I like history and I like horror. Not all types of horror. Mostly I like horror like Stephen King writes it. Horror that is so horrible because it blends in so smoothly with the everyday world. That is good writing. That is what I enjoyed as I read Cruel and Unusual by Erik Dean. This book is good. It is a collection of four short stories that deal with something the cover describes as judicial horror. This is a term that I haven’t seen applied to horror stories or the horror genre in general, but it is accurate in this case and it is a great way to describe these stories - it sounds much better than justice gone bad or something like that. I liked this book because I like history and Erik Dean writes it well. I like psychological or sociological stories such as Lord of the Flies. Erik Dean combines the two elements like a pro.

I like the characters. I like the history. I like the stories. My favorite of these four tales is the one involving the Salem witch trials. I found this story the perfect combination of history and of the psychology of a small, isolated, group that you would expect to behave well, but who ending up behaving…well, horribly. The writing is good, the characters are very believable. The plotting is spot on. Given the popularity of horror, I expect to see Erik Dean’s name in a lot of book stores, and maybe in some film credits in the future.

With a perfectly designed and truly intriguing cover to successfully entice those fiction readers avidly preferring the more strange and unusual in their literary fare, the four short stories in Cruel and Unusual by Erik Dean comprise a most cleverly unique and deceptively quirky book that links themes of universal justice with those of the more individually-inspired, supernatural realms. Convicted and executed witches exact their own perfect retribution after death. A lawman and a peddler team up together to do quite the same. The Devil gets a chance to testify in court. And justice teams up with game-show television to execute the perfect final punishment upon a nasty, convicted felon.

The stories in Cruel and Unusual are clever and entertaining, and at first one suspects that Erik Dean might be writing for the young adult audience. His composition style is quite concise; his sentences often painfully assertive, with the gut punches and uppercuts of a skillful boxer. But his wry cleverness and his sardonic wit - as well as his powerfully sparse writing style – do not conceal Mr. Dean’s unerring ability to target the voyeuristic pleasure that we all, often secretly, indulge in. And this is certainly not limited to young adults. Furthermore, embedded in these marvelously engaging stories is an intelligence and observance aware of the human proclivity for seeking vengeance over justice, mean-spirited as that may be, and worse, for seeking guilty pleasure at cruelty doled out as fairness. In the end, Mr. Dean lays claim to the finest writing compliment: the stories in Cruel and Unusual are wonderfully entertaining. Beyond the style, beyond the cleverness and wit, and beyond the guilty pleasure, the reader cannot help but sport a nasty smirk while reading. He is, you see, enjoying cruel and unusual entertainment.