Shaun Jeffrey

Prosper Snow is at it again and his past transgressions have caught up with him. He is back to his rogue self, recruiting a thief and Wolfe to help him, when a string of grisly murders draws him in to a case where an occult government agency conducts experiments on nature versus nurture. What compels people to kill? What is the benefit of knowing? Those experimented on kill because they are trained to and they know nothing else. With these made monsters loose in the world, no one is safe. A follow-up novel to The Kult, Killers is a great addition to the series, but is able to stand on its own. Shaun Jeffrey delivers a taut tale full of twists.… (més)

Set against the backdrop of a serial killer on the loose named The Oracle, a group of friends take a childhood pact to the next level.

Detective Prosper Snow started life as a chubby, bullied kid and when he is seriously injured, his friends form The Kult, a group sworn to avenge each others' tormenters by beating the crap out of them.

The Kult takes their vigilante justice to the next level when one of their wives is brutally attacked and rather than beat the perpetrator, this time the call is to kill him. Prosper takes his job as a law man seriously and is set against this, but is manipulated and dragged along until he is so entrenched there is literally no escape.

A handful of secrets, some gruesome murders, and clever misdirection on Shaun Jeffrey's part kept me guessing up until the point that Oracle's identity was revealed, who he might be. The Kult is a cleverly woven story that does not disappoint.… (més)

I really enjoyed this collection but just couldn't get above 3 stars. There are a number of really good stories and no real stinkers and some real novel ideas in the plotting of some of the stories. I guess what holds me back is there really are few higher level things going on, nothing that makes you particularly thoughtful about any of the stories. Still, there's something to be said for a good tale well told.

Once again gr is effed up for this book in the database. On a good not though, if you click outside the review box by accident it finally asks you if you really want to discard the review.… (més)

‘Voyeurs Of Death’ is a single-author collection by Shaun Jeffrey from 2007 featuring very short stories, most of which have appeared previously in some other horror magazine or anthologies. This means that some editor paid good money for them and was confident they would please the punters which is the best recommendation you can get. Four of the stories are previously unpublished but, in all honesty, you would never guess which if he didn’t tell you. After a one-sentence summary of each tale, cunningly including the title, I will give you my overall impression.

Ethan Cullen and his colleagues want to set up a holiday resort on the Scottish isle of Inchcullen but ‘The Flibbertigibbet’ has other plans.

‘The Watchers’ are people who want to see Luke and his new girlfriend, Geraldine, have sex in their car which might be fun.

A ‘Paranoid’ woman wakes up in what seems to be a hospital but the windows are barred, her head is shaved and the doctors don’t have a reassuring bedside manner.

‘The Tunnel’ is a drain leading towards a haunted house where peer pressure ruined a man’s life several years ago and now he’s back to try to fix things.

‘The Quilters Of Thurmond’ sew lovely quilts and give them to the young people of the village when they go off to the mainland to protect them.

‘Sin Eater’ comes around to your house and listens to your family as they confess their sinful thoughts and deeds, no matter how embarrassing.

‘Voyeurs Of Death’ gather at a car crash to look at the victim which reminds me of an old Ray Bradbury story but this took a different turn.

It should be all part of the normal ‘Life Cycle’ when Frances Hulme, a desperate whore and junkie gets pregnant, presumably by one of her customers, but she gives birth to something very strange.

Things go ‘Dark Inside’ a cruise ship when they rescue a lone boat on the ocean and it’s full of rats that carry a deadly virus.

Deaf Alex uses his mechanical skills to make a dead cat go like ‘Clockwork’ but it works better than expected.

A ‘Venetian Kiss’ might be a bite from one of that city’s mosquitoes or it might be something more deadly, especially at carnival time when the mask can conceal anything.

The ‘Peacock Lawn’ belongs to a rich man who wants to build a shopping centre on a swamp but soldiers who died in battle there might have other plans.

‘Envy’ is what struggling b-movie actress hopes to promote in her colleagues by getting a very special dress to wear to the premiere and she succeeds beyond her wildest nightmares.

Simon Wagner wants to make wife Deon into a ‘Snake Charmer’, charming the snakes inside other men’s trousers to enhance their sex life but things don’t work out as planned in this erotic horror.

‘Park Life’ is flash fiction with a family at a zoo and a nice little twist at the end.

It’s all good and some of it is very good indeed. This is mostly because Shaun Jeffrey not only gets the basics right but also adds and ruffles and flourishes like similes, metaphors and wit. Getting the basics right gives him a sound footing for the rest. The basics are:-

1) Naming your characters and describing, preferably with some style, their physical characteristics.

2) Having a solid sense of place, the setting for the story, again with some description to bring a sense of mood or danger or enchantment.

3) Making the reader care a little bit, given the limited page count, what happens to the lead character.

4) Having a satisfactory ending. These tend to the twist in the tale which is not the only option but is a popular one for very short stories.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and am happy to report that Shaun Jeffrey has moved on since to write novels and even had one of his novels, ‘The Kult’, made into a film which will be released soon. It’s also worth noting the fine pen and ink illustrations by Zach McCain, one for each tale, that adds a little extra touch of the macabre. All in all, an entertaining little collection that’s well worth reading.



… (més)