Review: From "The Horror Fiction Review"
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 2, 2013
Any story that opens with a prologue about an old-fashioned witch trial gone wrong and then skips merrily ahead three hundred years to an abused wife letting her husband have it with a frying pan has got my attention. By the time she's buried him, all the while with the glowing blue ghost of her creepy father keeping her company, I was hooked.Turns out that violence and dark secrets are nothing new to the quiet little town of Crossfall. A witch's curse will do that, even if the evil forces have remained largely dormant until now. When Maddy Harker plants Vic's corpse out in the field, she has no idea what she's unleashing on herself and her neighbors. Her neighbors have no idea, either.But, to be fair, they're caught up with their own dramas. Like the former sideshow fat lady, and the peeping mailman, and the police dispatcher into voodoo, and the police chief whose wife isn't away after all. Or the fussy hardware store owner, or the would-be preacher trying to crucify himself ...The unlucky few just passing through also have no idea what they're getting into. Like the broken-hearted trucker with the romantic streak, or the thug in the red Mercury who needs a place to hide out after shooting up a convenience store.Yeah, there's no shortage of strangeness going on in Crossfall, even before Maddy's dead husband comes back from the field as something new, something remade and terrible. He's Tatterdemon now, a walking nightmare mishmash of flesh, bone, dirt, roots, twigs and straw.Settling old Vic Harker's score with his murdering wife is only part of the fun. The more bodies Tatterdemon can bury in the field, the more scarecrow zombies he can raise, until he's got an army.That on its own would make for a compelling enough read, but there's much more. There's the other ghosts, like Maddy's daddy, who've appeared around town. There's the witch herself, waking to find Tatterdemon resisting her control and neither of them being very pleased about it. There's mangled corpses, possessions, gunshots, car crashes, explosions ... and just when you think you've reached the conclusion, some new twist gets thrown in.What really binds this book together, much in the way the straw binds together the scarecrow zombies, is a style of writing that is clever and funny even when describing violence, mutilation and gore. Some of Vernon's turns of phrase ... as the kids say, I LOL'd. Several times. A highly enjoyable read!