Creepy crawlies times a thousand.

Nightcrawlers

By Tim Curran

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

If you like horror novels with non-stop action and descriptions that will give you nightmares, then Tim Curran's Nightcrawlers is for you. This is the first book I have read by Curran and, if this is an accurate representation of his talents, he is bound to be a major name in the fields. Nightcrawlers read like a Lovecraft tribute except that the actual Cthulhu Mythos isn't really used by the novel except as a fleeting reference to a character's knowledge of the horror sub-genre. Yet the book does bear a eerie similarity to Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space". However, That similarity is slight and the story becomes Curran's own unique take on the idea. In Nightcrawlers, A plethora of corpse are unearthed by a bulldozer. At the same time, an officer is reported missing with his partner telling a terrifying account of what happened. Lead officer and out-of-towner Kenney starts to look for the missing officer, soon to be plural, and he start to uncover a secret that the town of Haymarket is terrified to reveal.

For the most part, Nightcrawler is all action. The only time it lets up is when Kenney researches past stories and the writer shares the antidotes with us. While it is essential to the story, it is the only part of the book that bogs down the telling slightly. But no matter. soon we return to the excitement. But what is special about Curran's story telling is that he is excellent at merging the action with descriptions and thoughts that let us know what may be happening. I just love the grotesque and almost psychedelic descriptions. One may fault him for having less developed characters but this may be one of those novels where three dimensional protagonists would actually reduce the effect.

However you look at it, Nightcrawlers emerges as a contender for best horror novel for 2014. If you don't mind a few sleepless nights, I highly recommend it.