Title: PlaceritaAuthor: John Palisano, Lisa Morton
First Published: June 14, 2024
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications
Pages: 66
Genre: Horror, Short Stories, Supernatural
Format: eARC
Source: Review Request
Rating:
Synopsis:
It's 1928, and something strange is afoot in the desert town of Placerita just north of Los Angeles. When young biologist Alexis Crawford discovers an unidentifiable specimen washed up in the wake of a devastating flood, it begins a journey that will reveal the dark conspiracies at the heart of California and the secret known only to a few: that beneath the City of Angels is an ancient world of tunnels lined in gold, a world that is home to the legendary Lizard People.
Review
A wonderful slice of California history and urban myth with a generous serving of pulp. Placerita is a short horror story about a woman that finds herself entangled in a web of mystery surrounding a local legend about lizard people. The writing remained light even during a few of the creepier moments, which made the story a fast and fun read.
I really enjoyed the weirdness of the story, and the vibrancy of the roaring 20s setting. I was less keen on the romance that felt shoehorned in, and the mystery was so intriguing it felt a bit too rushed and I wanted a little more, which is a compliment in itself. I was surprised to find that there is indeed some smoke to the fire, as there really was a man named G. Warren Shufelt that claims to have found subterranean tunnels built by lizard people underneath California 5,000 years ago. Yes really.
Overall a fast and adventurous read that was a breath of fresh air compared to the darker horror stories flooding the market right now.
Quote
“Once your eyes are opened, you can’t just close them again.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About John Palisano
John Palisano’s novels include Dust of the Dead, Ghost Heart, Nerves, and Night of 1,000 Beasts. His novellas include Glass House and Starlight Drive: Four Halloween Tales. His first short fiction collection All that Withers celebrates over a decade of short story highlights.
He won the Bram Stoker Award© in short fiction for “Happy Joe’s Rest Stop” and Colorado’s Yog Soggoth award in 2018. More short stories have appeared in anthologies from Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, PS Publishing, Independent Legions, Space & Time, Dim Shores, Kelp Journal, Monstrous Books, DarkFuse, Crystal Lake, Terror Tales, Lovecraft eZine, Horror Library, Bizarro Pulp, Written Backwards, Dark Continents, Big Time Books, McFarland Press, Darkscribe, Dark House, Omnium Gatherum, and many more. Non-fiction pieces have appeared in Blumhouse Online, Fangoria, and Dark Discoveries magazines and he’s been quoted in Vanity Fair, The Writer and the Los Angeles Times.
About Lisa Morton
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is the author of four novels and 200 short stories and is a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert, and her awards include the Bram Stoker Award, the Rondo Hatton Award, and the Black Quill Award. Her latest releases include Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and The Art of the Zombie Movie. Recent short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, and Classic Monsters Unleashed. She has appeared on such popular shows and podcasts as Shock Docs, Coast to Coast, NPR’s Throughline, CNN’S Margins of Error, and Chinwag with Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma, and is also the host of the weekly Ghost Report podcast. Lisa lives in Los Angeles.
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