Title: Stray Fears
Author: Gregory Ashe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 284 Pages
Category: Horror
At a Glance: One sure bet in a Gregory Ashe novel is that when the going gets tough, the tough get bloody. Stray Fears is full of pure, goose bump inducing perfection.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Elien Martel is a survivor, but surviving, he’s beginning to discover, isn’t the same thing as living. In the house he shares with his much older boyfriend, Elien spends his days trying to stay as far away from living as possible. Living, he has learned, means that sooner or later you’ll get hurt.
When a member of Elien’s support group dies under strange circumstances, though, Elien finds himself in a web of bizarre coincidences. The responding officer turns out to be another member of Elien’s support group—a man named Mason, who has made no effort to hide his dislike of Elien. Then, just a few days later, Mason tries to kill Elien in front of dozens of witnesses.
As violence ripples through Elien’s world, he begins to suspect that the coincidences are not coincidences at all. Something is at work behind the cascade of tragedies, something vicious and intelligent. Something that has wanted Elien for a long time.
To defeat it, Elien will have to do what he fears most and face the darkness in his own past. Worse, he’ll have to take the risk of trying to live again.
Review: “What scared me was the reality that sometimes, you locked the danger inside with you.”
Elien Martel is a survivor. He’s functioning, for the most part, but is a long way off from living his best life thanks to the continuous loop of post-traumatic stress that torments him. So Elien attends his group therapy sessions like a good boyfriend—not that he takes those meetings altogether too seriously—and he takes his prescribed meds regularly . . . up until he doesn’t. When things get too out of hand, though, when Elien is triggered and begins to spiral deep down into his own rage, he has his very own Dr. Feelgood who’s there to make sure he gets a shot of the heavy stuff that will lull him into oblivion and make him forget. For a little while, at least. Because Elien is being stalked by something sinister, something so feral and so terrifying that it’s murdering its way through the members of his therapy group. Just a few emotionally piquant appetizers on its way to the main course—Elien.
’Tis the season for horror and ghouls and macabre things that go bump in the night, so why wouldn’t Gregory Ashe tap into an evil straight from the archives of Choctaw mythology and then craft a story rich with local lore? The ambiance of the Louisiana bayou increases the terror visited upon Elien, and it’s used superbly in Stray Fears as the clear and present threat of the unknown is as tangible as the monster itself. The objective to identify the beast and stop it before it kills again leaves Elien one small step ahead of death at all times, until he eventually comes face to face with his own mortality. One sure bet in a Gregory Ashe novel is that when the going gets tough, the tough get bloody.
The story also offers up exactly the sort of solid mystery for which Ashe is known, digging into clues and piecing together probabilities that will eventually lead to an outcome that leaves its heroes staring into the abyss. Broken, flawed characters with a heaping dose of their own charm are as necessary to this author’s work as the suspense and danger. Above and beyond that is the depths of personality he infuses into even the most minor players. This novel is chock full of menace and humor, the dialogue delivered so well, never a wasted word, and the descriptions of everything from the scenery, to the evil presence haunting the DuPage-St. Tammany Parish, to the adrenaline overload of the final confrontation, are pure, goose bump inducing perfection.
Fans of Horror—the creepier, the more menacing, the better—should hope this won’t be Gregory Ashe’s last foray into the genre.
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