Still Life With Crows (Four Stars)

horror
Still Life With Crows
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Warner Books
©2003
ISBN 0-446-53142-1
Pages ?
US $25.95 CAN $36.95

I was talking with Janna about 1408 and it’s author, Stephen King. King is the only author I have ever been so scared that I had to quit reading at night and finish in the morning. Two of his stories did that to me: The Boogeyman, and 1408. Janna revealed that this is the book that she had been scared enough to stop reading at night. I had read previous novels by Preston and Child (Relic), and knew I was in for a good read.

This novel was spectacular. After a bizarre murder in a cornfield, an FBI agent comes to investigate of his own volition, not at the agency’s behest. He befriends a girl, Corrie, who becomes his assistant, driving him around town, introducing him to the people and places of Medicine Creek. As the numbers of victims continue to grow, in ever-increasing deaths of savagery and gore, he discovers that the secret to this crime lies in the infamous Indian Massacre that also took place in that locale a century ago.

Tightly paced, riveting, and descriptions almost too vivid make this book a quick and exciting read. I admit that the descriptions of the dead bodies were almost too much for me to handle. You couldn’t really guess who the murderer was, given the clues, but it still made sense in the end. For mystery and horror buffs, this is a good choice.