ABJECT FEAR

In Carro’s horror novel, scientists developing a fear-inducing drug start human trials, using themselves as subjects.

Los Angeles resident Mitch Trager’s life is upended when his wife, Wendy, is killed during an armed robbery, just moments after they celebrated her birthday. Five years later, he seems to have moved forward, at least in his professional career. He’s the head of his own pharmaceutical company, Trager Chemicals, where he and a team of scientific researchers are developing a new kind of drug: one that induces fear. But just after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to start human trials, the project’s investors pull their funding and order them to clear the lab, which is housed in a refurbished former psychiatric hospital on an island off the Seattle coast. Determined to continue their work, the researchers decide to spend the weekend in the lab before the electricity gets turned off, and they start the trials on themselves. The same day, newspaperreporter Gillian McCann shows up unannounced to interview Trager for a follow-up to an article about Wendy’s murder. The researchers, who have all shared their deepest, darkest fears and traumas with Trager, try the drug and temporarily experience terrifying hallucinations. As they continue their research, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to tell what’s real and what’s not. Meanwhile, Gillian starts to realize that there’s a hidden motive behind Trager’s project. Carro combines an intriguing premise with classic horror story elements, including a creepy, isolated setting, a ragtag group of deeply traumatized people, an intrepid journalist, and sinister science. The book doesn’t quite come together in a satisfying way, however. Although the characters are mildly entertaining, none are particularly compelling. Occasionally stilted dialogue makes the pacing drag, and readers may find the narrative’s constantly shifting perspectives and timelines to be difficult to track. But the horror sequences are delightfully grotesque: “The wall came to life with movement. Arachnid legs popped into view all over the mass, like spiders escaping a wall of tar. There were hundreds.”

An offbeat and gory, but ultimately unsatisfying, tale of terror.