Michael Hicks's Reviews > Small Town Horror
Small Town Horror
by
by
Andrew Larimer is summoned home following the disappearance of a friend's wife in Ronald Malfi's superb Small Town Horror. It's been twenty years since Larimer has set foot in Kingsport, Maryland, but the secrets that united he and his childhood friends still lay between them, haunting them, both literally and metaphorically. A shadowy figure watches them, follows them, a spectral reminder that each of them are cursed following a shared trauma decades past, and that the supposed witch living at the heart of this small fishing town may be to blame.
Secrets, of course, are at the heart of Small Town Horror, and as such I'm loathe to give much away. What Malfi does brilliantly here is subject readers to a cast of shady folks with varying degrees of unlikeability. Central to them is our narrator, Larimer, whose story unfolds in first-person point of view. Malfi puts us right in Larimer's shoes, but not always in his head. We don't know, for instance, why Larimer takes off his wedding ring upon returning to his hometown and lies to his childhood friends about being married. That's just one more secret in a large bucket overflowing with them.
Dale is the primary suspect in his wife's disappearance, but as things heat up between each of the five friends it grows ever more clear that he's not the only one with a likely motive. And then there's Robert Graves, a figure from their shared past and the son an old crone rumored to be a witch.
Malfi smartly blends crime and horror here, creating a work that is positively thick with tension and atmosphere, enough so you can practically taste the saltwater on the air of Kingsport. At times, Small Town Horror feels like a deeply layered east coast Alan Wake by way of Mystic River. The reveals, once they begin to unfold, are heavily loaded and precisely timed bombs, one of which actually made me rock back in my seat and put the book down for a moment, so perfectly done was the audibly-gasped 'what the fuck' nature of it all.
Small Town Horror is, in a word, sublime, and an easy contender for Horror Book of the Year in my estimation.
Secrets, of course, are at the heart of Small Town Horror, and as such I'm loathe to give much away. What Malfi does brilliantly here is subject readers to a cast of shady folks with varying degrees of unlikeability. Central to them is our narrator, Larimer, whose story unfolds in first-person point of view. Malfi puts us right in Larimer's shoes, but not always in his head. We don't know, for instance, why Larimer takes off his wedding ring upon returning to his hometown and lies to his childhood friends about being married. That's just one more secret in a large bucket overflowing with them.
Dale is the primary suspect in his wife's disappearance, but as things heat up between each of the five friends it grows ever more clear that he's not the only one with a likely motive. And then there's Robert Graves, a figure from their shared past and the son an old crone rumored to be a witch.
Malfi smartly blends crime and horror here, creating a work that is positively thick with tension and atmosphere, enough so you can practically taste the saltwater on the air of Kingsport. At times, Small Town Horror feels like a deeply layered east coast Alan Wake by way of Mystic River. The reveals, once they begin to unfold, are heavily loaded and precisely timed bombs, one of which actually made me rock back in my seat and put the book down for a moment, so perfectly done was the audibly-gasped 'what the fuck' nature of it all.
Small Town Horror is, in a word, sublime, and an easy contender for Horror Book of the Year in my estimation.
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