Swift to Chase

by Laird Barron, Paul Tremblay (Introduction)

Laird Barron's fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and giallo-fueled nightmare vistas.

All hell breaks loose in a massive apartment complex when a modern day Jack the Ripper strikes under cover of a blizzard; a woman, famous for surviving a massacre, hits the road to flee the limelight and finds her misadventures have only begun; while tracking a missing B-movie actor, a team of man hunters crashes in the Yukon Delta and soon realize the Arctic is another name for hell; an atomic-powered cyborg war dog loyally assists his master in the overthrow of a far-future dystopian empire; following an occult initiation ritual, a man is stalked by a psychopathic sorority girl and her team of horrifically disfigured henchmen; a rich lunatic invites several high school classmates to his mansion for a night of sex, drugs, and CIA-funded black ops experiments; and other glimpses into occulted realities a razor's slice beyond our own.

Combining hardboiled noir, psychological horror, and the occult, Swift to Chase continues three-time Shirley Jackson Award winner Barron's harrowing inquiry into the darkness of the human heart.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Lovecraftian, Collections, Anthologies

383 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 7, 2016

About the author

Laird Barron, an expat Alaskan, is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence and Other Stories; Swift to Chase; and Blood Standard. Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley of New York State and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

Photo credit belongs to Ardi Alspach

Agent: Janet Reid of New Leaf Literary & Media

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some seriously stunning stuff that deteriorated into some mediocre half-coherent horror by the end of it. Was it worth spoiling a good flowing narrative with that freak show?

Q:
Me? Let’s say I prefer to rely upon a combination of native cunning and feminine wiles to accomplish my goals. Flames and explosions are strictly measures of last resort. (c)
Q:
I’ll put my life in mortal danger for a pile of cash. No shock there, anybody would. (c)
Q:
It’s as if the stars and the sky don’t align correctly, as if the universe is off its axis by a degree or two. (c)
Q:
A good friend who worked in the people-removing business for the Mafia once told me there aren’t coincidences or accidents, reality doesn’t work that way. Since the first inert, super-dense particle detonated and spewed forth gas and dust and radiation, everything has been on an unerring collision vector with its ultimate mate, and every bit of the flotsam and jetsam is cascading toward the galactic Niagara Falls into oblivion. (c)
Q:
The dude possessed a more inquisitive nature than one might expect from an enforcer by trade. He said, Jessica, you’re a dancing star being dragged toward the black hole at the ragged edges of all we know. Drawn with irresistible force, you’ll level anything in your path, or drag it to hell in your wake. (c)
Q:
You dames have all had bad experiences. (c)
Q:
“I heard that name somewhere. Want to say a news story. Which means somebody got maimed or murdered. Wouldn’t be news otherwise.” (c)
Q:
“How can you be sure you’re here?”
“What, think you were humping your pillow?”
“Sorry, Jess, you started this. Maybe all of it is a projection. Or a computer program. You’re a sexy algorithm looping for eternity.” (с)
Q:
Hey, everybody, this is Jessica Mace. She’s wandering the earth. Make her feel at home. (c)
Q:
Big brains. Quantum physics, exobiology, anthropology. They’re famous, infamous, one of those things. A pair of mad scientist types. They’d love to build a time machine or a doomsday device for the kicks. (c)
Q:
I stepped back and gripped the Ka-Bar under my coat. Come to it, I’d stab a hillbilly psycho, badge or not. My shiny new policy. (c)
Q:
You’re a dancing star. … Meeting you is fate. Can’t be anything less than the machinery of the universe clicking into place.(c)
Q:
My ever-intensifying death wish might’ve compelled silent complicity, or whatever wish it was that had followed me since the debacle in Alaska. (c)
Q:
Stars flared and died. The moon burned a hole through the black and into my mind. (c)
Q:
Another time a kid walloped me full force with an aluminum bat. This felt kind of similar … (c)
Q:
Sir Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. In my humble opinion, that goes double for sufficiently advanced lunacy being indistinguishable from supernatural phenomena. (c)
Q:
“Real sorry about your deputy... Sorry about the dog, too. He was probably a good dog.” (с)
Q:
We drove deep into the night, cleaving through a vault of stars. The air thinned until the stars burned through the windshield. (с)
Q:
His totem animal was something savage and furtive, it watched me from beneath heavy lids. (с)
Q:
All those dead stars shone on. (c)
Q:
We didn’t talk, not that there was ever much chatter, but this was two-cactuses-on-a-date quiet. (c)
Q:
Politically speaking, the difference between a conservative and a liberal in the forty-ninth state is the caliber of handgun one carries. (c)
Q:
You are an earthquake, a tidal wave, a mountain of collapsing stone, waiting to happen. You are the implacable wilderness personified. What is in you is ancient as the black tar between stars. A void that howls in hunger and mindless antipathy against the heat of the living. (c)
Q:
How can you be certain, Ms. Mace?
Maybe I can’t. Killer could’ve been anyone. Could be anyone. The doctor. The nurse. Maybe it was you. YOU look fucking suspicious. (c)
Q:
The angel on his shoulder keeps whispering in his ear. (c)
Q:
I meditate at night. Sit in the middle of my room and open my mind to the cosmos. All kinds of shit is floating around in the dark. Seeps into us every minute of the day. I just figured a way to make it happen faster. (с)
Q:
This line of work doesn’t engender intimacy, it heightens eccentricities. A man becomes known by his foibles, his personality tics. Illusions of bonding or brotherhood are perfidious. (c)
Q:
The wind is the tongue of a ravening beast. It licks at our warmth, the feeble light of our miserly souls. (c)

[Dan Schwent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swift to Chase is a collection of interconnected Laird Barron tales, most set in Alaska.

