Berserk by Tim Lebbon

"A master of language, Lebbon leaves the reader afraid to go to sleep?and even more afraid to put the book down."

"Be afraid of things that go bump in the night. Be more afraid of the things that don't."

Be afraid of things that go bump in the night. Be more afraid of the things that don''t.

"Porton Down."

Tom, getting a drink in the pub on a Friday after work, thought he heard them right. Porton Down is near where his son Steven was killed in a military training accident ten years before. Maybe the two men huddled over their drinks furtively eyeing him had known his son?

On the tenth anniversary of Steven''s death, Tom and his wife, Jo, decide to go to the Salisbury Plain to remember their son. At least that''s what Tom wants his wife to think. He has other reasons, darker reasons. He wants to see where Steven is buried now that he knows his son''s death was no accident.

King, one of the men from the pub, gives Tom a map to the grave site and a shock — they kept monsters at Porton Down. Tom is determined to see his son''s last resting place for himself. His body isn’t entered in a lovely wooden coffin in their family plot—he’s been buried on a lonely deserted military reservation.

After settling Jo and their things in the rental cottage, Tom takes a shovel and the map, following it to where X marks the spot. As he unearths bones and desiccated bodies from the mass grave, he finds a mummified little girl chained to the headless remains of a man, a woman, and a little boy. Now the real terror begins…

Author Tim Lebbon terrifies the reader from his first few words, painting ghoulish and garish pictures in the mind, coloring our sleep in the deepest hues of nightmares. Berserk is a nightmare that quickly becomes much more–a horrific juxtaposition between sanity and madness that turns monsters into saviors and heroes into serial killers. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Lebbon weaves his dark spell with skill. A master of language, he leaves the reader afraid to go to sleep—and even more afraid to put the book down.

Carried in the wake of adrenalin-soaked fear, Berserk remains a abattoir of horror that leaves its mark long after the story ends. Lebbon finds a home where monsters lie.

Reviewer: J. M. Cornwell