"He'll eat you little by little, first a foot and then a hand and then all the way up and he'll eat your head last so you can watch it all." - Jo

Welcome to the best named Author on the planet's second collection of short fiction Magick & Misery. The U.S Author tackles the down home yarn with a decided turn toward the macabre presenting dark delights that go beyond what one might reasonable expect from a book found in the horror aisle at Dymocks. While the collection for sure settles into the dark genre's domain it's with a voice of its own far removed from the normal collection of ghouls and things that might go bump in the night. Let's slice into this one and see what it bleeds.

It's taken me a little while to swing my attention to Magick & Mystery due to the requirements of judging this year's Shadows Awards, in fact the review queue is about as organised currently as a Wallaby forward pack. Once I latched onto the book however I rocked through it like a line of tequila shots set up at the Cabana Lounge on a Friday night. Crisler has the ability to spin a yarn that drags you in via the decent writing and presents a small slice of life that doesn't require an overly prolonged relationship. I was rocking along to each story as I was surprised by the ability of the Author to switch from the normal situation to the bizarre with a seemingly effortless twist of words.

While the vast majority of the stories concern themselves with killers in various guises, if there's a common theme throughout the book then for sure it's how individuals can be driven to slaughter family members or people unlucky enough to find themselves in the antagonist's path, there are also tales featuring more supernatural elements and even a detour down the Tales From the Crypt path. In Lincoln Crisler's fictional world it's a thin line between social norms and the chaos the dark genre brings into your nightmares. For mine Crisler handles the introduction of chaos into the ordered world even better than Stephen King manages it.

The first story in the collection, Discarded Refuse, could have been picked kicking and screaming off the pages of Tales From the Crypt with Crisler delivering a morality tale that drives towards it's final paragraph with the same amount of small town pettiness that the former horror comic thrived on. I'm nearly always up for one of these tales, we seldom get them in the modern era, Crisler delivering on the requirement with relish and the sort of narrative pace that just makes you want to read more from the Author.

While the first story sets up the possibility of the collection being just another tossed together dark genre chocolate box of tropes Crisler is more interested in the things that drive people just a little bit crazy without going the full Dexter path. So in tales like Making the Grade, Seizing Deliverance, and Redemption, it's just a short jump to the left from the normal to the abnormal where death comes with apparent ease to both the guilty and the innocent. While Crisler for sure isn't dialling into the whole Hannibal Lector style psycho situation he does show how easy it is for things to go from the sublime to the slaughter house when things start to get chaotic. In Lincoln Crisler's world we all go a little crazy sometimes.

Which isn't to say that the supernatural doesn't enter the equation and add to the general mayhem that is to the forefront in this collection. Discarded Refuse throws a zombie into the mix, Old Stooping Lugh visits with old country mythical creatures, and The Seven O'clock Man certainly hints at otherworldly influences. Add in a psychotic robot that wouldn't be out of place on a Weyland-Jennings production line, a teenager prepared to take extreme action to get through to his parents, and a husband though tempted finding a way to stay faithful in a sort of love you with a knife fashion. Lincoln Crisler isn't simply throwing on psycho quarterly here, he's heading down numerous different paths without being fixated on any single deviation from mainstream fiction.

Perhaps the best story in the collection, depending on personal preference, is The Seven O'clock Man that works on a number of levels to great effect. On the surface it can be seen as simply a tale used to scare a young boy into obeying his mother, the traditional be good or the boogeyman will come to get you, however on a deeper level it can be seen as someone so traumatised by their new found circumstances that they are externalising their actions in the face of something they don't want to believe they have done. Which is a pretty convoluted way of saying the devil made me do it rather than accepting personal responsibility. Crisler nails the concept and only switches from the supernatural to what could be a logical, albeit hard to handle, explanation toward the end of the story. Read The Seven O'clock Man and then try telling me it won't be in the top ten stories you have read this year.

I'm always up for something by Lincoln Crisler, here at ScaryMInds we have been hitting his catalogue, and Magick & Misery hit the spot. Crisler here shows he's on top of his writing game and throws together a collection of similar themed stories that match the dark genre requirements. If after a collection to while away a few winter nights then this book should be exactly right for your requirements. It doesn't require reading honking great swaths of description, trying to decipher arcane ideas, or threatens to overload with ideas. Lincoln Crisler knows his audience and writes directly to them.

Magick & Misery is available from Amazon and most decent online stores. Lincoln Crisler maintains a website right here, and you can hit Black Bed Sheet over here.