The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

The Girl Next Door Jack Ketchum Leisure Books version 2008

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum starts off wonderfully: You think you know about pain? That's a kicker of a first sentence. Yes, this book is based on a true story and that is what makes it all the more horrifying. The book focuses on David and his experiences. The story is told from the POV of David and relayed as he is writing it down, though he has no intention of showing his soon to be third wife. Davi is 41 now and the events that shaped his life happened back in 1958, when Ruth, Donny and Willie meet Meg Loughlin and her sister Susan.

Admitidly I bought this book after seeing the preview for the movie, which I intend to buy, not because I think the book was fantastic but because I would like to see the movie version. The book itself is not so fantastic, it lolls around a lot and has too much inner termoil and it seemed to take a long time to get into the story fully and some things seemed a little unrealistic -- yet it is based on true events, so I guess there are people out there like Ruth, people tilting on the edge on insanity.

Jack Ketchum is an excellent writer and cn weave an awesome story with full back stories and totally engaging. I own another of his books which I enjoyed more: The Lost and have ordered Red for further enjoyment. The Girl Next Door is unfortunatly a let down.

On the front cover, Stephen King says: The Girl Next Door is alive. It does not just promise terror, but actually delivers it. I wonder if we were reading the same book?

On a side note: my wife totally loved the book.

The Lost by Jack Ketchum

The Lost
Jack Ketchum
(c)2001
Leisure Edition 2008
Pages: 394

I've heard a lot about Jack Ketchum (especially recently), even discovered he has a couple of movies out. My only experience reading Jack is in the book Triage with Richard Laymon (the reason I bought the book) and Edward Lee.

The other day I saw a youtube clip on his movie, The Girl Next Door. Now THAT is a movie I want to see, but I like to read the book first. So, I jumped online to goodbooksnz and went hunting and ordered The Girl Next Door and The Lost. My wife read TGND and I read The Lost.

The story starts off nice and hard with a double murder and described in detail. The story then jumps four years and we get to learn all about Ray (the killer) and his friends. Best friend Tim and Jennifer (sex buddy more than anything). I didn't like the skanky ho by the end of the book. Why? Because she was described so real. We all know people like her and Tim and Ray (I do or I did), and what she does to Tim sucks big time.

Ray likes to fuck and everyone he wants -- he gets with (while Jennifer stands back and waits for him to come back to her. He always does). His mother runs a motel and Ray has the room at the back of the complex. he is assistant manager and one day, Sally Richmond comes to work for them. On her first day he hits on her and is rejected. That pisses him off. Ray has a short temper, but he holds it at bay.

Sally (18) is dating ex-cop Ed Anderson (52), she tells him where she is working and Ed gets his cop friend to pay her a visit and warn her about the assistant manager, Ray. This happens before Ray hits on her. Later he meets her at a parking lot and tries to impress her with a book he's never read but heard college students like it. She doesn't and embarrasses him in public. This infuriates him, he grabs her arm but the place is busy so he lets her go. Thinking he'll get hte bitch later.

Then he meets Katherine. On a date with her, he thinks he's meet the perfect person for him. She gets him to help her steal some free beer, drink in NY and not pay and on their second date, tries grant theift auto, but the car is locked. Ray takes her to the lake where he shot the two girls and they get it on.

Ray is totally into her.

A week later, she dumps him. On the same day, Jennifer shows up and dumps him forever and tells him she's doing Tim.

Ray goes off the deep end.

The Lost is a fantastic story looking closely at friendship, small town life, and the mind of a killer going off the deep end. There were parts I wish I had skipped, these were dreams that seemed unrelated to the story and I don't understand what they were doing there. I didn't find the violence I was led to believe (via critics -- have I not learnt yet? Never listen to critics).

This book is suspense more than horror and I think it is wrong to class it as horror. As an introduction to Jack Ketchum's writing style and skill at weaving complex characters and building a solid, believable, story--it was a good choice.

77%

Crimson by Gord Rollo

Crimson by Gord Rollo
Published by Leisure Fiction
(c)2009, March
326 pages

Crimson is a basic horror story in setting. We have four friends (like Stand by me-sk) and we have an evil (reminds me of It-sk); but that is pretty much where the similarities end.

The book opens with a man walking home after visiting his neighbour with an axe. He walks home, his family already done and gone, bar the baby who is crying. He cleans up the child, feeds it and when the baby is asleep he bakes her and then hangs himself.

Wow! What an opening. We are then introduced to the main characters of the story delivered in an interesting style going from third person to first person telling a tale in third person. This allows him liberty to inject omnipresent views or second person POV.

Building the characters and setting the scene runs at a steady pace. While looking for a clubroom, they discover a buried room and naturally open it and investigate, awaking the evil inside (whom they believe to be Old Man Harrison, the dude who baked his baby).

Angered at having been awakened, the beast tells them there is a price to pay for disturbing his rest. And pay they will.

Then the story jumps several years and pretty much drags on leading to an exciting end.