That's really underselling the collection. In Swift to Chase, Laird Barron performs a juggling act, pitting the bleakness of life in Alaska with the mangled nature of time and cosmic horror that lurks just around the corner. The interconnected nature of the tales and the fact that they aren't presented in chronological order drives home Barron's concept of time that is as twisted and deformed as a wrecked car. There is a disjointed, dreamlike quality to the collection but that doesn't diminish the horror in the slightest.

The Jessica Mace tales that begin the collection set the stage for the rest of them. Almost every character mentioned in every story appears somewhere in the book. I could read a hundred Jessica Mace tales and still want more.

The book bounces around between people Jessica knows to her parents to the people her parents knew once upon a time, all the while the Followers of Old Leech lurk in the background like a time bomb hidden in a closet.

Laird Barron's prose is as delightful as ever. There's a certain poetry to his descriptions of people being stabbed, short, or rent limb from limb. I've mentioned some horror authors as guys I'm sure I would have been friends with had we met as teenagers. Barron would have been the guy that I would have wanted to talk to but would have been afraid to approach. I get the sense that his early life in Alaska was brutally hard but that's what makes this book so effective. Which is worse, unfathomable cosmic horror or being alone in the dark and cold of an Alaskan winter?

One of my favorite parts of the book is in the introduction. One of Paul Tremblay's little girls asks Laird how he got his eye patch. He says "Has your dad ever told you not to run with a pencil in your hand?"

This was one hell of a read. I'm giving it a 4 now but I'll probably bump that up on a reread. This is definitely a book that begs to be read more than once.

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely brilliant. It's the third Laird Barron book I read inside the last twelve months and while I loved them all, this is by far the best. It probably is the only example I've ever experienced where short stories actually do something a single novel could never do: create a mythos from top to bottom. There are some major moments in this collection: Termination Dust, Ardor, Black Dog, Tomahawk Park Survivor Raffle, but it's how Laird Barron connects the dots and creates a terrifying and majestic portrait that this collection truly shines.

This is not just cosmic horror, this is some greater scheme pulp fiction and a work that challenges the very boundaries of storytelling. Laird Barron has been playing chess the entire time we were playing checkers, guys. This is the best book I've read this years and it's not even close. It's the kind of stuff that's going to be studied in college. We're not ready and we're not worthy, but Swift to Chase is coming anyway. Rejoice!

[Dr. Cat in the Brain · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short: Experimental collection of weird tales that takes iconic genre fiction staples into strange and different horizons. We have inventive re-imaginings of monsters and old gods and devils chasing men for their souls, slashers, curses, body-snatchers, doppelgangers, Frankenstein, future dystopias as well as government conspiracies and secretive cults.

Plus dogs. Lots of dogs.

All brought together into a constellation of rot, wreckage and beautiful, cold, cosmic decay.
10/10

LONGER REVIEW:

This book is about the mythology of canines that has been intertwined into the world of man since the very beginning of our species. And how that link to nature is a constant reminder of the best of us, and the worst.

It's also about Lovecraftian horror.
And John Carpenter's Halloween.
And a little bit Sleepy Hollow? Kinda? Sorta?
And maybe Eraserhead. And Eerie Indiana?

Too much? Not enough?

It's less like a short story collection and more like a Laird Barron Alaskan multiverse of madness.
A ton of stories that are quick, punchy, interconnected and yet completely work as separate individual plots. But also work as a strange, swirling, science fiction, horror, 80s slasher on DMT, multi-narrative, fantasy, personal drama blend.

Mmmmm. Toasty.

And it's a thesis on genre writing.

I'm getting in too deep.

Do I like this? NO, SIR.

I LOVE THIS.

You say self-indulgent, I say pass the hot sauce. Cuz baby, I'm gonna indulge.

You cannot take this from me. I will screech and cling to this book like a child with a Nintendo 64 in a Christmas internet meme.

I've read this book four times and each time I read the stories in a different order and each time the whole thing both makes perfect sense and is completely unhinged. Like everything comes unhinged. Minds. Reality. Jaws. ME.

The first time I read this book I noticed all the many linked ideas and plots and concepts and names. Not only within this book but with other Laird Barron stories I've read. I began making a list and drawing out a web of all the different mysteries and how they connect to each other and by the time I was finished my fourth read, my personal chronicle of Swift to Chase looked like a bulletin board that some conspiracy nutcase would use to explain the live-action Netflix adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.

"You see, it was really all about the Rockefellers."

I shall unlock your secrets Laird Barron.

What Stephen King does with the Dark Tower and Lovecraft does with his Cthulhu Mythos, Laird Barron is doing, but in a Twin Peaks meets Fargo and invites over Outer Limits for tea and cookies, "Don't Talk to me or my Space Potatoes" kind of way.

This book starts strange and then drives right over the border straight into Bonkers McChilli country. Where we go Bonkers and Chill.

But not necessarily in that order.

And we don't always chill out. Things just get really, really cold.

Like blackness of space, cold.

Spooky cold.

Which is good, because nobody and I mean no writer on the face of the planet Earth can evoke the sheer desolation of rural winter like Laird Barron.

