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My guest this week on The Scariest Part is author Ray Clark, whose new novel is Implant. Here is the publisher’s description:

Bramfield, near Leeds, a sleepy little market town nestled on the borders of West and North Yorkshire. Detectives Stewart Gardener and Sean Reilly discover the naked corpse of Alex Wilson, nailed to the wall of a cellar in his uncle’s hardware store. His lips are sewn together and his body bears only one mark, a fresh scar near his abdomen.

Within forty-eight hours, their investigation results in dead ends, more victims, no suspects and very little in the way of solid evidence.

Gardener and Reilly have a problem and a question on their hands: are the residents of Bramfield prepared for one of history’s most sadistic killers, The Tooth Fairy? The detectives race against time to stop the trail of horrific murders…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Ray Clark:

I had a good think about the scariest part of the novel, and I even spoke at length to my editor about it and we both came to pretty much the same conclusion. I don’t think there is anything in Implant that falls in the really scary category, particularly not in the sense of a heart-pounding, jump out of your skin, nearly mess yourself, scary moment.

However, I think the overall concept of notbeing in control of any given situation is a particularly frightening one. As human beings we all like to control our environment, even if it’s something as simple as having friends over for dinner and you suddenly start to realize that you’re making a mess of a relatively simple meal you’ve cooked a dozen times or more. Running late for a meeting is another good example of losing control: you’re stuck in traffic, you’ve lost signal on the mobile and shortly afterwards you start to lose it. So, there are varying degrees of loss, most of which we can overcome. But if you are threatened by someone who has imprisoned you, is going to kill you, and who takes their time to explain how and why they have you, and what they’re going to do, that’s a whole different ball game: a brand new level of fear. As things progress, you can see that no matter what you do, there is no way out. Given that scenario, I imagine your heart will start to pound, very rapidly. As a writer you can control that situation perfectly by concentrating on your own fears before transferring them to the page.

There are definitely two very intense horrific scenes in Implant that fall into that category. They instill a sense of fear in the creeping-dread-of-what-is-about-to-happen sense. Both include victims who are isolated but treated in very different ways. With one, it’s a long drawn out affair in which the victim is held captive, and being forced — in a unique way — to part with information; the other is a scene set in the waiting room of a small country railway station. I take quite a bit of time throughout the novel to explain the gentle, rural setting where life is lived at a slower pace, with a small-town, tranquil yesteryear feeling. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I describe what I believe to be an extremely cringe-inducing, spine-creeping scene that the police are faced with. All along, you instinctively know that no matter what they do — or attempt to do — things are going to end very badly for the victim. Hopefully, the rising panic the scene invokes causes a sense of fright in the dreaded anticipation of what is coming.

Even whilst I was writing it I could sense it all perfectly, and despite what I was doing, and the fact that I was also starting to inwardly feel uncomfortable, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to make sure that everyone who reads that scene feels as I did — or maybe even as stressed out as the victim.

Implant: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound / Press Release & Official Trailer

Ray Clark: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Amazon Author Page

Ray Clark’s first published work in 1995 was a 3,000 word essay on the author Graham Masterton, with The British Fantasy Society for one of their in-house magazines. A book length adaptation, Manitou Man, followed in 1998. Ray is the author of several stand-alone horror and crime novels including, The Priest’s Hole (May 2012) and Seven Secrets (Jan 2015), published by Damnation Books. Calix (Nov 2012) and two short story collections, A Devil’s Dozen (Dec 2013) and A Detective’s Dozen (June 2015), published by Double Dragon books of Canada. Ray’s first full-length crime novel, Impurity, was published by Caliburn Press in 2016. The second, Imperfection, followed in March 2017 from Urbane Publications. Endeavour Press also released Ray’s stand-alone horror novel, Resurrection in June 2017. Implant is book 3 in the IMP series, published by Urbane Publications.

Steve Lichman – Volume 2 by David Rapoza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Catching up with our favorite, all-too-human D&D monsters, STEVE LICHMAN, VOL. 2 finds the characters dealing with petty jealousy, peer pressure, misguided 1980s Sunset Strip fashions, porn addiction, an organized crime syndicate run by a talking frog, a keytar-playing Bard, all-out war between dungeons, and the perils of ordering too much Meat Lover’s Pizza from Pizza Hut. Along the way readers will find hilarious riffs on everything from THE LOST BOYS and Stephen King’s IT to Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and Francis Ford Coppola’s DRACULA.

Rapoza and Warren’s humor is as sly and knowing as ever, and the art perfectly captures both detail and emotion. The storyline that has Ben the Beholder being pursued by a child molester was a little too much for me, but other than that I loved STEVE LICHMAN, VOL. 2 as much as VOL. 1. I just wish that A) these volumes came out more frequently, and B) they were widely available to the general readership and not just to Kickstarter donors. I personally know a lot of people who would love to read about Steve the big-hearted Lich King, Flay the sarcastic Mind Flayer, Ollie the deeply insecure Owlbear, and the rest of the gang if only they could find these books in bookstores!

