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THE CORPSE QUEEN by Heather M. Herrman

THE CORPSE QUEEN

by Heather M. Herrman

Pub Date: Sept. 14th, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984816-70-2
Publisher: Putnam

A teenage grave robber needs to find a killer before he finds her in Herrman’s first novel for young adults.

Molly Green, 17, has barely begun to cope with the death of her only friend, Kitty, when a wealthy woman claiming to be her aunt liberates her from the Philadelphia-area orphanage where she’s spent the last several years. Before Molly can even set foot inside her aunt Ava’s gothic mansion, she’s tasked with picking up what turns out to be a severed human head. Ava procures human bodies—the fresher the better—for Dr. LaValle, who uses them to teach medical students anatomy. Molly’s adept at dealing with the naturally dead but has a harder time with the murder victims who bear evidence of precise knifework reminiscent of a wound she found on Kitty’s corpse. This macabre novel, told primarily from Molly’s point of view, is more horror than history. Several characters, including Ava’s assistant, one-eyed Tom, and Molly’s heavily tattooed sex worker friend, Ginny, border on the grotesque, but none drop into stereotype. All characters default to White. Despite a scattering of historical inaccuracies, the narrative flows smoothly, and the plot rockets along, greased by the rot of the dead, to a satisfying, and somewhat surprising, conclusion.

If Poe’s daughter told a story, this might be it.

(author's note) (Horror. 12-18)