Sour Lake Or, The Beast
Bruce McCandless
Ninth Planet Press, Dec 1 2011, $9.99
ISBN: 9780615544861

In 1911, East Texans live in fear as a monster is viciously ripping people apart while draining the victims of their blood. Ochiltree County Sheriff Reeves Duncan knows he must end this reign of terror, but realizes all the advantages belong to the unknown malevolence who owns the night in this depressed area called Big Thicket for an obvious reason.

While the good citizens of Acheson and other towns blame Sheriff Duncan in spite of his almost two decades of dedicated law enforcement, he puts together a posse of undesirables and second class misfits (as the good citizens refuse to help). The team of unacceptable pariahs methodically searches the slough of Big Thicket seeking to end the gruesome beast’s horror unaware that this monster has quisling allies and that there is an even greater danger to mankind.

This is an exhilarating gory early twentieth century horror thriller in which the taut storyline is enhanced with short backstories re the posse and the victims. Fast-paced with a sense of doom on every page, fans will appreciate this dark tale as 1911 East Texas comes to depressing light through grisly deaths and the eyes of a team suffering from PTSD with every mutilated body they find.

Harriet Klausner