He's an absolute master when it comes to developing lore and he's even better at crafting the sense, feel and just visual of a weather-beaten life. Where even when it's not freezing you can see the mark of winter everywhere. That constant sense of generational damage even (or especially) in the people. Everything's either been painted over or left to fall apart. It's a world made of broken bones that have been healed and broken and healed and broken again. Like Wolff's law it toughens, but it is built on trauma. A land and sense of self crafted in scar tissue.

It is a place of seasonal fracturing. And maybe dimensional fracturing too?

EH?

Shut up, the edibles have not kicked in yet. You'll know when the edibles kick in.

This is why Laird is so good at developing these types of stories. Because he doesn't just see a character, he sees the history in the character. And he sees the history in a place. Even if he only brings it up in a single sentence, that history reverberates through how the character thinks, how they move, how they react, how they talk, how they interact with the weird. Their experience is lived in and real and so it brings reality to even the most strange and abstract ideas.

And the same goes for his locations. They don't just exist on the page, they are a prism that refracts the ideas of the story. The story moves through that medium and onto the page. It is not just multi-layered (Laird), if you will. It is cast, using that dimension like a shadow play.

Yes, now the edibles have kicked in.

So lets take a fast look at the stories that await you in SWIFT TO CHASE and how I'd rate them:

The first frostbitten fable involves carnival folks hiring a survivor of a serial killer to help banish a terrifying curse. Winks and nods ensue. Both literally and structurally. Dead things with half a face meet their match in a Final Girl looking for a decent payoff, in Screaming Elk, MT 7/10

In our next blizzard of blood, we find a girl hitchhiking across country who encounters a monster that is targeting dogs for fun. And that monster just might be looking to escalate into hunting something bigger. Laird Barron reminds us that sometimes it's best to put the bad ones down while you still can in LD50 10/10

There's a lot more to come in this below zero body count: A party goes to hell when a little LSD is put in the punch bowl, we're taken back to the origins of our Final Girl and see her confrontation with a demon she can't seem to leave in the past. A woman caught in the first winds of the Termination Dust. 9/10

Up next in our interconnected abattoir: A young lady tries to get the perfect birthday present for dear old dad who's dying of cancer. A celebrity impersonator from hell comes to dinner with Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees. 10/10

Talk about a hard act to follow: in this frigid frightmare we have a search for a missing person through the forests of Alaska, which is connected to a strange adaptation of Dracula and a climatic meeting with things that suck so much more than just blood. It feels like a lost John Carpenter masterpiece in Laird Barron's Ardor. 10/10

From one iconic movie monster to another, a vengeful man on a hunting trip into the woods goes through some serious ch-ch-changes as neither death nor betrayal can avert a rampage when The Worms Crawl In. 8/10

Next up we return to the teens of Eagle Talon and a divergent account of what happened on the frightful night of the Final Girl, in this body-ripping bonanza where friends and French Savate meet (Little Miss) Queen of Darkness 7/10

And then we're shot into the far future as we view war, advancement, dystopia, family and generational bonds through the eyes of an atomic dog in Ears Prick Up 10/10

From one hound to another. A man on a blind date encounters some very unlucky omens before the lights go out in Black Dog. 8/10

Captured in the cycles of PTSD as we once again see a different perspective of a teenage party turned into a slaughterhouse. Strange memories, survivor's guilt, broken minds and a possible connection to The Croning awaits in Slave Arm 9/10

In our next tale of polar pandemonium a man who interrupts an ancient ritual on the unforgiving ice becomes the target of The Wild Hunt in my favourite story of this collection: Frontier Death Song 10/10

And the final story wraps everything together into a cryogenic collage of conspiracy, experimentation, invasion, sex, fun and dream logic in Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle 9/10

This book is full of broken things.

Broken bonds of trust, broken families, broken timelines, broken minds, broken relationships, old wounds both physical and emotional.

It's also about the bonds and unspoken pact between man and nature.

And it's also about vampires, porn stars, spies, human experiments, lesbian cheerleaders showing us their breasts and Planet X showering debris on us.

Laird Barron's style of horror is like when you lift up a slab of rock looking for a key and you see tons of weird and strange insects that have been living underneath the rock. Only magnified to a million.

Where we lift up chunks of reality and there's bugs underneath. And they notice us. And they roll towards us from the deep Stygian gaps. The secret creeping worlds of horror that live parallel and underneath our own. Coming to finally initiate us into the truth.

Or... make us into dinner.

Or worse: a pet.

See? Full circle.

Complete Ouroboros.

Got right back to the whole thing being about dogs.

That's why they pay me the big bucks on patreon.

Watch and learn kids. Watch and learn.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote an intro to the collection. Suffice to say, it's Laird's best book to date.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often that my first reaction to finishing a book is to sit and stare out a window in disbelief, but that was all my mind could summon my body to do after turning the last page in Laird Barron's new collection Swift to Chase.

It is that good.

I've been a fan of Barron's for a number of years now, and every time I think I've got a handle on the sheer breadth and scope of his fiction he releases a new short story, collection, or novella that blows my mental battleship straight out of the water. Swift to Chase is no different. Barron, wielding plot strings like a cosmic puppet master, fuses everything we've come to associate and love with his work (that wicked blend of horror, noir, and pulp) and takes it in new and wonderful directions with this latest release.

