To The Last Page

The concept is promising and a little bit different for a horror novel. Deviating away from the familiar locations of a remote house in the woods, a gothic mansion or even from the satire of suburban life, Mats Strandberg offers up a cruise ship as a place of mass slaughter on the high seas. Clearly with a background of having served time as an employee on such a transport, it’s no surprise that Strandberg presents a more varied cast of, dare I say it, unlikeable victims that he is willing to put through sheer terror and bloody horrible death. There’s a bit of a disaster movie there in Blood Cruise as well as the horror and it’s not without some social satire either. The Baltic Charisma is indeed not exactly your regular luxury cruise ship. In reality it’s a booze cruise on a one-day stopover between Sweden and Finland, attracting all sorts of misfits. There are the good-time party animals and the stag parties, alcoholics, dysfunctional families and lonely aging singles looking desper...