Night Shoot

In researching Scottish author David Sodergren, a review blurb I read described his fiction as “modern horror for vintage fans”. That sort of stuck with me when I borrowed a friend's paperback of Sodergren's Night Shoot. The book was self-published in 2019, one year after the author's acclaimed debut The Forgotten Island. As a fan of vintage slasher flicks, I was excited to sample Sodergren's writing.

Night Shoot's past-tense, third-person narrative (you have to be specific these days) features Elspeth Murray as the protagonist. In the book's early introduction, readers learn that Elspeth is in her fourth year of film school to become a professional set designer. She lives with her girlfriend Sandy and the two seem to be reaching a milestone in their relationship. 

Elspeth's class has paired her up with a small crew of classmates that must complete a film as their final exam. The group is mostly misfits that are working on a low-budget horror movie called The Haunting of Lacey Carmichael. While some of the film has been shot at the school, the director has called in a family favor to his father to use an estranged uncle's cavernous manor house to shoot the majority of the film. There's a lot more to it, but giving anything else away is giving you the steak before the sizzle. 

The rule is that the film crew has to get in and out of the house in one day, allowing just a few hours of shooting time before the rigid 8PM deadline to get the Hell out. This rule is important to the owner of the place, a stuffy old fart that doesn't appreciate the tedious task of having young snot-nosed kids ruining the woodwork. As the film crew sets up in the giant mansion, a hideous “something” is in the attic watching and waiting. 

In a fast-paced 80s slasher style, each of the film crew is knocked off in heinous fashion. It follows the beloved formula of ticking off the characters until the final girl is left alone in the house with the “something”. I was getting some serious Linda Blair vibes from the VHS classic Hell Night (1981), but also shades of the flick Curtains (1983) and the lost gem The House That Vanished (1973). Setting is always important for these stories and the use of an enormous manor house nestled on a cliff overlooking the North Sea was pretty spectacular. Kudos to the author for using every square foot of the house's interior, with chase scenes spilling into offices, hallways, attics, bedrooms, rooftops, and closets. 

Night Shoot is a 230-page horror novel for the casual mop-headed rental-store veterans out there. I love a good 70s and 80s romp where the actress evades the masked man through campgrounds, houses (big or small), malls, schools, barns, and mines. If you love that stuff, then Night Shoot is a popcorn classic. I can't wait to read more of this author.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

The Suffering

David Sodergren is a contemporary extreme horror author based in Scotland who has developed quite a loyal following among modern horror fiction readers. The Suffering is his 13th novel, published in 2026.

The story takes place in a remote Catholic convent in the Italian Alps around 1890 or so. The nuns live in solitude and prayer under the supervision of a strict Mother Superior. A couple of times per year, a doctor from the nearby village travels up the mountain to provide the nuns with basic medical care.

On this trip, the doctor finds a young woman in the snow near the convent and brings her inside to be nursed back to health. There’s a young sister named Ursula with a genuine interest in nursing, so she takes ownership of the amnesiac girl’s well-being.

There are some salacious chapters where the reader is treated to the secret lives of cloistered 19th-century nuns, including a hidden lesbian couple and a sister who has learned to love the Joy of Sex with a visiting doctor.

It doesn’t take long for the horror to begin in the form of a black fungal parasite infecting the nuns. The fast-spreading ailment reminded me of a classic British horror novel called The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight or The Ruins by Scott Smith. This gives way to a lot of vividly described gross-out body horror, so you may not want to read this one while eating.

The infection coincides with a blizzard, snowing the doctor in with the rapidly decaying situation involving the infected nuns. The mysterious ailment also drives the ladies completely mad and impossibly horny, allowing the author to spread his literary wings with scenes of irrational Catholic Girls Gone Wild dressed as penguins behaving like dogs in heat.

How does all this tie into the lost girl in the woods that Sister Ursula is nursing to health? Can the doctor and his secret nun lover survive this convent of carnage? What we have here is a very graphic reimagining of zombie fiction tropes. As a closed-space survival adventure story, it really worked. At no point was it actually scary, but there are plenty of stomach-turning gore set-pieces, if that’s your jam.

Whether this is your thing or not, it’s undeniable that Sodergren is a solid author who has mastered easy-to-read pulpy prose and a good instinct for propulsive plotting. The Suffering certainly isn’t going to be for everyone, but I had fun with it. 

Get the book HERE.

The Haar

I really enjoyed David Sodergren's horror novel Night Shoot, but it has taken me over two years to find myself submerged in another of his books, The Haar. It was independently published by the author in 2022. The book is available in both hardcover and paperback, as well as a 7-hour Tantor Media audio narration by Mhairi Morrison. 

The novel stars an 84-year old widow named Muriel McAuley. Muriel lives in a cottage on the remote Scottish seaside. Land developers, led by an unscrupulous baron, have bought or bullied their way through the small village in a grand effort to create a golf community (side note – I despise golf). Muriel refuses to sell for any amount of money. She loves her little place, partly because she has lived so many years of her life there with her husband. He died years ago on a fishing expedition – this is important.

Often, Muriel journeys down to the rocky beach to enjoy a small watershed cave there, a place where she spent magical moments with her husband. In the opening pages of the novel, Muriel is in this place when she discovers a wounded sea creature lying on the jagged rocks. In an effort to heal the beast, she scampers back to her house and places the creature in her bathtub. Only there's a small problem with its healing...the creature doesn't just need water – it needs blood.

Soon, Muriel embarks on an emotional adventure with this strange creature residing in her bathtub. In a shocking revelation, the healed creature confesses to Muriel that it can appear as anything. It can also read her mind and cull from it her most precious memories – memories of her time with her husband. Muriel allows the creature to “become” her deceased husband, and the two cherish her memories together. Yet, Muriel knows this facade can only be temporary. The creature needs human blood in order to remain alive. 

The Haar is the best book I've read thus far in 2026. It is a combination of horror, dark fantasy, action, and romance. At a short page count of just 200 pages, Sodergren took me through different levels of emotion as Muriel experiences the ultimate reunion and is forced into some really dark decision-making. I described the book to a friend, and he immediately caught the Hellraiser comparison, but I'd also mention other influencing films like Splash, Lady in the Water, and maybe, to a lesser extent, Swamp Thing. It is a fish-out-of-water story, but it incorporates so many different aspects. It is violent, beautiful, gory, and wholly unique. 

The best compliment I can give to any book is how it made me feel afterwards. This book makes you feel something, and for that, I can't recommend it enough. You need to read this book.

Get The Haar HERE.