Review: A Sizzling Psychological Horror Thriller
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 23, 2012
Crime is the subject and crime doesn't pay.  A study in revenge scenes gone wild, the author asks you to suspend reality and enter the mind of the victim turned avenger in this suspense filled psychological thriller.  The popular fiction novel is divided into 4 short stories, Scorned, Hitchhiker, Intoxication, Bike and introduces Mr. Kizer's next horror thriller novel, Days of Vengeance.The intrigue begins with Scorned and the quote by William Congreve from The Mourning Bride, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."  This quote could not prepare you for what happens next.  Immediately, the writing grabs the Reader and takes them into a nightmare world of danger and the edge of sanity. Scorned may be the ultimate woman's fantasy, late at night after a bottle of red wine and too much cake, perhaps not one you would admit to in the light of day.What woman hasn't wanted to take revenge on an unfaithful lover?  Heather has a happy love life with her boyfriend Dan . . . until Loretta introduces herself at a local coffee shop.  She presents Heather with evidence through surveillance cameras and text messages that her boyfriend is sleeping with two other girls at her high school.  Loretta and her people offer to give Heather the opportunity to torture her boyfriend for 4 days in an isolated cabin in the woods.  Warning:  Adult Situation and Adult Language.  XXX rating.Hitchhiker is the unlikely but tantalizing story of two psych killers. What are the chances the man hitchhiking and the man giving the hitchhiker a ride are both serial psycho killers?  The driver, David, introduces himself to Ron as the hitchhiker gets into the car.  A plot within a plot, both killers have stories of atrocities. As they sit in the restaurant playing fake out, tension builds.In The Bike, Jesse is visited by a police officer who accuses him of stealing a woman's purse containing money and an expensive necklace, by snatching her purse while riding on his bike.  Jesse says his bike was stolen and that the discovery of the purse in his garbage had been planted.  Little does Jesse know his neighbor is playing payback because Jesse killed his dog.My favorite story was Intoxication, in this scenario a woman office worker, Leslie, thinks the office secretary, Helen, has attempted to poison her coffee cup. What made this story so unsettling was following the thoughts of Leslie about halfway through the story, "Leslie just remembered she had intended to discard that receipt right after buying the poison. One more detail:  she had paid cash to avoid a credit card trail." "And she provided that push in the form of rat poison in the can of Folgers coffee on the countertop in Helen's kitchen." and the story becomes psychological clockwork and eventually psycho vs. psycho.  The entangled plot of this story fascinated with a surprise ending.Tucked in at the end of the book are the first chapters of Tim Kizer's horror/suspense novel Days of Vengeance.  Frank has amnesia and his wife is missing, thought murdered, "With the last 6 years wiped out of his memory, Frank suspects he may have murdered his wife Kelly, who vanished 3 days before the car crash that caused his amnesia.  While struggling to remember Kelly, Frank is shocked to find out that his wife's family has the same suspicions."  In the background an anonymous blackmailer wants money not to talk, accusing Frank of killing his wife.What surprised me in the stories was that the characters often operated above the law, as if not expecting retribution.  As if in the nightmare of life gone awry, the entangled spaces that play upon tortured peoples minds, the author asks you to enter the fantasy, the horror zone (a case for telling the truth in all circumstances).  A spellbinding popular fiction novel to read late at night, or perhaps wait until daylight, it's that scary, Scorned by Tim Kizer.