beautifully written and enchanting story. This is a power house of a book.

Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films by Nina Nesseth

Put in very basic terms, I was and am vaguely aware that both horror and porn, representing two opposing sides of a scale of human instinct, respectively stand for death and life (reproduction), and are the only genres in fiction that provoke a physical, visceral reaction in the audience. There are many more details, much more information to explore and a whole lot of myths to debunk when it comes to the subject of biological science of horror, which Nina Nesseth takes upon herself with this book. 

The Canadian biologist explores in her book Nightmare Fuel a ton of neat details about the science of what we feel, why we react, and what happens in our brains and bodies while we watch horror movies. What happens to your nervous system? Why do people even watch horror? What makes up a good horror movie from a scientific point of view? What does fear provoke in our bodies and what does disgust? What about the place of sound and scores in horror cinema?

My only critique would be that even in chapters having a universal claim, like "The History of Horror", not much attention was given to works outside of the US, missing some titles that are important from my point of view, but I guess you have to cut down a lot when you want to cover such a big field. Other than that I'd totally recommend this, very interesting.

Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

I finally got to read my first Keith Rosson book, an author who has been getting immense praise for the last couple of years, and whose books I never really had the time to explore. Well, my verdict is that he is indeed an exciting new name and his work can be compared to later King works.

Coffin Moon is a vampire novel, no need to hide, as it's no real spoiler and it's a historical book, if you want to count the 70s as historical. Vietnam veteran Duane Minor lives a quiet life as a bartender in Portland, trying to stay sober and to get along with his wife's thirteen-year-old niece Julia who moved in with them after her mom killed her domestically violent dad.

Long story short - vampire John Varley walks into his bar, makes a scene, and leaves with a grudge that leads him to kill Minor's wife in an act of retaliation. Both Minor and Julia bond and unite over their shared rage for revenge and hit the road in search of the powerful undead, encountering all kinds of freaks during their pursuit.

As I mention above, this is a quite solid horror story, the quasi punk vampire reminded me a little of director Kathryn Bigelow's vampire band in her iconic film "Near Dark", a movie I love. I'll definitely be on the lookout for some more Rosson books, I liked this.