Peter Rourke lives a life of excess. Alcohol, drugs, you name it, he does it. As a songwriter he had great success with Devil's Reign, a track he wrote for a rock band called "Sour Candy". Now he is trying to write the follow-up and life is getting hard. The harder he works the more drugs he needs. Grass and coffee to counteract the hangover, Rainbow for the energy and creative clarity, alcohol to sleep. When he arrives at work to find his girlfriend, Dee, lying on his desk, eviscerated, he decides to return to his childhood home to try and straighten himself out. Little does he know that Dee's death is only the start of his problems...

Night of the Beast is a disturbing little story where pure evil infects a small town in America and the main protagonists struggle to defeat the enemy and return things to normality. When you read the introduction, Harry Shannon admits that Beast originally started to take form around thirty years ago and developed over the following years. After experiencing problems that are not dissimilar to those of Peter Rourke, the Mr. Shannon decided to quit work and become an author.

Knowing a little about the background emphasises the apparently cathartic nature of the novel – you get the impression that Harry Shannon has definitely exorcised a few personal demons when writing Night of the Beast. This personal touch makes the experiences of the main characters all the more real.

About three quarters of the way through reading this novel I became a little concerned that the energy and quality of writing may wane as the story reached its climax – not the case. If anything, Night of the Beast gains even more momentum as it progresses.

If you enjoy the "real" horror writing of such authors as Peter James then Harry Shannon is an author to try!