Reincarnal & Other Dark Tales by Max Allen Collins

I’ve read a fair number of Max Allan Collin’s crime and/or mystery novels and always enjoyed them but this is the first time I realized he wrote some horror as well, so naturally, I had to jump on this collection. Included here are 8 stories plus two radio play scripts. I enjoyed every one of them, an unusual thing for an anthology of any stripe. 

Several of these are MAC’s take on traditional horror stories. There’s a couple of vampire tales, a Frankenstein’s monster type of story, a werewolf story and at least two haunted house yarns. But the author brings a unique perspective to each of the stories, dropping clues along the way as to which traditional story you’re reading. For example, the Frankenstein story isn’t a mad scientist creating a creature from dead body parts, exactly, but rather about a mob kingpin. There are other tales here as well, not tied into any previous works. Some tend towards hard core horror while others have a definite sense of humor about them. Most of them offer explicit sexual content so be aware of that before diving in.

All these stories were previously published as contributions to previous anthologies, mostly in the 1990s. All are pretty quick reads and thoroughly enjoyable.  Here are the stories included:

- “Reincarnal” - 1994
- “The Night of Their Lives” – 1995
- “A Good Head on his Shoulders” – 1993
- “Wolf” – 1999
- “Not a Creature Was Stirring” – 1990, revised in 2020
- “Open House” – 2011
- “Traces of Red” – 1995
- “Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die” – 1994
- “Interstate 666” – 1997
- “House of Blood” Radio Play – 2012
- “Mercy” Radio Play - 2012