An inventive, multi-layered horror novel structured around a cryptic document.
In Blackhurst’s debut horror novel, a lawyer attempts to understand a mass death event and avoid becoming one of its victims.
In 2017, two hunters in Kentucky came across a dead town; ‘dead’ in the sense that all of the residents—hundreds of them— seem to have been killed in a freak landslide. The event came to be known as the Carrington Tragedy, even though no one is sure that the town had been called Carrington (in fact, before the hunters stumbled across it, the outside world was entirely unaware of the town’s existence). The sole record of the town, and of what happened to it, is a series of 33 canvases, found buried in the rubble, on which a man called Richard Maltessouri had scribbled a difficult-to-decipher diary. The first entry begins, ominously, “I wish the marionettes would stop trying to break through the windows. Incredible. I’m not entirely convinced I’m still alive.” Though it’s unclear whether Richard was sane—or even real—his account implies Carrington suffered something closer to a massacre than a natural disaster, even if the claims in the barely legible diary (written in a hard-to-read paint called “tint”) are difficult to parse. Along with a colleague, lawyer Joseph Blackhurst travels to the Carrington site in an attempt to decrypt the demented diary, hoping that his efforts at transcription do not end, as previous attempts have, in catastrophe. The book is a metafictional puzzle, with two texts unraveling side-by-side: that of Richard Maltessouri and that of the fictional Blackhurst. The real-life Blackhurst writes them both with the kind of neurotic restraint that hints at larger, unspoken forces. “I should come clean,” confesses the character Blackhurst early on. “In a footnote, I wrote that no part of the Canvases would be edited or omitted during transcription to preserve a complete record of the evidence. However, certain inconsequential edits will be made at the decision of the Committee.” It’s a fun puzzle of a book, reminiscent at times of Mark Z. Danielewski’s work, creeping slowly from confusion to delightful terror.
An inventive, multi-layered horror novel structured around a cryptic document.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798988484318
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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