The collection is broken down into three distinct parts, though each is related to the other and to Laird's larger mythos that he has been steadily constructing over the past decade. The first part deals primarily with Jessica Mace, Laird's pulpy and noir protagonist whose broken nature and encounters with the darkness will leave you with chills that you can't shake. "Termination Dust" is the standout in this section, as Barron takes you back through Jessica's adventures and time as he slowly lifts the veil on the evil that stalks everyone hungrily. The second part includes some of this collections most powerful and disturbing tales. My favourite, "Ardor" tells the story of a man hunting for someone in the harsh and uncaring wilds of Alaska. This story showcases Barron's ability to weave an incredibly unique, surreal and fascinating tale whilst also grounding it within the scope of a moody noir and cosmic piece. "Ardor" is uncomprimising, beautiful, deeply disturbing in places. It also highlights the fact that you CAN write exceptional cosmic horror out from under the shadow of Lovecraft and his acolytes. This section also includes "the worms crawl in", a revenge story that quickly escapes its boundaries and escalates beyond all expectations, and "Ears Prick Up", a remarkable story that includes robotic canine war machines and a post-apocalyptic Romanesque civilisation with an Emperor at its head. I was addicted to this particular tale from the outset, with Barron hooking me in with his unique, raw and poetic cadence:

"My kind is swift to chase, swift to battle. My imperfect memory is long with longing for the fight."

Some writers can create permanent and lasting memories in a readers mind. Barron achieves that in spades with "Ears Prick Up". The stark and haunting image of Rex loping across the frozen tundra will remain with me to my dying days I suspect.

In the third section Barron ramps it up even further with the cosmic and surreal strangeness of his tales. "Black Dog" takes a blind date and twists it with a bizarre and eerie ending, and "Slave Arm", a short and ambitious piece, answers so much and before asking even more. This final section is rounded out by two of my favourite stories from the collection, "Frontier Death Song", a terrifying and brilliant tale that draws upon wild hunt mythology, and "Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle", a story where several familiar and recurring characters reappear as loose ends are tied up, and the violence and horror hinted at in the preceding stories fully realised and set loose upon our world.

Swift to Chase is, to put it simply, masterful. It is an enthralling and terrifying journey across many different landscapes, from the physical to the mental through to forays across time and space. It is indicative of Barron's skill that he somehow manages, despite the shifts in time and place, to make this collection one of his most accessible yet, with each and every story relating directly back to his ever-growing mythos. It also represents a new and wonderful direction for Barron in many ways. From the cold and biting harshness of Alaska through to the carnivorous reality that lies just beyond the perception of most, Barron weaves a seductive web that traps readers and makes morsels of them. This book answers some questions, whilst posing even more. It also elevates Barron to a pedestal where few other writers exist. Intoxicating, ambitious, and utterly superb storytelling, Swift to Chase is Barron's finest work to date.

5 out of 5 stars.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

In one of the most ambitious books I've read all year, author Laird Barron presents us with a collection of stories that not only play with the mixing of pulp genres like hard-boiled noir, slasher thriller, and cosmic horror, but also build a whole horror mythology as they move along, compiling to become a mosaic novel in which everything is connected. All of the stories revolve around various people that live in a small, cursed Alaskan town, and the horrors that befall them.

"There's a hole no man can fill," says the count. "No amount of love or hate or heat poured into the pit. No amount of light. I am the voice of the abyss."

This is my introduction to Laird Barron and he truly has a voice of his own. I was really impressed with his writing; on a sentence level, it might be some of the best prose I've read all year. Every story has a palpable atmosphere and there are parts of these stories that are truly creepy and stuck with me at night. But I do feel that each story meandered and took too long to get to its payoff. Although I loved the writing, I do feel that the tales were a little long-winded and overstuffed. Because this book reportedly builds on other Barron stories, I wonder if I would've enjoyed this more if I read some of his other work first. There are many things about this book I still don't fully understand, but I was always intrigued, similar to the way I felt after seeing David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. Although it's sometimes confusing and frustrating, it's a unique piece of work and definitely going on my re-read list again so I can appreciate and explore it more.

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

“…a man and his dog, versus the outer dark.”

This was incredible. Swift to Chase is not for everyone; it’s a collection that seems all over the place, but really comes together. It doesn’t fit one precise genre, but includes: horror, cosmic horror, mystery, thriller, fantasy, science fiction, drama, tragedy, dark comedy and more. The genre is… Barron. The setting is (mainly) Alaska. The style is experimental. The result is breathtaking.

Book 5 - Laird & I Will Follow: A Laird Barron Retrospective

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barron's masterpiece to date.

[Jack Haringa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laird Barron's Swift to Chase is marketed as the author's fourth short story collection (after the groundbreaking The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Occultation and Other Stories, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories), but I believe that in reality it's a stealth novel. To be sure, each story in the volume can stand on its own, yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Barron seems to be going about the work of constructing a new mythology, or a new branch of the Old Leech stories that comprise much of his earlier work. This collection/mosaic novel revolves around events that echo each other across several decades, from the '70s to the present, mainly in the same few Alaskan locales, impacting a recurring group of characters and their descendants. The final novelette--"Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle"--ties in even the most disparate of the included tales, and the cumulative effect of our encounters with the madness, savagery, hallucinations, conspiracies, and myths that Barron weaves through them all is deeply unsettling.

