THE CREEPING

Although she remembers little, Stella witnessed her friend Jeanie’s murder when they were 6 years old. Now Stella needs to learn just what kind of monster was responsible.

Was it a supernatural monster? Is it still out there in the woods today, waiting for redheaded little girls to kill? Certainly most residents of Savage, near Minneapolis, believe in the supernatural monster. Shane, the police detective in charge of Jeanie’s case, has no doubt the monster is human. Mrs. Griever, a seemingly crazy old lady living on the outskirts of town, has no doubt the monster is centuries old. When another redheaded little girl turns up dead, Stella believes the two cases must be connected. Warned by Shane that she may be in real danger, Stella nevertheless constantly risks her safety to investigate what she increasingly believes may be a truly paranormal beast of some kind, especially when she and another childhood friend learn that Jeanie was far from the first redheaded little girl to be murdered in Savage. Sirowy’s main focus—the rift between legend and fact—slowly emerges. With Shane as the voice of skeptical reality and Mrs. Griever the purveyor of longstanding local legends, Stella eventually must learn which is correct if she is to survive. Although the story takes rather too long to tell, it delivers with a nicely suspenseful plot that builds to a crisis point.

Intriguing all the way through.