Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Deadly Resurrection by John McCarty REVIEWED

As a collector of the books now known as "Paperbacks from Hell", tomes of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the biggest lure for a guy like me is great cover art.

We are often pulled into books with cover art that promises more than the book can ever deliver. Lurid and beautifully drawn, with ghastly creatures and gruesome acts often depicted, the covers often serve as the best advertisement the stories within can hope for. This is particularly true for the obscure authors, the ones long forgotten, who often wrote a book or two and vanished.

Books like John McCarty's sole offering to the fiction world, Deadly Resurrection, generally come equipped with some depiction that alludes to a feeling that "man, this book is going to be cool...", And nothing sold books better during this time.

Which is what leads me to ask the question...what the hell was St. Martin's Press, who put this out to little fanfare in 1990, thinking? 

This has got to be some of the blandest artwork in my collection. The premise/synopsis on the back is what led me to read the book, but I must have ran into it at least 5 times in used shops before actually deciding to give it a read.

The artwork offers nothing but a lone bloodied coffin, which is about as vague as it gets. It doesn't exactly suck the reader in, because it promises exactly nothing.

I suppose the sell-point, outside of it's fun-sounding summary on the back, is the fact the author wrote several non-fiction studies on horror film, including the cult classic reference pieces on 80s B-horror, Splatter Movies and it's companion, The Official Splatter Movie Guide. I'm of the mind that noone is going to be able to tell a better horror story than an author well in the know on horror film.

I'm kinda of the wrong mind, after reading this short 264 page novel.

264 pages doesn't lend itself to very complex storytelling, things should move relatively quickly, yeah?

Deadly Resurrection tells a very well-worn story of a couple running from a problem, the loss of their young son, moving into a small town in hopes that a geography change will heal some of their wounds. Of course, this is a horror novel, so this doesn't happen.

Instead, they move into the clutches of a vicious murderer, whose stalking the town, sexually assaulting their victims prior to death. Added bonus, the tried-and-true psychic heroine wife of the couple is asked to help crack the case.

In the process, our couple uncovers a ghostly witch who is taking her victims out with a GIANT STRAP-ON DILDO!?

Oh, and a big mean demon creature named Atavar, who is somehow the great granddaddy of all psychically inclined heroines, that kinda seems to be here just so the novel can have a monster.

Deadly Resurrection is an almost serviceable time passer of a book, but it makes some very grave errors along the way.

It should be a brisk read with that low-page count, but it's not. It's incredibly slow, particularly in the middle of the book, where we are senselessly wrapped in the police investigation of the murders, which does very little for the main plot, and seems to just be a way for McCarty to thicken up the page count.

There isn't a ton of action to get us to the climax, which admittedly is a pretty decent one, with head-tearings and chest-rippings, etc...it's just too little, too late.

Deadly Resurrection is a strictly middle-of-the-road exercise in Horror Fiction from the end of the paperback heyday. I would recommend checking it out if a bisexual, murderous dildo slinging, ghost witch is something you haven't read before...I know I hadn't. But just about everything else is very by-the-numbers.

Just barely good enough, with a really lame cover.

2.5/5.