REVIEW: Carnosaur by Harry Adam Knight

Ferocious predators, which should have long been extinct, break free from their confines and go on the hunt in search of prey. No human, caged chicken, or family pet is safe! No, this isn’t a Jurassic Park inspired spin-off, Carnosaur (1984) by Aussie author John Brosnan (writing as Harry Adam Knight), is on a different level of pulp-tastic horror.

 

Published some six years prior to Michael Crichton’s well known Dino-blood splatter romp, Carnosaur explores the test tube dino element much like Jurassic Park did, however the science is generally left to the footnotes as this story is all about killing off characters in the most gruesome way possible with little care for plausibility – it’s all part of the fun.

 

David Pascal, a journalist at a small town rag is the lead character who sniffs a good story from the smell permeating from the massacred chicken inside their demolished coup and smushed human bodies. He comes across as a bit of a wimp and has a tendency to whinge about everything in life, namely his ex with whom he ended the relationship with because she was destined to be more successful than him and he couldn’t possible stand that! Not to let his whinging ways deter him, David can sense that there’s something not right about the death and destruction and uses his powers of deduction to weasel his way into the secure compound of the resident bad guy, thanks mostly to catching the eye of the cougar nympho wife of said bay guy.

 

From that point forward, it’s all about survival of the fittest (or survival of those with the biggest guns) as the inevitable dinosaur escape ensures rendering the modern dominant species a little less dominant…

 

Carnosaur is a blast, chock block full of fun and inventive scenes of destruction which leave nothing to the imagination and with just enough tension to make you think for a split second the characters actually stand a chance against the supposedly extinct reptiles. The only downside to Carnosaur is that a sequel wasn’t published – there’s certainly more room for mayhem; sadly with the author having passed away sometime, the story starts and ends here.

 

The 1984 paperback is pretty scarce these days (I was super lucky to stumble across a copy in the wild), but never fear for the fine people at Valancourt Books have published a fresh new edition in 2022! Here’s the link to their website for more detail: Carnosaur by Harry Adam Knight, with a new introduction by Will Errickson.