Customer Reviews

Thrust

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THRUST is one of my personal favorite pieces from Tom Piccirilli, one of those quirky mixtures of suspense, atmosphere, and offbeat horror. Another of his self-proclaimed "noirellas" (noir novellas) that are very fast-moving, hard-hitting, brutal, smart, sharp, and fun short novels of 25k-40k words. He's written a number of these pieces, including Loss, Every Shallow Cut, The Last Deep Breath, Frayed, All You Despise, and You'd Better Watch Out.

The story starts out with us meeting Chase, a well-known Manhattan poet who gives readings at various clubs, bars, and other New York City establishments, causing a stir wherever he goes. He's recently been released from a mental hospital where dark shenanigans had been going on. Patients had been tortured and brutalized, or at least he remembers such things happening. But are his memories accurate or is this all just more freaky hallucinations caused by his traumatized psyche and mental illness?

We get our answer in the end, but it's the ride from start to finish that matters most. Chase is forced to face his fears, whether they're real or irrational, as they come for him in the form of a vicious orderly he knew in the hospital. As the situation grows more intense and the bodies begin to pile up, Chase must discover if he's a knife-wielding maniac or if one's actually hot on his trail and those of his friends.

On display here, as in all of his work, is Piccirilli's skill at creating oddball characters we care about, who live in terror because they can't trust their own mental faculties. This at once makes them sympathetic, dangerous, and extremely humorous. When you're not on the edge of your seat, you'll be laughing at the hijinks Chase gets into with his plethora of goody circumstances and hijinks.

THRUST is one of Piccirilli's finest pieces, whether you enjoy his noir fiction, his suspense thrillers, horror, or even his occult fare. This is perfect fiction to hold us over while eagerly awaiting Piccirilli's next crime novel The Last Kind Words: A Novel. If you haven't already invested in his noirellas, I suggest you give this one a go...soon you'll be ordering them all (there's something like a dozen of them in total available via Kindle).