While some might have a TBR pile, I have a TBR tower. As a librarian, I am surrounded by so much great stuff to read, I feel like a kid locked in a Toys R Us. Sadly, it takes me longer to read books than it does to play with toys, so my TBR tower can become either an architectural marvel or a disaster waiting to happen. To prevent such a collapse, I decided to finally read a book that I have wanted to read for a long time: Scott Thomas’s Kill Creek. While the cover seems to promise a by-the-numbers haunted house story, Thomas adds enough dramatic flair and compelling characters to help it stand out from the other haunted houses on the block.
Somewhere in the Kansas countryside, situated by the titular Kill Creek is the Finch House, an abandoned home with its share of ghosts. It is here where four of the most famous writers of horror have agreed to be interviewed. There’s introspective Sam McGarver, reeling from a recent split from his wife; Daniel Slaughter, a writer of Fear Street-like books who is a devout Christian; Sebastian Cole, the esteemed elder statesman of horror, and T.C. Moore, an acerbic female Splatterpunk author. All are intrigued by the Finch House and the house is more than happy to let them in. In fact, a little bit of what haunts the Finch House might follow each of these authors home.
Moving past the standard groans and rattling chains, Thomas takes his time building up the discomfort, which steadily grows into dread. What really sells the book is the ensemble cast, who all have their own approaches to horror but all bring assorted traumas that the house will gleefully exploit. As with all the great haunted house stories, it’s the mix of those haunted with the things that are haunting that create the book’s combustible elements, showing them that any horror these writers can devise pales in comparison to what Finch House shows them.
One book down, several more books to go.
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