Since at least the publication of his novel The Croning, Barron has been hard at the task of grabbing traditional narrative structures by the throat and wrestling them into new contortions. This deconstruction of standard storytelling is on full display in Swift to Chase; there are no easy stories here, either in content or in form. Terrible things happen, revelations of deep and awful secrets lurk between word and action, and one's sense of reality is undermined--constantly, violently--by the authors destabilization of the very form he works in. Swift to Chase is difficult, rewarding, unsettling horror, unlike anything else being published today.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this collection of interconnected short stories, I feel like Laird Barron pushed the envelope of his weird, cosmic horror even further. The way he had played with non-linear narrative in "The Croning" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) is kicked up a notch with "Swift to Chase".

Mostly set in his native Alaska, these stories are loosely centered around Jessica Mace, a rather enigmatic dame who flees the isolation of Anchorage, the complications of a fractured family... and the notoriety of having survived a strange mass murder. Barron gives us a glimpse of her formative years, but also of her parents' teenage involvement with a party gone wrong and the long-reaching fallout of said-party.

While Barron plays with classic tropes like werewolves and the Huntsman, his own mythology is all over these stories: the Children of Old Leech, the Tooms family (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), mad scientists and secret service agents lurking around... It's noir, it's pulp, but with the creep factor on 11. He does not paint a very nice picture of either growing up or living in Alaska, and plays up how unsettling a desolate landscape can be if you have a morbid imagination.

I love Barron's work and recommend him to everyone, but this one is not a good place to start: I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it had I not already been familiar with his strange world-building - and the post-modern, non-linear storytelling adds a layer of complicated that might confuse readers who aren't used to his weird style. But if you have enjoyed any of his previous short story collections (such as this one: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), do not skip "Swift to Chase"! I am already planning on re-reading it, as I am sure a second visit will let me pick up on a few details I might have missed on the first pass.

[J.W. Donley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before we get into this review I need to let you in on a little secret. Are you ready? Here it is. I may be a bit biased when it comes to works by Laird Barron.

There is a bit of history behind this bias. I first came across Laird Barron about a decade ago. Up until that point I'd only been reading Tolkien style fantasy and the occasional science fiction. At that time I was working at a large chain bookstore and I came across an intriguing book with a beautiful cover. It was so different from all of the other books around it.

This book was The Imago Sequence by an author I'd never heard of and published by Night Shade Press. Every other book was ultra glossy and they all looked just like the others, while this one had a gorgeous dust jacket printed on a slightly textured matte paper that made the different shades of absinthe tinted green stand out like a beacon among the gleaming rows of spines. Also, throw in the vague and unsettling image on the front cover. I had to have this book. So I used my employee discount and bought the store's only copy.

Up until this point my only real exposure to horror literature was a little of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, some Lovecraft, and Frankenstein back in high school. So the use of this level of nightmare imagery was something almost shocking. I'd never experienced anything like it before. It was new, exciting, and completely different, and it changed my tastes in fiction forever.

After reading this enlightening collection I began to search out other similar reading experiences and each time a new Laird Barron work came out I made sure to find a copy to devour. And this brings me to his most recent collection of short stories: Swift to Chase

My Thoughts:

With this collection Barron is trying something new. The stories of his previous three short story collections all seemed to take place in a similar universe. These stories still seem to have a slight connection with his past work, but, at the same time, you can tell he is tackling new territory; and new styles as well.

Having said all of that, I'm not sure if this collection was as good for me as his previous work. But, this is not necessarily a bad thing. He has said in recent interviews that he is trying to branch out his writing styles to appeal to more than just the niche 'weird fiction' market, and this collection has some traces of that. There are some stories that verge on slasher thriller and there is one that is futuristic science fiction. If this means bringing more people to the wonderful worlds of Laird, I'm all for it.

I did absolutely love the story Frontier Death Song. This one was about a man who comes across the mythical Wild Hunt in progress while in the wilds of Alaska. (Wild Hunt – it is bad luck to see the Wild Hunt, click here to read more about it on Wikipedia) The Wild Hunt was also a major story component of another recent story I've read and enjoyed: The Brotherhood of the Wheel. I think I may have a thing for folklore based horror.

Conclusion:

Do I recommend that you pick up a copy of this book?

Yes, very much so. Bit with a caveat: don't read it as a collection of short stories. Instead read it as a single story arc covering the plight of a group of people connected to a series of events in an Alaska town. Having finished the book I find much more value in the stories after the fact while thinking over who the all connect. I think this book would be a very enjoyable one to read a second time, and possibly more enjoyable than the first read.

If you are interested in reading some of Laird Barron's work I would suggest picking up a copy of his first collection The Imago Sequence as well as this one. You will not be disappointed.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laird Barron’s superbly decadent and goosebump-inducing fourth collection of short stories, “Swift to Chase”, could also be subtitled, as Paul Tremblay notes in the introduction, “The Alaska Stories”. I’ll go one step further and suggest another subtitle: “The Jessica Mace Stories”.

In truth, not every story in this collection has something to do with Alaska. In some cases, the connection is negligible to the point of being irrelevant. Same can be said for Jessica Mace. Only a few of the stories feature Barron’s tough-as-nails heroine in a feature role. Some stories mention her briefly, and some don’t mention her at all. The book reminded me somewhat of Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Kittredge”. At least, the set-up, not the content.

Ms. Mace is a wandering soul and a survivor. She famously survived the Alaskan serial killer, the Eagle Talon Ripper, killing the guy in the process. She has the wounds to prove it; wounds that probably should have killed her.

