John Foster writes like a man possessed. I think maybe because he is. I'm not meaning head-rotating, pea-soup spitting stuff. but a whirlwind of words barley held back by skin and hair bullying him from inside out...that's how he reads to me. It's almost chaotic but also beautiful. It's swarming flies on a carcass in the sunshine gorgeous.

A U.S. Marshal Virgil Bone is sent to a remote island to collect the body of a known killer. His trip to the island from the mainland let's you know all you need in regard to tone and atmosphere. Something large moves below deck. The crusty captain speaks in riddle and Bone is not much for social graces himself. He's not out for friends or allies, just wants to gather the corpse and get the hell back to the mainland and hopefully, on with his mess of a life.

Once on the isle, he discovers the denizens are not all that friendly...or right in the head. There's peripheral evidence of folk magic and even darker things...and he picks this up all before a deep dive into the island's history. When the body he's meant to claim goes missing, and the islanders start dying horrifically, Bone has to choose sides...a task made all the more difficult by the fact that no one seems to want him to leave the island alive.
Foster takes an age old trope--the fish out of water tale and gives is shaking legs and gnarled fingers. He gives it a dark history and a darker future. He litters the path with lobster shells and rocks and bones. He is a fucking master is what John Foster is.  The pacing here is top line and the characters are fantastic, although it is here where I lay out my sole small complaint...the names of the islanders are so richly outlandish that I sometimes had trouble keeping them straight especially in scenes where there was a mob of them all going back and forth. This might be down to the fact I read at bed time and was tired maybe not.  It did nothing to mar the experience for me.

The Isle is a helluva read. You need it.
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The Isle is available from Grey Matter Press
 

I quite enjoyed most of the stories within this collection. As always with short story collections, some you love and some you hate. Here, I loved most of them. Brain Damaged is as it says it is. It contains some very graphic, gory, pushing the limits (but never too far) gruesome horror tales.  

To pick my favourite three, well, it’s hard I must say. I will go with the following though, as these really stood out.

Scarab: This is a tale of crime and ancient gods. Jason is a man who has always lived within the grey. He has been in trouble with the law numerous times and served his time for armed robbery, costing him his family. He is a desperate man, and desperate men will do anything. Just one more job, one more job will set Jason and his crew up for life. Jason plans to kidnap his children and flee the country with the proceeds of this last job. He targets what appears to be a simple family jeweller, with lax security in place. They hold within their vaults priceless ancient artefacts, which cannot be removed from the vault under any circumstances. Jason doesn’t believe this; he has his sights set on an ancient Egyptian Scarab. Ignoring all the warnings, he kills the jewellery shop owner and takes it. The second he sets foot outside the shop, the world begins to end. The dead rise and begin their slaughter of the innocent.

As a fan of mythology as well as horror, ‘Scarab’ really stood out for me. I love all these stories mummies rising form the tombs, ancient curses, all that kind of thing. I find it so fascinating, as well as very believable. I for one would never tamper with an ancient artefact, because really, who knows? We have all seen those movies!

Brief Encounter: The first tale from the book. Brief Encounter is the story of a man trying his best to get to his kids on Halloween. After the end of a toxic relationship with his ex, Millie, he now lives a separate life from her and his children, Lilly and Mark. He is doing his best to get to them on Halloween; he has costumes for them, and is, as any father would be, excited to spend some time with them. He is unfortunately stuck in excessively heavy traffic, and is unsure what is happening after he witnesses some form of explosion behind from his rear view. He isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

 He meets a woman, in the next car over, first thinking that she is in costume, then the gruesome reality hits, she is dead, and so is he. The explosion was his death on the highway, and he is now in hell.

I really enjoyed this story. It felt like a great metaphor for the ‘hell’ that is the daily rat race of life. A man, working a job he resents, separated from his family, just trying to get by anyway he can.

Mink:  I loved this one. Tanya is a nasty piece of work, a woman who married her mob boss husband purely for his money, and then she had him killed by her lover, her husband’s right hand man.

One of her favourite possessions, well used to be, was a mink coat. Her husband had gifted it too her, and she loved wearing it. She loved wearing it that is, until she started to believe it was possessed by her dead husband.

