Review: Subtle horror
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 11, 2014
Okay, I admit up front, that I am biased towards liking horror stories written by psychologists. I am not too sure how many there are beyond my immediate sphere of existence, but Gary Fry is a psychologist who writes riveting horror tales. His latest novella, Menace, is a brilliant piece of subtle horror.Jane Marlow is a successful young model who finds herself pregnant after a brief fling with a TV actor. She begins taking as many modeling jobs as she can before her pregnancy starts showing. One is at an old coastal home in rural England where she is on a shoot that will end up on a book cover. In the process, she has a strange experience – noticing a group of small boys playing dangerously close to a cliff. She sees them only for an instance, and then they are gone. Was she just imagining them? She is perplexed, but diverts her attention to her developing child. When she sees the copy of the print which will serve as the cover, she is stunned to see the boys in the picture with her.To offer any more information will detract a reader from a clever horror tale which is very shrewd in its delivery. The story is surprisingly complex and yet understated. The reader becomes increasingly uneasy as the plot advances due to incremental chills. Dr. Fry is a master of delicate writing that snares you against your will. I couldn’t figure out what was going to happen to poor Jane. I was essentially glued to my Kindle. Some reviewers complained about the abruptness of the ending, given the pacing that came before. That may be true, but I didn’t mind the resolution. Some also commented on how the ending has been done before. That is also true. Still, Gary Fry had the guts to give it a go, and he had me guessing. This is the third work of his that I have read, and he has jolted me with each one.  Highly recommended.