But something follows her from Alaska everywhere she goes, and she can’t shake it. In truth, it’s followed her from birth, but she doesn’t know that.

Each story (with a few noticeable exceptions) centers around some supernatural or otherworldly entity that has “infested” the small Alaskan town that Jessica calls, begrudgingly, “home”. Something wiped out a large percentage of her graduating class, but she was long gone when that happened. For decades, Jessica has been trying to distance herself from her home town and state, to varying degrees of success.

As is usual for Barron, the mysteries go relatively unsolved in this, the questions don’t always get answered, and if they do, the answers merely raise more questions. This is par for the course for Barron. It’s what adds to the creepiness and horror.

I’m hoping Barron decides to give Jessica a larger role in the future, perhaps even a novel or two, a la his Maori mafia-hitman-turned-detective Isaiah Coleridge, a fellow Alaskan ex-pat.

[Vladimir Ghinculov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Laird Barron is an author that is known in the horror circles. Reading this book I wondered why. His writing is a combination of adventure (I guess the horror should come from his use of killers, ghosts etc. - muck like the TV series Supernatural) and noir aesthetic, which comes out as a bad pastiche and almost funny. The common denominator of the stories in this collection is the setting: Alaska.

[Christopher Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction by Paul Tremblay

Publishers Weekly top ten list for most anticipated horror/Scifi Fall 2016 releases.

Laird Barron’s fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and giallo-fueled nightmare vistas.

All hell breaks loose in a massive apartment complex when a modern day Jack the Ripper strikes under cover of a blizzard; a woman, famous for surviving a massacre, hits the road to flee the limelight and finds her misadventures have only begun; while tracking a missing B-movie actor, a team of man hunters crashes in the Yukon Delta and soon realize the Arctic is another name for hell; an atomic-powered cyborg war dog loyally assists his master in the overthrow of a far-future dystopian empire; following an occult initiation ritual, a man is stalked by a psychopathic sorority girl and her team of horrifically disfigured henchmen; a rich lunatic invites several high school classmates to his mansion for a night of sex, drugs, and CIA-funded black ops experiments; and other glimpses into occulted realities a razor’s slice beyond our own.

Combining hardboiled noir, psychological horror, and the occult, Swift to Chase continues three-time Shirley Jackson Award winner Barron’s harrowing inquiry into the darkness of the human heart.

[Paul Roberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

What happened to Laird Barron? Has the doppelgänger he's warned us about all these years finally taken over? This is Huffington Post Horror.

[Seregil of Rhiminee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Risingshadow.

Laird Barron's Swift to Chase is the author's fourth collection. It is a prime example of what modern horror fiction and literary dark fiction can offer to readers, because it contains beautifully written, disturbing, experimental and memorable stories that boldly break new ground.

I can honestly say that Swift to Chase is one of the most impressive collections I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and I consider it to be Laird Barron's best and most exciting collection to date. When you've read horror fiction and weird fiction extensively, you'll easily notice that many stories are similar to each other and lack freshness, because finding originality has become difficult. That's why it's great that the author writes original fiction and delivers fresh material to his readers.

Laird Barron is an author who - along with a few other authors (Livia Llewellyn, Richard Gavin, Michael Wehunt, Stephen Graham Jones, Clint Smith, Philip Fracassi etc) - has rejuvenated modern horror fiction and has dared to offer new and terrifying vistas to readers who delight in reading strange and thought-provoking stories. He fluently blends hardboiled noir fiction, psychological horror, the occult, literary horror fiction and weird fiction, and he creates stories that have plenty of style and substance.

I think that most readers, who have read horror fiction, are familiar with Laird Barron or have at least heard of him, so I won't say much about him. I'll only mention that he is the author of four collections, one novel and several stories. His fiction has been published in many anthologies. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading any of his stories yet, this collection is an excellent entry point to his fiction.

Because I enjoyed reading Laird Barron's previous collections (The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Occultation and Other Stories, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All), The Croning and The Light is the Darkness, I was excited about this collection and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. When I began to read it, I was instantly impressed by the author's prose, writing style and dark imagination, because each of the stories was well written and worth reading.

Swift to Chase has been divided into three different sections and contains the following stories:

I: Golden Age of Slashing
- Screaming Elk, MT
- LD50
- Termination Dust
- Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees

II: Swift to Chase
- Ardor
- the worms crawl in,
- (Little Miss) Queen of Darkness
- Ears Prick Up

III: Tomahawk
- Black Dog
- Slave Arm
- Frontier Death Song
- Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle

I'm tempted to say that some of these stories represent a unique marriage of modern pulp fiction and literary dark fiction, because it's the best way to describe them. Careful readers will notice that these inter-connecting stories are - in varying degrees - connected to the author's ever-growing mythos which can be considered to be one of the cornerstones of modern horror fiction, because many of the author's stories have influenced other authors.

One of the things why I love these stories is that there's an experimental edge to some of them (I've often found experimental and literary dark fiction to be interesting, because it's imaginative fiction that requires a bit of thinking on the reader's part). The author's approach to experimental fiction works well, because he seamlessly blends various elements and is not afraid of experimenting with structure. In certain ways he is horror fiction's equivalent to Brendan Connell.

Another thing why I enjoy these stories is that the author has a keen eye for psychological horror and dares to explore the darkest and deepest reaches of the human psyche. Based on this collection, I can say that he's one of the best writers of psychologically effective horror fiction, because his stories create genuine feelings of discomfort, unease and terror in the reader. There's something cerebral and visceral about them that will haunt you after you've finished reading them.

