A wonderfully spooky and gripping tale with a tormented young hero.
An adolescent boy in 1962 fights to survive in an asylum rife with ghosts and a murderous creature in this paranormal thriller.
Cole Nightshade can sense demons. He keeps them at bay by obsessively counting things (like floor tiles), something his beloved grandmother taught him. His foster family is less accommodating: “The boy ain’t right,” says his abusive foster father, as he signs Cole over to a mental institution. Yet Saint Edward’s State Asylum, a former boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains, isn’t entirely unwelcoming. Cole befriends several patients in the pediatric ward who recognize him as a “seer.” He can see spirits that haunt the asylum and suffers dreams and visions that seemingly predict future events, including certain people’s deaths. But it’s the Creeper whom Cole and his friends fear the most—a bloodthirsty ghost who eats children. According to lore, anyone who lays eyes on the Creeper dies. But if that’s true, then who or what is the misshapen, ragged figure that Cole repeatedly spies roaming the halls? In this series opener, Hains creates a moody atmosphere that rarely lets up. Cole sees ghosts before he even steps inside Saint Edward’s. Meanwhile, a corresponding present-day plot—a tour of the haunted asylum—highlights the institution’s checkered history without decelerating the steady narrative pace. Readers will easily sympathize with Cole, who has OCD and sees and hears terrible things that no one else does. While the Creeper is horrifying, so is the asylum itself, complete with diabolical staff members and controversial treatments like electroconvulsive therapy. Notwithstanding bursts of violence and startling deaths, the tale avoids graphic specifics, letting suspense drive the story: “The corridor was full of murmuring sounds. Cole searched for the source but could only see an empty wooden chair at the end of the hall.”
A wonderfully spooky and gripping tale with a tormented young hero.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73238-803-1
Page Count: 259
Publisher: PCNY Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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