Urban Gothic
Brian Keene
Leisure Books
Dorchester Publishing (2009)
Brian
Keene is a prolific writer of horror and in this book he is at his best. His
writing is graphic, the plot is intelligent, and it has all the blood and
splatter you could want.
A
group of young people driving back home from a rock concert are stranded in a
back street in a Philadelphia slum. Pursued by a group of locals, they take
refuge in an old Gothic-style house that seems to have survived urban renewal
and vandals. The house is a trap. It is inhabited by a group of weird, deformed
humanoids. They are the outcasts of society over many centuries, the ones who
would have been left to die at birth because of their deformities and defects.
They live as best they can in the house and the sewers and caverns underneath.
They are cannibals and the young folks are future meals to them.
The
hunt and the killings are described in graphic detail. The increasing despair
as the youngsters are killed off one by one is well brought out. Even if one of
them has a small victory against the monsters, there are many more creatures
left. The house itself is designed as a series of traps with pitfalls, moving
walls and ambush spots. The creatures have been playing this game for a long
time and have prepared the house well. No one gets out.
Keene
even manages to give some of the creatures a personality of sorts. There is the
monster who likes to wear the skins of female victims as his “clothing”, and
the one who has constant cravings for necrophilia with his victims – or parts
of them. We are spared nothing, not even the bleeding out and preparation of
the bodies of the victims.
Maybe
I’m just in a bloodthirsty mood but I found the book compelling reading. Keene
has taken a standard and rather tired genre and rejuvenated it into something
better and far more horrifying than average.
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