There's intriguing cosmic horror in these stories, because Laird Barron approaches cosmic horror from a new direction. I admire him for steering his fiction away from the well-known Lovecraftian cosmic horror and producing his own kind of vision of cosmic horror. In my opinion, this collection proves that if you have talent, you can write modern and original cosmic horror that is modern and different, but just as disturbing and intriguing as the stories that were written by old masters of weird fiction.

The characterisation is excellent and delightfully vivid in these stories. I like the way the author writes about the characters and their lives, because he makes them real people who face difficulties, obstacles and strange situations and try to cope with them. Readers are mercilessly subjected to emotionally challenging material, for the author doesn't shy away from difficult themes and issues when writing about the characters.

Here are a few words and my thoughts about some of the stories:

"Termination Dust" is a brilliant story about Jessica Mace who is introduced in the previous stories, "Screaming Elk, MT" and "LD50" (this story originally appeared in Tales of Jack the Ripper, which was edited by Ross E. Lockhart). This stunningly written story pulses with raw power and dark energy that beckons readers to read it as fast as possible. It's great that the author gives his pulpy protagonist a strong voice.

"Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees" was originally published in the anthology Autumn Cthulhu (edited by Mike Davis). It's a satisfyingly weird and mesmerising high school story that takes place in 1998.

"Ardor" (originally published in Suffered from the Night: Queering Stoker's Dracula, edited by Steve Berman) is perhaps the most striking and most memorable story in this collection. It is one of my favourite stories, because it's a unique, bleak and disturbing story with cosmic and surreal elements. The happenings take place in the Alaskan wilderness where a man is hunting for someone. I'm sure that this story will impress and unsettle many readers.

The novelette, "the worms crawl in," was originally published in Fearful Symmetries (edited by Ellen Datlow). It's a brilliant and memorable glimpse into a twisted mind.

"Ears Prick Up" (originally published in SQ Mag) is an excellent and strikingly written dystopian science fiction story which features a cyborg war dog called Rex and a Rome-like civilisation (the distinct feel of Roman Empire intrigued me). The author wrote so fluently about Rex, his master and their deeds that I found myself wholly enthralled by the happenings. It's been a while since I've read anything like this.

"Black Dog" (originally published in Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, edited by Paula Guran) is a satisfyingly strange story about a blind date that ends in a weird way. This story features excellent dialogue. It was enjoyable to read how the characters interacted with each other.

"Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle" (this story is original to this collection) is a strong and well written final story. I won't go into details about its contents in order to avoid writing spoilers, but I can briefly mention that it is a thought-provoking and unsettling account of certain events.

I liked the author's way of writing evocatively about Alaska and Alaskan wilderness. He evokes a distinct sense of bleakness and untamed beauty that is ever present in the wilderness. The harsh, untamed and unyielding wilderness offers good contrast to the settings that can be found in other authors' works.

I also want to mention that I like the author's approach to sex and violence, because certain descriptions are satisfyingly graphic and realistic. He writes well about these issues and easily integrates them into his stories.

Laird Barron explores various themes and issues in Swift to Chase, covering a lot of ground between the real and the surreal. This collection marks partly a new direction for Laird Barron, because he has never before written as intriguingly and widely about various things as he does in this collection. This is a welcome direction for him, because he masters it perfectly and doesn't stumble when writing about strange things.

The introduction by Paul Tremblay is excellent and deserves to be read. It provides readers a bit of information about the author and his stories.

As you may have already guessed, I was deeply impressed by this collection (this kind of fiction has always been to my liking, because I enjoy reading dark, entertaining and thought-provoking stories that feature good prose). I wholeheartedly recommend it to horror and dark fiction readers.

I end this review by saying that Laird Barron's Swift to Chase is a dark, enthralling and sinister collection that should be on every horror fan's reading list. If you've ever - even remotely - enjoyed reading horror stories, you need to take a look at this collection, because it's a rewarding, challenging and unsettling reading experience. The disturbing nature of these stories will deeply impress you.

Highly recommended!

[Mark Tallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is yet another excellent collection of fiction from Laird. My personal favourites in this book are, Termination Dust, Ears Prick Up and Frontier Death Song. In May of this year (2018) Laird will have his first crime novel published by Putnam. I for one, am looking forward to that.

[Shane Douglas Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excerpt of my review on This Is Horror: http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/book-re...

If you’ve been reading horror fiction for any length of time, then you’ve likely heard of and even read Laird Barron. If you haven’t you should probably go see what all the buzz is about. Barron is the author of several brilliant collections and novellas, tales of the strange and cosmic with a heavy pulp noir flavor and literary sensibilities, and he’s pretty much the single author who sets the bar that likeminded writers strive to reach. His most recent novellas, X’s for Eyes and Man with No Name were groundbreaking works of literary cosmic noir and fine examples of the new directions Laird tends to move the genre in with each new release. Now, with Swift to Chase, his newest collection from Journalstone, he once again pushes the boundaries of genre fiction, defying established norms and redefining the structure of horror.

[Aksel Dadswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you thought you knew what to expect from Laird Barron, his latest (fourth) collection – and sixth major publication – Swift to Chase, tears down all those preconceptions. He breaks a lot of new ground here, especially in terms of technique, structure and style. His Old Leech Mythos – which makes Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos look like the Teletubbies – is present and accounted for, but Barron attacks it from some unexpected angles. He seems to be going out on an experimental limb both with the individual stories as well as the larger picture that’s pieced together as you move through the collection.

