Grave robbing in glitter: Chuck Tingle’s wildest, warmest horror ride yet.
Fabulous Bodies | Chuck Tingle | Titan Books | 11 August 2026 |
- Author Chuck Tingle
- Publisher Titan Books
- Published 11 August 2026
- Pages 304
- Format Paperback
- ISBN 9781835415511
- Subgenre Supernatural splatter, queer horror
- Reviewed by Jim McLeod
A Palm Springs influencer who steals corpses on the side lands the job of a lifetime: collecting her dead rock idol. Then he wakes up, and the long night really begins.
Fabulous Bodies is the latest horror novel from Chuck Tingle, and my Fabulous Bodies review comes with a warning: bring a strong stomach and a soft heart. Poppy Stringer is a fashion influencer by day and a grave robber by night, and her latest pickup is the body of her rock star hero. It does not stay a pickup for long. This Chuck Tingle horror novel is loud, fast and soaked in blood and glitter, yet it keeps hold of the big idea that runs through all of his work. It is not flawless, and the logic takes a battering on the way.
A glitter cannon loaded with buckshot. Chuck Tingle’s Fabulous Bodies is fast, filthy and funny, with a body count that would worry an actuary and a plot that does not bear close thought. But the heart under all that sequin and gore is real, and it lands.
Selling the Dead, One Selfie at a Time
Every age gets the body snatchers it deserves. The Victorians had resurrection men with spades, sacks and a good idea of which sexton liked a drink. Burke and Hare cut out the digging, which tells you all you need to know about cost savings in that trade. Our age, it seems, gets a woman with a ring light.
Poppy Stringer has 216,000 followers, a young daughter and a nice life in Palm Springs that she would very much like to keep. She also has a side hustle she never posts about. By night she talks her way into funeral homes and walks out with the dead, then sells them on to buyers it is best not to ask about. She is very good at it. For the first stretch of the book, she is also not someone you would lend a pen.
Then her hero dies. Eddie Michaels, a flamboyant, piano-slamming rock star and queer icon, is killed by a drunk driver, and a buyer offers Poppy five million dollars to collect him from the medical examiner. It is the job that ends all jobs. Then Eddie sits up.
That is the hook of Fabulous Bodies, which its publisher sells as Drive meets Beetlejuice. It is a fair pitch. I would add a dash of George Romero, who put the dead in a shopping mall. Tingle goes one better and puts them on the market.
The Stock Starts Talking Back
The clever trick here is that Poppy’s two jobs are the same job. By day she sells a body, her own, framed and lit and filtered. By night she sells other bodies, cash in hand, no questions. In both trades the body is a product, and a product does not have opinions. Then one of hers does. Eddie wakes, takes charge and makes Poppy drive him across Palm Springs through one long, wild night, and the book becomes a road trip with a corpse calling the shots.
Look at how Poppy works, and you see how well Tingle has built her. Early on she needs a nervous young worker at a funeral home to hand over a body. So she spins him a line, which I paraphrase here: a four-year-old in Barstow will go blind by morning if she does not get those corneas.
It is a lie built out of a child in pain, sold with urgency and a deadline, and it works. That is an influencer caption with a body bag attached. It shows us her skill and her rot in one breath. It also sets up the arc. A woman who uses a made-up child as leverage will, sooner or later, have to stand up for a real one.
Her voice is a joy. Even when she is hiding for her life, the narration pauses to note that she still looks fantastic. Vanity as a reflex, not a choice. It is funny, and then, as the night goes on, it stops being funny, because you see what that reflex has cost her.
Eddie is the other half of the double act, and he is a gift. He is nasty and charming in equal measure, and the rapport between the two leads crackles. Part of what makes him frightening is that people do what he tells them. Every superfan has said they would do anything for their idol. Tingle simply takes them at their word. Fandom as possession is a sharp idea, and the book has fun with it without ever letting it go soft.
Tingle’s prose suits the job. It is a glitter cannon loaded with buckshot: bright, loud and built for spectacle, with something hard and sharp inside the sparkle. The set pieces climb at a rate that would alarm an actuary, and each one tries to top the last.
Which brings me to the one real problem. Plausibility is the first casualty of this book, and nobody ever finds the body. A killing spree across a city in a single night should bring every police car in California down on our pair, and it does not. Too many of the dead are walk-ons without names, there to be torn apart and forgotten.
That matters more than usual here, because this is a book about honouring the dead and treating bodies as more than stock. When the camp gore turns real people into props, it works against its own point. Many readers will not mind. Some will find the tone lurches. It is the reason this is four stars and not five.
Chuck Tingle’s Best Body of Work So Far?
Tingle has been building to this. Camp Damascus took on conversion therapy. Bury Your Gays took a knife to a Hollywood trope. Lucky Day went cosmic, as our review of Chuck Tingle’s Lucky Day found. This one is the most fun of the lot, and the most open about what he has always been saying: love is real.
That line has been his calling card for years, from a man who, as our field guide to horror author headshots points out, solved the author photo problem by never showing his face. Here the message is earned the hard way. Poppy has to go through hell to learn the difference between surviving and living. The final act lands with a real emotional punch, and I will say no more than that.
Fabulous Bodies is trashy in the best sense and tender where it counts. Tingle has dug up love, put it in heart-shaped sunglasses and made it sing for its supper. Leave the logic at the door. Bring tissues and a mop.
The Verdict: Is Fabulous Bodies Worth Reading?
The verdict
A fast, gory and big-hearted ride that earns its emotional finale, even if the logic gets left in the boot.
Read it if: you want Beetlejuice with a body count, a heroine you love to dislike, and a splatter novel with real feeling under the glitter.
Skip it if: you need a killing spree to make sense, or nameless victims played for laughs leave a sour taste.
No bodies were harmed in the writing of this review, which is more than Palm Springs can say.
Keep reading on Ginger Nuts of Horror
Chuck Tingle’s Lucky Day: Existential Horror Meets Absurdist Heart
Don’t Leave Her Alone by Desirée de Fez Review: A Family Love That Bleeds
The Cracks by T.H. Huddleston Review: Punk Rock Versus the Stately Home
About Ginger Nuts of Horror
Ginger Nuts of Horror is an independent horror review and culture site based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Edited by British Fantasy Award nominee Jim McLeod, it publishes horror book reviews, film reviews, author interviews, features and cover reveals. Ginger Nuts of Horror won Best Inclusive Film & Book Review Platform at the SME News UK Enterprise Awards 2026.
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