Probably your favorite bartender / real estate magnate
returns (The Quarry, 2023) in an interweaving blend of eras and narratives.
Almost 44 years ago, Russell Stander found something. Spending summers of his adolescence away from
home and friends in Michigan, and instead a season-long visit to his idiosyncratic,
elderly aunt in Western Illinois, Rusty is understandably in search of
adventure. As it turns out, he and his
cadre of summer friends find more than they bargain for, discovering a
mysterious, abandoned graveyard full of dark secrets.
Stephen King and Peter Straub described the “dreamlike
and slightly unnatural… characteristic of borderlands” in their novel Black
House, and DM Gritzmacher’s third installment of the Skulldiggery series
takes place just a short way down that most awesome (and awful!) of all
American borders – The Mississippi River. The story hops between the present day, the
early 1980s, and the turn of the 19th into the early 20th
Century, with each of the three eras meandering toward each other as the
narrative unfolds. In our modern moment,
we find middle-aged bar owner Rusty returning to the small community of Almore,
Illinois with his friend and employee, Tom Secrist, a retired police officer. In the early 80s, we find the same Rusty, 10
years old (give or take), and a group of four friends wandering through the countryside
in search of some fun and some adventure.
And eighty years prior to that, a mysterious figure on either side of
the border that is The Mississippi (and the turn of that century on either side
of 1900) also wandering that same countryside where the boys find themselves we
are witness to a sequence of grisly murders told from the perspective of the
perpetrator.It's part Stand By Me and part In Cold Blood,
with a dash of co
smic horror, and a world of related stories swirling all
around the edges.
Engaging, leaving you hungry for more.
Pub Date: Oct.
10, 2023
ISBN: 9798986638751
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Piqued
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