#BlogTour-‘Slash’ by Hunter Shea

About the book…

Five years after Ashley King survived the infamous Resort Massacre, she’s found hanging in her basement by her fiancé, Todd Matthews. She left behind clues as to what really happened that night, clues that may reveal the identity of the killer the press has called The Wraith.

With the help of his friends, Todd goes back to the crumbling Hayden Resort, a death-tinged ruin in the Catskills Mountains. What they find is a haunted history that’s been lying in wait for a fresh set of victims. The Wraith is back, and he’s nothing what they expected.

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things and Flametree Press for the blogtour invite and my gifted copy of ‘Slash’ by Hunter Shea, available now!

This book is perfect for an 80’s kid like me who grew up on a steady diet of teen slasher movies but what Hunter Shea does here is give it a unique, millennial twist.

The death of Ashley is the catalyst to the novel, but what came before is oh so important. Ash and her 4 friends were fans of ‘urbex’ or Urban Exploring, where they would break into abandoned buildings, maybe spend the night and record their findings. As well as being obsessed with the mystery of abandonment, Ash had a tendency to add to the air of legend by leaving clues in the shape of micro sd cards containing her thoughts and findings. Like a lifelong treasure trail ending up who knows where, hoping to inspire others.

The last trip to Hayden Resort, the site of a fire which closed the hotel and it’s grounds down thirty years earlier, ended with Ashley being rescued by a car, covered in blood and traumatised beyond belief. What the police found at the Resort was 4 deconstructed human beings grotesquely displayed, and no lead from Ash. When she was finally able to talk again, the insubstantial nature of the thing that killed her friends was nicknamed ‘The Wraith’ in the media.

5 years later…Ash is slowly putting her life back together with her fiancee, Todd, when she takes her own life. Grief struck and furious, Todd puts the blame firmly on the murder podcasts, the sycophantic weirdos who built up the ‘final girl‘ mythos and the media. When he finds Ash’s suicide note, he realises that the truth may be way stranger and more twisted than anyone could imagine…

He and 4 friends set off to put the truth straight once and for all before the Hayden is finally demolished but what is waiting for them is beyond their wildest imagining….

Gory, bloodthirty and with a neat sense of humour, Shea creates palpably vivid atmospheres whether describing the atmosphere of the infamous resort, or creating his own urban legends around it. You honestly believe that this could have been a real place and that the evil things which happen there are not too far fetched.

It’s a neat twist as he holds a mirror up to modern culture who creates people into images they put on pedestals and then quickly destroy-as Todd says early on in the book, the people who died at Hayden were the lucky ones,the media killed Ash over and over again by not letting the story die. There is the culpability of the public in eulogising survivors and creating the energy around a myth which could bring it, Frankenstein like, to shrieking, wailing life to kill and kill again.

Vivid, engaging and never boring, this would make a great reading choice for anyone watching, and enjoying the latest season of American Horror Story, set in 1984 at a killer infested summer camp. What Hunter has done is take all the tropes we know, and love, and given it his own unique twist-and as the best slasher movies always do, an opening is left for a sequel or three…

About the author…

Hunter Shea is the author of over 25 books, with a specialization in cryptozoological horror that includes ‘The Jersey Devil’, ‘The Dover Demon’, ‘Loch Ness Revenge’ and many others.

As part of the new horror line at Flame Tree Press, his novel ‘Creature’ has gained critical acclaim. His novel, ‘The Montauk Monster’, was named one of the best reads of the summer by Publishers Weekly. A trip to the International Cryptozoology Museum will find several of his cryptid books among the fascinating displays. Living in a true haunted house inspired his Jessica Backman: Death in the Afterlife series (‘Forest Of Shadows’, ‘Sinister Entity’ and ‘Island Of The Forbidden’). In 2011, he was selected to be a part of the launch of Samhain Publishing’s new horror line alongside legendary author Ramsey Campbell. When he’s not writing thrillers and horror, he also spins tall tales for middle grade readers on Amazon’s highly regarded Rapids reading app.
An avid podcaster, he can be seen and heard on Monster Men, one of the longest running video horror podcasts in the world, and Final Guys, focusing on weekly movie and book reviews. His nostalgic column about the magic of 80s horror, Video Visions, is featured monthly at Cemetery Dance Online. You can find his short stories in a number of anthologies, including Chopping Block Party, The Body Horror Book and Fearful Fathoms II.

Links-https://huntershea.com/category/ghost-mine/

 https://www.flametreepress.com/about/

Twitter @huntershea1

             @flametreepress

             @annecater

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