I'm in two minds about this book. In a way, I like it and in another I found parts of it way too long. Many of the sentences put me off:

David cried out in fear. He cried out in agony.

The book didn't have a lot of show but I think it was written that way. And the story worked in this vein.

72%

You Play, You Pay by B. L. Morgan

You Play, You Pay by B. L. Morgan
StoneGarden Publishing
ISBN: 1-60076-140-2
204 pages
(c) July 2009


I have read all of Bob's work. I have known this talented writer since 2001 (or was it 2000?) and was stoked to get a copy of his latest book: You Play, You Pay, in the post and I devoured it in to sittings (damn job lol).

I have one word for you: Fantastic.

This book is extremely readable and based on the premise of everyone's wish to find a bag filled with money. And Sheriff Hector O'Grady has done just that. He is thinking of his financial future after retiring and he knows that a cops retirement fund is not going to support him and his wife. Even now they are just getting by with two kids to feed and mortgage to pay.

Unfortunately, the money does belong to someone and that someone is a person you don't mess with and three men are sent out to find that money and get it back, regardless of the cost.

It is Hector who pays the greatest cost.

You'll fly through this book as the plot and characters carry forward from one page to the next. It is a short book and I really would have loved to see more.

Bob knows how to tell a tale and he spins the web so thick, one can't escape until the last page.

89%

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
St Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38285-8
ISBH-10: 0-312-38285-8
421 pages


This is the first Jonathan Maberry book I have read, though I've known of him a long time. I discovered him over at the Masters of Horror social site. I ordered Patient Zero for two solid reasons.

The first: It sounded like a zombie book, and I like zombies.
The second: It sounded like a zombie book, and I like zombies.

And yes, this is a zombie novel. The story is about Joe ledger, a cop who is recruited into a secret organisation called The Department of Military Science (DMS). They fight terrorists who are trying to release a new virus that turns people into zombies.

Joe is a smart-ass detective and is not interested at first, so Mr. Church has to find some leverage to get Joe to join them and lead a small team into the jaws of hell. They find that leverage in the form of Joe's close friend and shrink: Rudy.

Joe has a team of five and during their first training together, they get called out and attack a warehouse, where zombies are getting ready to feast on children, or infect them and send the blighters home. (That part is not clear.)


The book is told in first person when we read of Joe Ledger, and told in third person with all other characters. I believe Jonathan is far better at third person as I didn't really get into Joe's character, I found him clichéd and in need of an injection of life, a spark of something that was missing through out the book. I liked the terrorist, Gault, more than Joe. This character leapt from the pages.

I also found interest in this book waning as it seemed to take forever to get to the zombies. There was a LOT of explaining going on to entice Joe into the fold and it was told in a boring manner. Personally I didn't think all those details needed to be told. I know it was added to give flair and explain how the zombie virus worked, but for me, nope. I found myself skipping paragraphs and waiting to reach the end of the chapter and many chapters are really short.

When we finally got to the action, the first person POV killed the scene. Some parts were over-explained and others were not.

This book did not do it for me.

57%

Z Day is Here by Rob Fox

Z Day is Here,
Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse
by Rob Fox
Publisher: Library of the Living Dead
Copyright 2009
ISBN 13: 9781448603077
209 pages


Wow. That's my initial reaction after finishing Z Day. I am not sure but I think this book started off as a blog book and was then picked up for a POD CAST and then publication. And it is well worth the read. Once you get past the formatting and typos (on purpose in some cases - it is meant to resemble a blog, not a book), you'll find yourself rooting for the MC and several of the stragglers he comes in contact with.

Our MC was in the city when the shit hit the fan. He has one goal, to reach his home and his fiancé. This book is a rush of action and interesting characters told after the fact. It is a blog, you have to keep reminding yourself of that, because the story will pull you in.

The book is a quick read (and I'm a slow reader), I finished it in three sittings. It is an account of the first 101 days of the Zombie Apocalypse and it starts with an interesting reason to how the world died. And it all started with a little boy. Read the first page, it is all explained in an excellent way -- as background to the story taking place. I loved that.

Zombies are the new vampires and this is the perfect book to set you on your travelling way through the land of the dead.

Once you finish this book, you're gonna want more and there is more. One of the characters continues the journal 280 days later. And you can find that blog HERE.

Deception Point by Dan Brown

Deception Point 

A Corgi Book 

ISBN: 9780552151764 

583 Pages (c)2001 

 There's been a discovery. It's top secret and the president wants some private investigation into the thing. The president is struggling in the polls and is competition is hammering him over the errors that Nasa has made, and there are a hell of a lot of them. It all sounds good, but the execution is poorly done. 

Brown feels the need to teach the reader science in a boring way, that drags on for pages and pages. 

Yes, his fiction is based heavily in fact but he doesn't pull this off like his other three books. If most of the information he gives us could have been delivered in a more interesting way, like he did in Angles and Demons or Digital Fortress. 

If a hundred pages were cut, things may have gone faster. Don't get me wrong, the book is still a good read with several story lines coming together nicely. It's just unfortunate the main plot didn't work and bored me.