Tuesday 9 January 2018

What Hides Within - Jason Parent's Latest Horror - Reviewed



 My Review:

What Hides Within is a deft mix of darkest comedy, horror, suspense and psychological thriller.  To enjoy it at its best, you need to suspend disbelief and let your mind go with it on an epic journey. Jason Parent stories are like that. They’re different, complex, challenging, but well worth the investment of your time.



Imagine you were working at your usual boring 9-5 job and suddenly one day everything changed. You heard a strange voice in your head and you became aware that a tiny, almost transparent spider, similar to a black widow, had taken up residence in the deep recesses of your brain. Does it – she actually –want to kill you or become your new best friend? This happens to Clive who, until that point, is a pretty normal kind of guy. Granted he lives with an eccentric, introverted roommate called Kevin who demonstrates a strange fascination for old re-reruns of Hannah Montana but, apart from eating Clive’s food, he’s not too much trouble to have around. Okay, he is a bit weird, but…



Meanwhile, somebody has begun causing explosions in the town. People have been killed. Increasing numbers of them. Who’s behind these senseless killings? It is up to Detective Samantha Reilly to find out and she is determined to find the perpetrator.



Meanwhile, in Clive’s head, things are becoming increasingly complicated. His arachnid companion – whom he calls Chester – will not leave, despite her host’s best efforts and she is certainly not the easiest resident to have around. One false move on his part and… I did say, she was like a small black widow!



Clive is also becoming more and more concerned about his roommate – to the point where he begins to follow him.  What is Kevin up to?



With a strong cast of supporting characters, including a young niece called Victoria who is mature beyond her years, What Hides Within is a multi—layered novel that works because it is so well and convincingly written. In my review of his short story collection ‘Wrathbone and Other Stories‘, I described the author as being  ‘a weaver of complex, macabre tales’.  What Hides Within provides further evidence of Jason Parent’s supreme talent for doing precisely that.

 
 Clive Menard is just an ordinary guy living an ordinary life.


But when a talking spider crawls inside his head, things get a lot less ordinary…and people start dying.

Could an itsy-bitsy arachnid be behind the killing spree terrorizing Clive’s community?

To evade a sharp detective and find a murderer among friends, Clive must shake the cobwebs loose and piece together the puzzle of his life, all without falling prey to a dark force beyond his comprehension.

A genre-twisting dark comedy, What Hides Within is an EPIC Finalist and Independent eBook Award Runner-Up for Best Horror.

“I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes horror. It will make you cringe. It will make you shudder. It will make you want to take a shower. But you won't be able to put it down.” - Thomas W. Everson, author of The Rain Experience Trilogy

About the Author

In his head, Jason Parent lives in many places, but in the real world, he calls New England his home. The region offers an abundance of settings for his writing and many wonderful places in which to write them. He currently resides in Southeastern Massachusetts with his cuddly corgi named Calypso.

In a prior life, Jason spent most of his time in front of a judge . . . as a civil litigator. When he finally tired of Latin phrases no one knew how to pronounce and explaining to people that real lawsuits are not started, tried and finalized within the 60-minute timeframe they see on TV (it's harassing the witness; no one throws vicious woodland creatures at them), he traded in his cheap suits for flip flops and designer stubble. The flops got repossessed the next day, and he's back in the legal field . . . sorta. But that's another story.

When he's not working, Jason likes to kayak, catch a movie, travel any place that will let him enter, and play just about any sport (except that ball tied to the pole thing where you basically just whack the ball until it twists in a knot or takes somebody's head off - he misses the appeal). And read and write, of course. He does that too sometimes.

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