Dead End Street By Rick R. Reed

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Reviewed by Janie Franz for http://www.myshelf.com/

Rick R. Reed is a prolific horror writer whose body of work has chilled many an adult reader. Dead End Street is his first horror fiction for younger readers. In this one, Reed hangs a horror story around several eerie offerings by five middle school kids in a small Pennsylvania town on the Ohio River called Summitville. Peter, Marlene, David, Roy, and Erin have created a number of short-term clubs in the past, but this particular Halloween, they launch a brand new club: The Halloween Horror Club. They pick the spookiest, vacant house in town on a dead end street to tell their stories in, one tale a week for the five weeks leading up to Halloween. The house is the site of a gruesome murder fifteen years before, and it adds ghoulish atmosphere for their storytelling. As the tales unfold, the kids soon realize that they are not alone in the house.

Reed is able to create just the perfect amount of icy fingers up the reader's spine without the gore of some horror novels or movies. The characters are well-drawn and believable, and the plot and subplots are good and scary. Move over, R. L. Stine. It looks like Rick R. Reed may be the next new horror writer for young readers for this century. (Because I enjoyed this book so much, I'm going to track down his adult horror fiction and dip into some of those.)

Dead End Street is available as an ebook in a variety of formats [HTML, PDF, LIT, RB, and Mobi (PRC) ] from the Amber Quill Press or as a trade paperback from Amazon.

http://www.rickrreed.com