**Slight spoilers ahead**

Hum, the more rave reviews I read the less I trust them. Greely’s Cove was supposed to be an undiscovered masterpiece of horror, at least that’s what the reviewers on Amazon said. I read it, it’s not. The only really effective scene is less than a page long, comes almost the end, and makes way for the standard unresolved ending. It also involved a child in peril and that’s not entertainment.

All the elements are there for a good story- a band of misfits battling an ancient evil. There’s magic, zombies, spooky old houses. The timing’s off, the book doesn’t really start until half-way through. Gideon has too much fun with his computer’s thesaurus. But it just doesn’t gel. Is it a morality play, a horror book, a disgusting-at-times mind movie? And would it have killed the author to introduce a sympathetic character? Still, the book does carry the reader along and is compelling, in a dime-store bookrack kind of way. And still again, it foreshadows the wave of torture porn horror movies that have glutted the theaters for the past several years. It’s a nasty book

If you’re reading this and you want an undiscovered horrific gem, try David Martin’s Lie to Me and the sequel, Cul-de-Sac, and his Tap, Tap. Now there are some intoxicating nightmares for you. Or if you want something more elegant, Martin Amis’s Dead Babies is the most appalling book I have read.