D. A. Barker

Hi, my name is Donald Andrew Barker, but I'm generally known as Andy. I'm British and I'm married with two adult sons and a teenage stepdaughter. My wife, Meishan and I divide our time between the UK and China. UK in summer and China in winter. As well as writing books I review books for other authors, generally on request and never for payment. I include a few samples here.

“Pretty Pretty Princess A Twisted Fairy Tale” by Shane McKenzie. (Blood Bound Books)

A twisted fairy tale indeed! A warped yarn or a vile thread might be nearer the mark. This is perhaps the most horrible book I have ever read. Yet read it I did, all the way through to the end. It wasn’t that I couldn’t put it down. I put it down times without number, nauseated, close to gagging on the ripe stench of feces, fresh feces and stale feces, human feces and pig feces, all intermingled with visions of swarms of flies and hordes of rats - large swarms of large flies and large hordes of large rats - feasting on rank corruption. Yet, for every time I put the damned thing down I picked it up again and ploughed onward into the mire.

Why? Because, God help me, I found it compulsive reading. Mr McKenzie is a master of his evil art and the festering web of his words, like an addictive drug, dragged me down, overriding all resistance, into degradation and baseness: taking the treasured fantasy fairy tale reading of my childhood - knights in armour, enchanted forests, damsels in deepest distress - and smearing it, besmirching, it with rankest filth that yet, despite the fantasy setting, somehow seemed, corruptly, to depict the human condition as it actually is. Which, I presume, is precisely what he intended and certainly what he achieved. So, therefore, despite the fact that I loathed his book, I am obliged to award it five stars.

“Pretty, Pretty Princess A Twisted Fairy Tale” by Shane McKenzie. (Blood Bound Books) If you love the smell of blood and what comes out of your anus you’ll relish every page.

D. A. Barker (author of Killing for Christmas and What am I?)

’Shepherd of the Black Sheep’’ by Kristopher Triana: ISBN: 978-1940250-31-1 (Blood Bound Books)

‘This is an awful bloody book. But then, being a Blood Bound Books publication it couldn’t be anything else because Blood Bound Books specialise in publishing works on matters that are generally exceedingly bloody and awful.

The book might be described as a mystery thriller and, indeed, essentially, that is what it is. But yet, to call it such would be to do it a gross injustice because it is in fact a horror story of the very first degree minus ghouls and ghosts and general mumbo jumbo. Call it then a mystery thriller wrapped in a jet black cobwebbed shroud of decidedly chilling, decidedly disturbing evil woven by Mr Triana’s genius with the pen when it comes to such.

The setting is small town northern New England in winter. The weather is bone numbing cold; as chilling to the flesh as the events that occur are chilling to the soul. The focal point is old timer Ted Hargrave’s ranch which stands on the outskirts of town; a lonesome spot, nearest neighbour a good quarter mile off. A small girl is murdered on ranch land: multiple stab wounds to the guts and Ted’s eleven year old granddaughter, Paige, who is also his ward, escapes the same fate by a whisker fleeing from the killer in terror and screaming for her grandfather who, luckily, happens to be near.

There is an obvious suspect: a drifter, a dope head, recently caught prowling about the ranch and run out of town by the Sheriff. The case looks open and shut but subsequent events quickly prove that it isn’t. More killings occur, triggering spirals of fear and suspicion which culminate in a witch hunt, its victim, perversely, poor Paige. Old Ted, enduring an intensifying waking nightmare that would have broken a lesser man, rises to the occasion and fights for his ward, for his blood grandchild, against all comers. What’s the result of the conflict? That I’ll leave for the reader to find. But, be assured, this being a Blood Bound Book, the good guys don’t come out winners.

“Shepherd of the Black Sheep” by Kristopher Triana: (blood Bound Books) if you’re a fan of horror that isn’t stuffed full of ghosts and ghouls and mumbo jumbo this is one you’ll enjoy. I have to award it five black stars. No choice in the matter at all.

D. A. Barker, (author of “Killing for Christmas,” “What am I” and, in composition, “Suzanne.”)

“Exit Velocity” by S Pearce ISBN- 13: 978-1985261938 (second of the spotlight tales)

Turning out a follow up that readers will enjoy as much as or even more than a scintillating debut novel must be one of the most difficult tricks in the game. For me, with “Exit Velocity,” the second book in the Spotlight Tales series, author Simon Pearce didn’t quite make it but he came remarkably close. In his first Spotlight Tale, the simply brilliant, “Mo,” the focus is on racial discrimination, the sometimes brutal transition from childhood to adolescence, the lack of communication between generations and radicalisation of innocent youth.

In “Exit Velocity” the light shines on squalor, on sloth, on greed; on Man’s contempt for Man and his general abuse with filth of the environment on which he depends for existence. In essence the book is a traditional whodunit that keeps the reader guessing from beginning to end but yet one that reflects the gathering storm clouds of calamity on a global scale. A poisoner is at work – surely mirroring Man’s poisoning of the whole world. The poisoner’s method? Adulteration of complimentary confectionary distributed widely and frequently replenished. His intended victims? Anyone and everyone but in particular the greedy, those who take more than their share, for one sweet won’t kill or two or even three but greater numbers most certainly will; slowly, inexorably, painfully without the victim realising what is happening until too late. His motivation? A chip on the shoulder, that and general anger at and a dislike of his peers.

It is a disturbing tale, a salutatory tale with good characterisation, brimful with people who the reader will feel that he or she knows, and told in simple straightforward language that made this reader at least reflect in some depth on what mankind is doing to his world. Why did I not enjoy it as much as its forerunner, “Mo?” Simply because “Mo” left me on the edge of a void with the adrenalin flowing in torrents while “Exit Velocity” left me deep down in the void, depressed and fearful that Man has left it all too late to avert the gathering poisonous storm. Even so “Exit Velocity” is worth five stars. No doubt about it at all.

D. A. Barker (author of “Killing for Christmas,” “What Am I?” and, in composition, “Suzanne.”