A gripping horror tale in the pulpy paperback tradition.
A group of adults who survived a murder spree decades ago confronts the possible reemergence of the killer in this horror novel.
In 1986, the small town of Deighton, Pennsylvania, was terrorized by a serial killer named Tom Wickerman, who murdered at least six children before crashing his car into a frozen lake during a winter storm. The survivors—the kids the Deighton Demon did not slay—formed the Leftovers Club as a means to work through their collective trauma. The club still meets 35 years later, and most of the members have long since built stable lives for themselves. Joe White grew up to be a successful novelist and has two kids with fellow Leftover Judy. But things are about to change. It begins when Joe notices an older man hanging around outside his house. When the man makes vague threats regarding the writer’s young son, Simon, Joe can’t help but wonder if it’s Wickerman. It’s impossible, of course—Wickerman would be over 100 years old even if he hadn’t died in the lake—but maybe he had a brother or some other relative? At the next Leftovers meeting, Joe learns that he isn’t the only one who thinks he’s seen the killer around town. Oddities continue to pile up, but when one of their own turns up murdered in her house, the Leftovers know that the Deighton Demon isn’t done with them. From the very beginning, Wennerstroem’s prose clicks like an ascending roller coaster, building tension with every scene: “Judy shook her head; she hadn’t seen her, nor did she want to, at least not yet. The room down the hall overflowed with feverish commotion, voices distorted by fear and horror, then the house fell quiet, dead quiet.” The book has strong notes of Stephen King—the premise is more than a bit reminiscent of It—but as the tale unfolds, Wennerstroem’s sensibility comes into its own. The characters mostly hew to established types—including the cops working on the investigation, a street-wise Baltimore transfer and a veteran of the 1986 case—but the author draws them well. For fans of terror and suspense, Wennerstroem’s unnerving story does the trick.
A gripping horror tale in the pulpy paperback tradition.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-648-97980-7
Page Count: 366
Publisher: FarSight Publications
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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