A fine introduction to Elmwood, which horror fans will find a nice place to visit.
In Karraker’s horror novel, an asylum inmate may hold the key to unsolved murders committed 20 years ago.
In 1999, FBI Special Agent David Nolan visits Green Elm Home to interview Tommy Wilford about a series of unsolved murders in Elmwood, Vermont, which Wilford may have witnessed in 1978, when he was 8 years old. It’s just a formality, Nolan reassures Wilford’s attending physician: “It’s the kind of nothing job that comes up when someone wants a promotion.” Wilford’s story, which involves tentacled monsters, is the same testimony that got him committed long ago, but he’s sticking with it: “I’d say I know a lot of things,” he eerily says. The narrative extends all the way back to 1968 in Vietnam (“A lot of messed up stuff happened there,” Wilford notes. “It’s no wonder some of it followed people home”) and is told from a variety of perspectives, including Wilford’s childhood classmates Elise Smithfield and Will Ross,who survived an initial attack that took the lives of two of Tommy’s childhood tormentors. Are these the “fantastic ravings of a certified lunatic,” as Nolan initially characterizes them, or, in classic horror tradition, is something still out there? It’s too soon to determine if Elmwood will become a destination for horror fans on a par with horror master Stephen King’s Castle Rock, Maine, but in his debut novel, Karraker does an effective job of scene-setting and worldbuilding. Several elements will be familiar to King fans, including childhood horrors, social outcasts and bullies, a fearsome supernatural entity, and gruesome deaths. The various pieces of the puzzle don’t fit together perfectly; how Wilford knows what went on in other people’s homes, for example, is a mystery. However, the book evokes palpable dread and terror, as when one character is described as “frozen in fear, the sanity vanishing from her eyes.”
A fine introduction to Elmwood, which horror fans will find a nice place to visit.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798987847909
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Gray River Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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