A compact but unforgettable tale as a novelist’s chilling creation seemingly comes to life.
In this paranormal thriller, a writer’s evolving story about killers turns doubly horrifying when she realizes these fictitious murders are occurring in real life.
Londoner Anna St. John arrives in New Orleans with her husband. She’s a novelist hoping the French Quarter will provide inspiration for her latest book. In no time, she crafts the tale of Voodoo practitioner Bartholomew DuCuir XVII, who calls on his ancestors’ spirits to help enact revenge. He and his love, Wren, lead repugnant men, including a rapist, to a basement they’ll likely never leave. But the culprit the pair truly wants is Wren’s former foster guardian, who’s responsible for vile acts committed against her when she was a teenager. The story flows, and Anna’s happy with her progress until she hears of a brutal death in real life just like the one she wrote about. When it happens again, she searches the French Quarter for Bartholomew and Wren, on the off chance the two actually exist. In Anna’s novel, Bartholomew performs a ritual to summon a writer, who will record his “epic tale.” If Anna is that author, she’s inexorably tied to a vicious killer—in the flesh. Laningham quickly establishes a relentless, unnerving tone, opening with Bartholomew’s brutal plan. This taut novella boasts strong dual characters. Bartholomew is descended from an enslaved African who was sexually assaulted, and Anna has grown weary of the husband she caught cheating. Despite Bartholomew’s seeking vengeance for Wren, she takes a back seat to her partner. As readers know little about her, the revenge story isn’t as “epic” as her lover repeatedly asserts. Still, Laningham’s tale enthralls, especially once Anna starts agonizing over what’s unfolding and starts speculating about hackers, coincidences, and whether her fictional characters are frighteningly real. Savage, drawn-out murders in plain sight (though never excessively graphic) spawn an effectively understated final act and a genuinely disturbing conclusion.
A compact but unforgettable tale as a novelist’s chilling creation seemingly comes to life.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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