Trapdoor spiders are scary. They dig a lair, a hole in the ground, and cover the top with leaves and debris. They sense the footsteps of insects walking by and spring out, snatching their victims and pulling them underground to be devoured. Trapdoor spiders are nature’s jump scare, leaping out of the dark like the killer in a slasher movie. Now, imagine a trapdoor spider the size of a Buick living beneath a playground in suburban Texas and you have the premise for Matthew Taggart’s aptly named, THE PLAYGROUND. It’s not much of a premise, but Taggart fills it out with the story of Jim Brown, a disgruntled detective who got lucky breaking a big case back in Houston, but longs for a quiet police beat. The fictional town of Steadworth Hills, Texas is pretty backwater, populated with rednecks, racists, and outright dullards. Brown must deal with both incompetent and hostile coworkers as well as incompetent and hostile supervisors. He’s the only sane man in a town full of idiots, which gives THE PLAYGROUND an Invasion of The Body Snatchers vibe.
Indeed, THE PLAYGROUND draws inspiration from several classic 1950s giant monster movies, