Book Review: Incident On and Off a Mountain Road by Joe R. Lansdale
Plot: Chased through the woods at night by the maniacal Moon Face after a car accident, Ellen defends herself by rigging a series of booby traps she learned from her cruel survivalist husband. But her tricks may not be enough to stave off the creepy predator. This is a short story that was later adapted into an episode of Masters of Horror on Showtime in 2006.
My Review: I saw the Masters of Horror episode of this story back when it first came out. I watched a few more episodes and didn’t like them. From my recollection, this one was the best one I had seen. However, going into this short story I couldn’t remember a thing other then a girl running from “some guy” in the woods.
Unfortunately I told someone I was starting it about 15 minutes before I actually started to read it, and they ruined the ending for me – probably accidentally – but annoying nevertheless. And well, when you come down to it the story had a lot to do with the ending, so it almost felt like “what’s the point”. I’m trying not to let it taint my feelings. I wanted to give the story 3 stars, but I think had the ending not been ruined for me, I would have given it a 4. So, that’s what I gave it.
This is a very short story, on the kindle its about 500 “locations” and ends at 79%, its probably a 15 minute read max. But I had issues with it because was some of it was really hard for me to picture due to all the action going on, it was non-stop and I was trying to read it while my husband was loudly watching the Playoffs in the next room, so it was hard to concentrate and took me awhile to actually finish it. But, its all probably my fault for not being able to concentrate, no fault in the writing style.
Overall: I got this as a free book on Amazon.com. It was a really quick read and it was enjoyable for the most part. I’m about to settle in and watch the Masters of Horror episode now. I may or may not review it here on SOH. I have a feeling if you’ve seen the episode you really don’t need to read this. Because of how short it is I’m guessing there isn’t much to add. But you never know.
My Rating: 
Leave a Reply