The Dread Syndrome; A Horror E-Book Review

The Dread Syndrome by James Patrick Riser is an intelligent title that doesn't mind getting down into the gore with its unique take on a morality message. It is a work that one needs to "give a chance" due to lack of a gripping opening, but horror movie fans, specifically torture and murder based ones, will find that Riser has taken the genre one step above and beyond the grotesque they so love and with supernatural slant.

The opening is a bit muddled and lacks anything truly gripping to pull a reader in whole-heartedly. I was a bit put off by the story being told in the past tense, with initial character interaction being dull. Confusion set in at first for me when I wasn't even sure if the first narrator was male or female until later on, making my imagination useless at the start. The story does go back and forth from first person to third person between characters if that matters to you as a reader.

Eventually you get to the first death scenario and things pick up to a degree. Once past the killer and victim section we are introduced to the crime scene photographer who I thought would be the main protagonist from the get-go. As he takes pictures of a grisly crime scene you are immediately shown that there is more creepiness to this character than there is goodness and though one may not be able to identify fully with his thought, most will probably agree with some of the ponderings. This character to me, is the guts of the story, the character arch of most interest by far. As for the crime scene itself and further blood spills: not for the squeamish. Perhaps you have visually perused the corpses to be found on websites such as Rotten.com, but if you even have a half powered imagination James Patrick Riser exploits that and gives you images that make Rotten.com PG-13.