Double Barrel Horror, Volume 3 edited by Matthew Weber (  Amazon.com  )

Pint Bottle Press, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-945005-01-5

Availability: Paperback, Kindle edition

Double Barrel Horror, Volume 3 is a 182 page collection of horror shorts by six different authors, two stories by each one.  Most of the stories clock in at around the 10-15 page mark, and the quality is all over the map.  There are some good ones, but some clunkers as well.   Or, in keeping with the “shotgun” theme of the book title, there are some good rounds of double-aught buck in here, but there is also a fair amount of birdshot and blanks mixed in.

Calvin Demmer is the most consistent author out of the six; his “Highway Hell” and “Motel Madness” are entertaining romps, concerning how roadkill is really removed from the highways, and what happens to a bad, but not truly evil, person when they are tossed into purgatory.  Robert Essig’s “From Unclean Spells” is a decent story of necromancy gone wrong.   If nothing else, the belch-and-barf-fest (literally) in the story is quite amusing.  Essig comes up big with “Fuel for the King of Death”, which scores high both in terms of originality and excitement.  How does a freaky little Museum of Death keep getting new video footage for the museum?  Read on and find out.  Mark Matthews adds “Goodwin”, which is an entertaining take on the joys of necrophilia, from a corpse’s point of view.  The most chilling story in the book certainly comes Glenn Rolfe.  His “The House on Mayflower Street” is a terrifying look at what happens when nosy neighborhood brats start investigating the classic “abandoned house” in a suburban neighborhood.  As the kids find out, curiosity is not only painful, it’s a lot worse than death.  This one would make a good movie; it alone is almost worth the price of admission.

As for the rest of the stories…meh.  They aren’t necessarily bad, but they aren’t that interesting either.  The writing quality for all of them is fine, there just really isn’t anything in the stories to capture and hold the reader.  They are okay for a quick moment, but there is nothing that will make the stories truly memorable for the reader.  If you have the money to spare, you may want to consider picking this up for the good stories it does contain.  Anyone on a limited budget, though, would be better off investing in The Third Corona Book of Horror Stories or Lost Highways: Dark Fiction From the Road.

Contains: violence, profanity, gore

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson