Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Description

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.

"I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . ."

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts--of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.

And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting--with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . .

A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.


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I finished this book last night and was mildly surprised that it was pretty good. Joe Hill is actually Stephen King's son and he's been writing short stories under a pen name so he won't be writing in the shadow of his father. Someone leaked his identity though. The Wikipedia has more info on Joe Hill.

Joe jumps right in with the action and there is much blood. About a 1/3 of the way through I wondered if he wasn't going too fast with his story and if it would run out of steam midway.

At first it was hard for me to like the main character Jude, a hard-hearted death-metal rock god who called the young goth chicks he lived with by their 'birth state' and not their names. The current state "Georgia" was a goth stripper he met about 9 or more months ago. Of all the characters in the book, she's the one that really grew on me.

After the big climax where they face the evil and fight, I noticed there were about 20 pages left. Many of them were one page chapters. I think he could have tied up the aftermath without so many little chapters. I kept thinking "what a waste of paper."

I give it an A- rating. Joe Hill is a young author who will grow into a very intense horror writer one day.