Helltown / World’s Scariest Places: Book Three
by Jeremy Bates
Ghillinnein Books, 2015, 1st
ISBN: 978 0997 096 067
A Review by Gene Stewart
A group of kids drive to an isolated town in Ohio to investigate legends of hauntings and other strange goings-on, such as a bridge under which a baby’s ghost wails in the wisps of mist, or the church with the upside-down cross on top.
Their investigation of the bridge proves a let-down but the wild ride that follows, featuring a game of chicken they lose, proves more eventful than any could want. Their driver swerves away from certain head-on collision, only to lose control, leave the road into the trees, flip, then roll the car, and end up paralyzed.
What the reader knows that they don’t is terrifying: A group of in-bred hicks with rape and murder on their mind, who refer to the men and women they hunt in their territory as Bucks and Does, wrecked them on purpose and intend on taking them to dungeons and worse.
Factor in a corrupt psychopathic shrink from a local clinic, a pair of anacondas, and the apathetic ignorance and corruption of local officials and things become really grim.
Bates writes focused prose that keeps things moving. Always engaging, he does not scrimp on character. Every scene is thought out so it works on many levels at once. Every sentence works.
He seems to attribute a Downeast accent to some of these Ohio natives, which offers an off-setting note of dissonance to an otherwise-seamless narrative drive, but that’s minor. Another cavil: I nearly stopped reading when the hicks were introduced because I thought, Oh no, not that old trope. The very next chapter redeemed my fear of cliché; he was playing with them more than slavishly following them, and this opened up the book to great effect.
Which clichés? This book contributes to the legacy of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES and other such gruesome Sawney Bean tales. Thing is, i’s a worthy addition, one recommended for those who like a wild ride full of twists, turns, surprises, shocks, and terrors presented on what seems to be familiar territory. You’d be wrong to get too comfortable.
Like the second book in his series, this one is set in an actual place you can visit if you dare, and the events on which he hangs his tale are reported in news stories you can research. It’s a great conceit for a series and so far he’s also covered Japan’s suicide forest, the Paris catacombs, and the Isle of Dolls in Mexico.
I’ve read Catacombs, the second in this series, and it, too, is recommended, not the least of which for its well-researched tour of the actual catacombs and the depiction of some of the denizens and urban explorers who are found there, sometimes dead and dismembered. The story itself is satisfyingly layered, with a solid resolution, and the characters are memorable.
Jeremy Bates writes better than necessary while delivering base-level shrieking horror at its best. Can’t ask or hope for more. Seek out his work and see if you concur.
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