Passing Through

A monstrous criminal descends upon a small town in Clark’s gory thriller.

Six years ago, Elliot Keller raped and murdered three young women in a cabin near Virginia’s Appalachian Trail. Now he’s serving time at the Virginia Maximum Correctional Institution. He’s a smooth-talking, low-maintenance prisoner, which leads to him getting a coveted overnight laundry detail. He plans to escape during one of the prison’s routine night deliveries and sate his appetite for violence. Meanwhile, in the cozy town of Thompson Trails, Virginia, a massive storm approaches. Sheriff Robert Brown makes the rounds, checking in on citizens, including Rick and Donna Welk, who own a series of lakeside cabins near the Appalachian Trail. Although the storm makes the likelihood of anyone renting a cabin slim, Rick and Donna are prepared for anything. Suddenly, a man who calls himself Elias Derringer steps from the wilderness and into their establishment. Rick is hospitable, offering him coffee, but he gets a bad feeling from the stranger. He doesn’t plan to rent a room to him for even one night and instead points him toward the local sheriff to help him continue on through Thompson Trails. When Elias ends up in a cell for the night, overseen by Deputy Darren Rush, his diabolical plan begins. Clark creates a memorable villain in this gripping thriller. Readers learn how Keller, during his childhood, witnessed “unspeakable things” that imprinted on him and inform the sadism that he inflicts on own victims. Clark’s energetic prose intensifies descriptions of brutality: “His head was nothing more than a bloody pulp with a small spot of brain pulsating grotesquely from his frontal lobe.” However, casual thriller fans may find such moments, as well as those depicting sexual violence, gratuitous. The tale works best as an over-the-top horror piece, as no other aspect of the narrative supersedes Clark’s penchant for savagery. The twist ending, however, will strike some readers as unearned moralizing.

A page-turner that places a premium on shocking its readers.