This was a great read, a gold digging horror show of a woman getting her just deserts. Her scorned husband still managing to enact his bloody revenge from beyond the grave.
 
This is a great read, short stories are perfect too if you don’t have too much time to read. It’s bloody, gory, scary and fun.

4/5
Lesley-Ann (Housewife of Horror)

If I were to distill down Matt Kurtz’s Kinfolk into a single word, something to give you an idea of how you will feel as you blast through this story, it’d have to be tension. From the very first moment until the last blood-soaked scene you will be left breathless. It is a grizzly affair that deals with inbred cannibals, redemption, and holding on to your humanity. Nothing is held back as you are plunged into a battle that won’t let go until long after you are finished.

Right from the start Kurtz shows that he is not messing around. We are introduced to a young man, let’s call him Red Shirt, going on a cross country road trip alone. Red Shirt catches a ride with a pervy truck driver that dispenses him in the middle of nowhere. A “friendly” old man picks him up and the next thing Red Shirt knows is that he is face down on a grimy bed wishing he stayed home. It is a shocking opening that seems to be a test for the reader, asking you if you can handle this. 

I will say it is probably the most gruesome part of the book, so if you are at all queasy or uncomfortable with the types of things inbred hillbillies might do to someone they kidnapped, maybe skip that section and jump into the next chapter.

I haven’t read much from Grindhouse Press(though I have more of their books on my slate), so I’m not sure how much they lean into the “grindhouse” aspect of their name, but if they are fully onboard with that label, then Kinfolk fits right in. We are given vivid details of every gunshot, knife wound, eating of flesh, and rock smashing that happens in the book. But, honestly, it doesn’t feel gratuitous. Kurtz’s use of language and description is so magical that we are almost lost within the beauty of word choice to notice that someone has had their brains splattered against a wall. Yes, there is a lot here that’ll make you cringe, but at the same time you can’t help but be impressed by the skill in which it is told.

I have to tip my hat to Kurtz on his ability to wield tension like it’s an extension of his arm. After he introduces us to the inbred cannibal family, he lets those images and thoughts simmer in the back of our minds while he focuses on the two brothers, Eric and Ray. They are leaving a small town in Texas to get revenge on the man responsible for Ray’s wife’s death. These two are not good guys, they’ve done terrible things in the past, and the mission they are on is not a good one. While we are following them, our anticipation is building, our legs twitch, our sweaty fingers flip through the pages faster, and we imagine the epic battle that is surely coming between these two forces. But, Kurtz keeps us on the leash, teasing us along, asking us to just wait and see where it’s all going to go. He even throws in a couple of false starts to make the final confrontation all the more sweeter. And once we get there, it hits hard.

As the two groups battle we are stuck in the sweaty balance of who is going to come out on top. Kurtz is not afraid to hurt his heroes or his villains, making every scene all the more terrifying. Both sides do dumb things that’ll make you scream out, “why?”. These characters are not perfect, they are living in the moment and doing what they can to survive. Kurtz plays with this realism to keep us guessing at what the outcome is going to be.

I did find some faults with Kinfolk. At moments it drags on a little too long. Maybe they are there to give the reader a chance to rest, but it comes across as padding. We also find our characters pausing to relish the position they are in, either moments away from a kill shot or chance to escape. As is always the case, this pause is taken advantage of at the detriment of the character. Yes, it does add dramatic tension and prolongs the story, but feels a bit played out. Then there are a couple of the scenes that might be hard for some readers to read. It might turn some off of reading the rest of the book or might trigger something. We can debate the merits of certain acts of violence all day long, but in the end, it is worth noting there are things in here that not all can handle.
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In the end, this is really a fabulous book. Any time I had to put it down for work or sleep, I always thought about ways I could slip in a few more pages. I never found anything over-the-top for the sake of being over-the-top; it’s a brutal story about criminals and cannibals, of course they are not going to take things easy. Kurtz comes across as a master of tension and description, never letting you go until he wants to. If you are looking for a grizzly good time, then hunt down Kinfolk and be prepared to get what you asked for.