HELL HEIST

The feisty daughter of an infamous killer takes on hell itself in Peterson’s horror-thriller.

Harboring various lost souls known as “Starchildren,” Athena Starchild (who will one day be recognized as “one of the most infamous murderers of the last century”) reigns supreme as the founder and leader of a sprawling commune called Starchild Ranch. After the cult’s collapse and Athena’s execution, the only remaining Starchild is her daughter, Letta. Thirty years later, Letta has not escaped the dark shadow of her mother’s crimes—in fact, her future gets a whole lot darker when she is faced with a bizarre and seemingly impossible task. Hundreds of feet in the sky, bathed in blinding, beautiful light above the most wretched creatures of the Earth, resides Matthias the Guildmaster. Tasked with “maintaining order within the universe,” Matthias is unexpectedly compelled to hand over control of his damned souls to Letta after a sudden and devastating death. To prove her worth, Letta must first complete a sacred ritual: retrieve the “soul of a fallen killer from Hell itself.” The catch? The soul belongs to none other than Athena Starchild. Armed with rage, tenacity, and a crew of supernatural creatures (including a charming teddy bear containing the soul of a killer), Letta descends into hell itself on the job of a lifetime. Peterson delivers a campy and creative adventure filled with heist-like hijinks that keep the reader excited (and maybe a little scared) to turn the pages. Around every corner is a special kind of horror—a bloody, brutal, humorous kind of horror—that is wholly unique and titillating (“It took her a moment to realize the beige-pink strips were human flesh, the nubby protrusions fingers. Someone had sculpted a sunflower out of a person. And it was still alive”). Peterson’s tale is both heartfelt and heinous, sincere and stomach-turning. Each character is more bizarre than the last; each incident more insane than what came previously. Fans of thrillers, heist narratives, and horror fiction will delight in this rollercoaster-ride through hell.

A wildly entertaining trek through hell itself with a bizarre cast of characters.