Read my full review over at my blog: https://larvalforms.wordpress.com/201...

[Waffles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another dark and gloomy winner by Laird Barron. This time we are given loosely connected stories that in their entirety could be taken as a novel. There were moments that reminded me of Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, maybe even some Gilbert Sorrentino. This is cosmic horror for adults.

My favorites were Andy Kaufman Creeping Through the Trees (What a title!) and Frontier Death Song.
All of the stories are solid.

[Paul R Kohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few great stories in this book of 12.

Laird Barron has a unique way of writing and describing things. He relies heavily on the imagination of the reader. This is often very good thing, but sometimes it can become a little confusing, particularly in the stories that jump from scene to scene very quickly.

Overall, 3.5 stars.

[Heidi Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review on the way . . . wow.

[Jonny Illuminati · Rating 5 out of 5]

I swear his books get better with each new publishing - Swift to Chase continues this nightmarish trend of excellence! So. Fucking. Good.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.
I have read a fair bit of Barron's work over the past couple years and enjoyed it, especially the way he balanced the eldritch with the visceral, creating eerie tales that were still packed with action. His work often felt like a merging of Ligotti and Morrell, two of my favorite authors.
Sadly, this collection is quite different, tonally, and also lacks the more cosmic themes Barron is best known for. Instead, we have linked stories that touch on classic horror tropes while twining together in sometimes confusing ways. There is also a heavy emphasis on Alaskan setting, which adds to the atmosphere as a whole.
Barron's craft has rarely been better: Where he generally tells twisted stories in a straightforward fashion, he now mixes things up with multiple narrators, timeline and tense shifts, etc. Unfortunately, the craft outshines a fair few stories here. There are few stories or characters here that stack up to his best works, despite the quality wordsmithing. Too few characters are interesting, fewer still sympathetic, and the multi-generational structure adds little more than confusion to the whole. Kudos for ambition, but...
Still, these are solid stories on an individual basis, even if they never quite cohere to the level the author may have hoped. If you are a fan of the author's less cosmic work, definitely give this a shot. Just don't expect to get your mind blown.

[Elle Maruska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa. This was....incredibly complex.

And really frickin good.

I love Laird Barron's style. I love his seamless fusion of genres, his quick and hungry prose, his twisty interconnected macroverse. I love his character work, how each of his many, many characters have distinct personalities and motivations. I love how everything ties back into everything else so you feel like you may have to reread a few times to get all the connections figured out. Laird Barron's horror is horror done RIGHT, complicated and original and multifaceted. You want vampires? Aliens? Conspiracies? Serial killers? Ghosts? Far future cyborg warrior dogs? Well Barron's got them all and more.

And the care Barron shows to his characters is incredibly welcome in a genre that has some issues with creating disposable people who act only as canvases for brutality. Jessica Mace, Julie Vellum, even the unnamed narrator fleeing from the Wild Hunt are given complex and human motivations, reactions, relationships, and choices. Barron's dedication to creating well-rounded characters is exemplary for the genre as a whole.

Barron is one of my favorite writers in the genre today and this collection is more evidence as to why.

[Sjgomzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, did I love this collection! The brilliant prose, slasher horror, the introduction of survivor Jessica Mace, cosmic experiments, and the bleak Alaskan wilderness. So many standout stories here, all starting with a fantastic Paul Tremblay introduction.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barron's style is changing and, I have to admit, it's leaving me behind a little. I'm just not appreciating his work as much lately as I used to and it feels to me like he's taking his writing in a different direction.

Still, there was quite a bit to appreciate here, in this collection of largely (but not all) interconnected stories. Stories such as 'Ardor', 'Frontier Death Song' and 'Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees' are probably among my favourites here although all of them are well worth reading. A couple I found quite challenging to read; 'Termination Dust' and 'Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle' because of the way they moved back and forth through time, between different points of view and touched upon so many characters and the complex ways in which they intersected with other stories in the collection. No doubt the whole book could do with a prompt re-read to help put things into context.

But that's not something I'll be doing too quickly. To be frank, I found it quite an exhausting read. Not just because of he intensity and complexity of the writing but because of the often intensely graphic sex and violence. Barron has always been fairly close to knuckle in this regard but I feel like he is getting more gratuitous lately. I noticed another reviewer state that Barron's 'descriptions [of sex and violence] are satisfyingly graphic and realistic'. I tend to take the opposite view and that sometimes less is more in this regard.

I might need to go back and re-read some of his earlier work to remind myself why he became one of my favourite authors because I'm finding I'm becoming a little more wary nowadays.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something about Laird's writing style that just completely terrifies me. Plenty of horror novels have scared me or creeped me out but none the same way that Laird's stuff does. This one kept me up late at night, unable to get the events of the stories and their connections out of my head. Jessica Mace and her cast of interconnected characters seem to be creating one hell of an interesting (and scary) mythology. Swift To Chase was fantastic and like no other story collection I have read.

[Kevin Taitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is that sound? Do you hear it?

Laird Barron's small Alaskan town, Eagle Talon, makes Castle Rock look like Disneyland. This "collection" of short stories is more of a full length David Lynch feature.

Terrifying and heart wrenching, complex and frigid, it's an epic story told in a non-linear series of cosmic horror vignettes.

I'm going to read it again as soon as I gather the strength.