Slasher Crasher – David Nora
Reviewed by Steve Stred
- Paperback: 357 pages
- Publisher: Black Rose Writing (21 Aug. 2019)
Slasher Crasher is the debut novel by David Nora, which made me completely unprepared for what I was going to read. David had contacted me about reading and reviewing the book and the synopsis sounded like a fun time, so I agreed.
The story itself follows our main character Nick and his return to his childhood home after escaping from a mental hospital. When he was young he killed his babysitter’s boyfriend. As I started to read the book I got some serious ‘Halloween’ vibes in the basic set up and premise of the story.
As the story continues he runs into two high school friends who have some ‘issues’ with a few things and the tale takes off from there.
The story itself doesn’t take itself too seriously and at times I wondered if this was going to become an unexpected Bizarro novel.
This isn’t a story I would typically search out or find on my radar, so I appreciate the author reaching out.
Overall the characters ranged between fun and unpredictable to static and fairly formulaic but when writing a story like this, you sometimes need those characters to keep things grounded. You do get to know the characters with great depth, which I’ve found can sometimes be lacking in most books.
The story is peppered throughout with pop culture references and while it’s fun at times, I also wished for a bit less during certain points. The references ranged from increasing the emotive aspect of parts of the story to detracting because it wasn’t a reference I’d normally get or had a relation too. It’s a unique feature in that most readers will react different to the references based on their background and even their age.
I’m not normally a big fan of comedy based horror, but Nora pulls it off well and in certain places you’re able to picture a movie theatre laughing aloud at that specific moment if it was adapted to film.
As I said before, this is not a book I’d normally pick to read off of a book store shelf, so it was a pleasant surprise. And when a book is called horror-comedy, oftentimes it’ll be more of one than the other, but Nora did a great job of balancing both.
This felt like a fun, summer-time slasher flick that you’d go see with a bunch of friends and that says a lot about Nora’s writing ability but also where he can go in the future.
Looking forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve after this!
Slasher Crasher
It’s Halloween. Nick Roesch, a towering figure of evil and stupidity, escapes from the upstate New York mental hospital he’s been committed to for the past five years.
Planning to return to his childhood home, where he brutally murdered his babysitter’s boyfriend, his plans are halted when he crosses paths with an even more terrifying beast—two high school friends with some serious beef.
Caught in a battle of loyalty that has been brewing for ten years of their friendship, the two girls, Kathleen Strife and Betsy Coleman, force the feud into a savage showdown, pitting the escaped monster against each other.
Who will survive this epic deathmatch, and is it totally wrong to fall in love with the murderous lunatic who just tried to kill your ex-best friend with a machete?
You can buy Slasher Crasher from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Steve Stred
Steve Stred writes dark, bleak horror fiction.
Steve is the author of the novels Invisible & The Stranger, the novellas The Girl Who Hid in the Trees, Wagon Buddy, Yuri and Jane: the 816 Chronicles and two collections of short stories; Frostbitten: 12 Hymns of Misery and Left Hand Path: 13 More Tales of Black Magick, and the dark poetry collection Dim the Sun.
On September 1st, 2019 his second collection of dark poetry and drabbles called The Night Crawls In will arrive. This release was specifically created to help fund the 1st Annual LOHF Writers Grant.
Steve is also a voracious reader, reviewing everything he reads and submitting the majority of his reviews to be featured on Kendall Reviews.
Steve Stred is based in Edmonton, AB, Canada and lives with his wife, his son and their dog OJ.
You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevestred
You can visit Steve’s Official website here
I enjoy some humor with horror if it’s done right, doesn’t feel forced. Sounds like the author found a good balance.