Reviewed by: Keith Nixon
Genre: Horror/Short Story Collection
Approximate word count: 15-16,000 words
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Author:
Richard
Godwin is a widely published author, with a focus on horror and crime, and
playwright. He has written two full-length novels – Apostle Rising and Mr Glamour
– and has contributed multiple short stories to anthologies.
You can
learn more about the author on his website.
Description:
Piquant Tales is a series of short, interlinked
stories regarding The Mustard Man that were originally published over time in Pulp Metal Magazine.
Appraisal:
If you’ve
read any of my previous reviews you’ll know I’m not big on gory horror or
gratuitous violence that serves no purpose. Thrilling or humorous horror though
(such as that written and previously reviewed by Gerard Brennan) is another
matter. I much enjoyed reading Piquant…
an ongoing series of shorts that follow a mysterious figure, The Mustard Man,
as he cuts a swathe through the unpleasant, distasteful characters who prey on
others that he meets on his journeys. Intriguingly written each differs a
little from the others in terms of style and (taking the food analogy) texture.
What remains consistent throughout, however, is a sense of mystery (who really
is the Mustard Man), gore (but, crucially, without glorification), and the (bad
guys) getting their just desserts.
The Mustard
man is introduced in the first short, where Norm and he go out for the night,
pick up and murder two girls but the interlinking really starts in the second
tale, Pickle Party. Jack Laretto is a recently married successful writer. His
breakthrough came with a novel on a fictional serial killer, The Mustard Man.
On returning from honeymoon he struggles with his noisy neighbour, Hank.
However,
Jack starts to converse with The Mustard Man by e-mail, then telephone. Is he
real or imaginary? It’s never quite clear. Hank ends up dead at The Mustard
Man’s hand. He then starts a pilgrimage across America, moving from state to
state dealing with people who have wronged others, all the time communicating
with Jack who, in parallel, writes successful stories on his misadventures.
I enjoyed
the stories, reading them with a bit of a grimace, but, as initially mentioned,
despite the hard hitting style they never quite drifted into the extreme. The
food theme remains throughout and the writing is by turns raw, cultured and
visceral. Here’s some examples:
…she was nothing better than a hooker in
Viola’s opinion ad had recently taken to insulting all the neighbours. Her skin
had the used look of a bag that had been stuffed too full and she smelt of open
sewers. He looked at Hank, his heavy simian face so incongruous in the setting
of Echo Avenue it reminded Jack of a turd floating in a swimming pool.
The women who walked by were covered
in onions. Their bodies bulged with them like some agricultural erotic
affliction. They adhered to their sweating skins like the corrupted hands of a
priapic wraith in some violator’s folklore.
Cerebral
writing applied to murder, a fascinating overlap. I’ll be hunting down (sorry)
Mr Godwin’s other work.
FYI:
Violent
scenes.
Format/Typo Issues:
None.
Rating: ***** Five Stars
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