View all my reviews

Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery by Fred Van Lente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A clever riff on Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, Fred Van Lente’s fun, fast-paced debut novel traps a gaggle of comedians on a remote island owned by a Woody Allen-like comedy legend, where they are picked off one by one by an unknown killer. Each of the characters is modeled after a popular, real-life comedian you’re sure to recognize, although Van Lente knows not to make them 1:1 replicas or simple stand-ins; each has his or her own personality and motivations that are important to the novel. Some of the murders are gruesome, but to Van Lente’s credit he understands that, for this novel’s purposes, the comedy is more important than the deaths. He manages to keep things light and brisk. Although (just to toot my own horn) I did figure out who the killer was before the big reveal, this is still a fun, enjoyable mystery I would recommend to anyone.

View all my reviews

My guest this week on The Scariest Part is author Karen Randau, whose new novel is Deadly Payload. Here is the publisher’s description:

Dead birds raining from the sky. Poison in the water supply. Spies on the back porch.

A lifeless crow shatters the windshield as Rita Avery, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter arrive at Arizona’s Rim Vista Park. Rita dodges bird carcasses on the road home, where she finds her husband Cliff and son Travis gravely ill from a mysterious pathogen with no cure.

The CDC assembles a team to create a cure, but Rita doubts it will arrive in time to rescue Cliff, Travis, and dozens of her friends and neighbors.

In a race to save her family, her community, and potentially thousands more Americans, Rita launches her own investigation. She partners with a certified herbalist and a homeless war veteran dubbed Crazy Mary.

But the more clues Rita uncovers, the deeper she finds herself in the middle of a ruthless plot that could unleash a wide-ranging American disaster. And the culprits aim to stop her at any cost.

Before it’s too late for her loved ones, Rita must thwart the next attack on innocent civilians.

Murder, spine-tingling trips through Arizona’s rugged wilderness, and callous spies determined to spread havoc — this isn’t your average family outing!

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Karen Randau:

The scariest part about writing Deadly Payload was researching how easy it would be for the spies among us to launch a chemical attack on our nation’s water and food supply. It scared me so much I kept having to pause work on the manuscript — once for several months.

The protagonist in my Rim Country Mystery series is a middle-aged mother and grandmother named Rita Avery. Her first husband died in the first book, Deadly Deceit, in a movie-theater shooting on the couple’s thirtieth anniversary. The investigation into the shooting uncovered a web of her husband’s lies that originated during his service in first Gulf War, making her question everything about her marriage, her life, and herself. Because her late husband knew his sins had put his family in danger, he led Family Fight Night every Friday for years. Rita didn’t realize what kinds of self-defense skills she had gained until she had to use them.

Since then, Rita has partnered with her second husband, Detective Cliff Avery, to solve the crimes that have followed them everywhere they go. Her adventures include saving her husband from drowning, him saving her after a bomb blew her onto a tree branch hanging over a deep gorge, and working together to escape from the grips of a serial killer.

In Deadly Payload, Rita is on her own.

She is thrust into the heart of a deadly mystery when her husband and son fall gravely ill from tainted water, along with hundreds of other people in her town. She deduces that the city’s water supply is the culprit and investigates what went wrong. As she digs deeper into the puzzle surrounding the contamination, she realizes that a homeless war veteran nicknamed “Crazy Mary” may be a part of the conspiracy, and that the roots behind the attack have something to do with Mary’s service in Afghanistan. They partner up to uncover the truth, but when they come too close, Rita is taken.

I’ve done a lot of research for all of my books, but nothing has scared me as much as what I uncovered for Deadly Payload.

It started with news stories about Russia’s meddling into the 2016 election. Wondering what else they’ve done to weaken their enemies, I discovered the real Russian spies who inspired the TV show The Americans, the actual use of chemical weapons on school children in Afghanistan, and multiple assassinations worldwide using KGB tactics.

I combined those revelations with my curiosity about the American electrical grid, water system, and food crops. The result was Deadly Payload.

My friends and I spend more time washing our produce and filtering our water now.

Deadly Payload: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

Karen Randau: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Karen Randau is the author of four Rim Country Mysteries: Deadly Deceit, Deadly Inheritance, Deadly Choices, and her newest, Deadly Payload, as well as Deadly Reception, one of several novellas by best-selling and award-winning authors. All her books are published by Short On Time Books. A native of the southwest U.S., Karen’s books feature a tough family-oriented protagonist from the fictional mountain town of Rim Vista, Arizona. Her article, “How Research Can Help Sell Your Story,” recently was featured in Writer’s Digest. She is a proud member of the International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Karen lives with her family in the mountains above Phoenix, Arizona.