A compelling plot and mounting sense of dread infuse this atmospheric thriller with plenty of chills.
A woman must uncover the truth behind the horrifying bargain that strips her of her senses, one by one, in Every’s horror novel.
Deena Bartlett cares for her dying, elderly Aunt Agatha at Wilshire Rehab Center. She has long had a tumultuous relationship with her cantankerous aunt, but Deena—partly fueled by the facts that her own parents were both dead by the time she was 25 and that Agatha is the only living relative she has left— attempts to do her part. When Wilshire’s mysterious old cleaning woman, Jadwiga, warns her to “take care…She is coming for you,” Deena soon finds herself facing a nightmarish set of attacks seemingly designed to take out her five senses, one by one: “The hum rose higher in pitch, piercing the stale, hot air. Deena threw her hands over her ears hoping to block it out—which was when she discovered it wasn’t coming from the room. It was coming from inside her head, growing louder and higher, throbbing against her temples, pressing against her eyes until it felt as if they would burst from their sockets.” Deena seeks help from Jadwiga, who reveals that Agatha made a deal with the Sensu, an ancient creature who feeds off Deena’s senses in exchange for curing Agatha. After each attack, Deena is left with a mark somewhere on her body for five days before the Sensu moves on to the next sense. When Deena is branded with the last Tactu (touch) mark, her life will end. To stop the relentless attacks, Deena must discover the truth behind her aunt’s bargain before it’s too late.
Every has crafted a genuinely spooky tale that relies less on body horror and more on the slow and patient buildup of moody suspense—an approach that fans of Grady Hendrix and Stephen King will surely welcome. The gore is never gratuitous as the tension slowly mounts and Deena uncovers the family secrets that have made her a marked woman. That’s not to say the book doesn’t have some absolutely stomach-churning moments, especially when it comes to the twisted old Agatha: “With a satisfying sense of release she pulls off her fingers, one by one, and drops them into the lake, watching the blood turn the water black. As each finger sinks it expands, becoming a formless, irregular mass floating just below the surface. She gazes at them as a mother would her children, her need for a legacy finally satisfied.” The dialogue mostly feels natural, with only a few missteps—such as the repeated appearances throughout the novel of a disembodied voice intoning “I’ve got you now,” a catchphrase that tends to come across as more “campy Wicked Witch” than legitimately creepy. The author manages to infuse her solid horror story with larger themes—including motherhood, grief, youth, and death—that lend Deena an added layer of depth while raising the stakes of her emotional and physical journey. The novel’s eerie, open-ended conclusion is reminiscent of classic horror novels and movies that manage to satisfy even as they unsettle.
A compelling plot and mounting sense of dread infuse this atmospheric thriller with plenty of chills.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781960456137
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Woodhall Press
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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