DEAD ELEVEN

On an insular island in Lake Michigan, a mother mourning her dead son finds a community apparently frozen in time in this supernatural-thriller debut.

When sports journalist Harper's sister goes missing on Clifford Island, he is determined to find her. Clifford is an anomaly in an otherwise-popular tourist area in northeast Wisconsin: no ferry goes there, and there’s no information about it to be found in the usual brochures and publications. Also, any online information about the island appears to be swiftly deleted. With this intriguing setup, the novel kicks off with an attention-grabbing scene in which the daily routines of two elderly neighbors on Clifford Island are permanently disrupted: One of them doesn’t appear at their usual time, leading to a hilarious set piece involving a corpse, zip ties, a carpenter just trying to rev up his old Dodge truck, and the involvement of the local sheriff. It’s a virtuoso scene that recalls the heady, charged atmosphere of horror-comedy movies such as Lake Placid (1999). Around the same time, Harper’s sister, Willow, a grieving mother, comes across the words Clifford Island written on the floor under her dead son's toy chest and decides to go there. Her gradual recognition that something is rotten in the state of Clifford is perfectly and sinisterly paced: Why, she wonders, does everyone drive old bangers around? And why is everyone so fascinated by the 1994 O.J. Simpson car chase? Told from various characters’ perspectives—including those of Harper, Willow, and Lily, a Clifford resident and high school basketball player—the paranormal-infused revelations toward the end of the book come thick, thorny, and fast—so much so that by the denouement, unfortunately, the story has lost much of its propulsive steam.

A tension-fraught horror story that starts with a bang but ends with a whimper.