A pulpy exploration of the monsters we make and a love letter to cult-classic frights.
In this homage to classic horror, a reporter is forced to cover the remake of an infamous 1993 film she starred in as a child.
The last time Laura Warren was in Los Angeles, she was a young kid going by another name and reluctantly starring in a slasher flick called The Guesthouse. The intervening years saw eight of the movie's cast and crew members come to terrible ends. Now living in London, she's been strong-armed by her editor into flying west to write about a new miniseries based on the original film. Why is he so adamant about making her write a puff piece anyone could do? Anyway, Laura is determined to stay in LA no longer than the 48 hours it will take to run through a few PR–sanctioned interviews. As if on cue, the body count starts to rise on set, and Laura becomes certain that somebody involved in the production knows who she is—knows and has been waiting for her. The question becomes: Is the show truly cursed, or is it Laura’s past doing the haunting? To figure it out, she teams up with her struggling-actress sister and the psychic hired by the young director in charge of the remake. The mystery is a compelling one, the details unsettling from the jump. Adding to the cult-classic ambiance are the documents interspersed throughout, ranging from social media posts to script pages. These add much-needed texture when the choices Laura and others make begin to feel oversimplified. If the characterizations aren’t always consistent, the nods to movie magic and monsters certainly are. And if the relationships seem to exist only to serve the plot, it’s because the heart of the story belongs to genre. After all, as a fellow child star reminds Laura, “Horror fans are for life.”
A pulpy exploration of the monsters we make and a love letter to cult-classic frights.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780593544662
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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