Title: The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod
Author: Bill Russo
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 9, 2017
Genres: Horror, Contemporary
Length: 26 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 5 Stars
Blurb:
Content Warning: Murders. I will not discuss it in my review.
Review:
If you know better, will you do better?
There wasn’t a lot of time for character development in such a short piece, but Mr. Russo definitely made the best of what he had. I especially enjoyed getting to know Anse, a slightly crusty old man who worked at a tackle shop and often gave tourists advice on the best fishing spots in the area. He was a little gruff at first glance, but he had excellent reasons for coming across this way that I’ll leave up to other readers to decipher for themselves. Honestly, I probably would have behaved the same way if I were in this character’s shoes. He didn’t exactly live in the safest part of the world, after all, and dealing with constant streams of visitors who weren’t always keen to listen to reason only made things worse.
I liked Anse’s explanation for why Rico and Angelo, the visitors, decided to brush aside his warning and go fishing at Kaycee Pond despite its scary reputation. Not everyone in the world has common sense or is willing to consider other points of view. Sometimes this only leads to minor inconveniences, but occasionally it can be wildly dangerous to ignore the advice of people who have many years of experience on a specific subject like, say, catfish that are much larger and smarter than they should be.
The ending was perfectly frighting. While I can’t go into much detail about what happened in it without giving away spoilers, I can say that it added new layers of meaning not only to everything Anse already knew about that area but also to why nobody lived near that pond anymore and why everyone else in the area was also terrified of getting too close to the water. This was one of those cases when basic details about what happened were more than enough to tickle my imagination and make me feel very glad that fishing isn’t one of my hobbies.
The Killer Catfish of Cape Cod made me shudder.