Horror author Joe R. Lansdale and his daughter, author and musician Kasey Lansdale, have collaborated on a series of stories about an unusual type of supernatural investigator: one who is skeptical of the paranormal and supernatural and looks for the reasonable or scientific explanation that might be lurking behind the strange occurrences she’s hired to investigate.

Dana Roberts doesn’t dismiss the weird cases out of hand, and looks forward to first finding out if anything beyond out of the ordinary is going on, then enacts a plan or two that can contain or eliminate the existing threat to her clients. Most of the time, unexplainable phenomena become merely undetermined anomalies in humanity’s knowledge of physics, albeit sometimes terrifying ones.

This collection is delightful, especially for people who enjoy the old throwback type of mystery stories, where both involved and interested parties are sitting in a dinner party or salon type setting, and the tale is told in an “I was there when” manner, and you have no idea whether the narrator is being straightforward or perhaps embellishing a few details just a bit.

The narrative style changes later, on the handful of stories that Joe & Casey collaborated on, where new assistant Jana joins in the investigations, but that elevates things by bringing a more modern feel and accessibility to the stories.

The scenes where Dana is planning what supplies and weapons to bring along just in case are also fun… it shows a scientific approach towards a situation that might be explained or unexplainable, and that adds to Dana’s appeal as a thorough investigator.

I certainly hope that more peeks into the investigations of Dana Roberts’ will be coming along, sooner rather than later.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

Terror is Our Business gathers together all of Dana’s and Jana’s previous cases in a single volume, and features an all-new adventure, “The Case of the Ragman’s Anguish,” written exclusively for this collection.

Join Dana and Jana as they investigate—and battle—angry jinns, malevolent shadows, ancient travelers, and soul-sucking shapeshifters. With two tough, resourceful women on the case, the specters from “the other side” won’t know what hit them!

Terror is Our Business: Dana Roberts’ Casebook of Horrors by Joe R. Lansdale & Kasey Lansdale
Paperback: 250 pages
Publisher: Cutting Block Books; 1 edition (May 29, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1732009007
ISBN-13: 978-1732009004