Workmanlike and agreeably absorbing, though lacking genuine thrills or chills.
More New England horror and madness tied to sadistic events in the past from Schreiber (Chasing the Dead, 2006, etc.).
When Seattle-based greeting-card writer and frustrated novelist Scott Mast returns for his father's funeral to small-town Milburn, N.H., where he grew up—and where his mother and great-uncle Butch died in a movie-theater fire 15 years ago—he discovers his brother Owen and five-year-old nephew Henry already in possession of the family house. In a ramshackle old shed, Scott finds a short, unfinished manuscript written by his father, evidently a horror story. Having come across the location where the story is set, the aptly named Round House—there are no sharp angles or edges anywhere—Scott impulsively rents the empty house with the intention of finishing the script. Meanwhile he tries to handle drunk, shiftless Owen by taking young Henry under his wing. He meets up with old flame Sonia Graham and, accidentally it seems, goes off his anti-depression/anxiety meds. The house itself is frigid, the writing goes nowhere and, while attempting to research old town records and legends, Scott becomes reacquainted with other denizens of the town, such as rich drunk Colette McGuire and her philandering ex-NFL husband Red Fontana. He also unearths hints of horrific goings-on in the 1880s and perhaps more recently. Suddenly Scott finds the ability to write and continue his father's story; coincidentally, perhaps, the long-delayed demolition of the site where his mother died begins. Owen rouses himself to take a job there, but what does he hope to find in the ashes? Further revelations about the Mast family past emerge, each less pleasant that the last. Scott begins to hallucinate. And young Henry wanders off in a snowstorm.
Workmanlike and agreeably absorbing, though lacking genuine thrills or chills.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-345-51013-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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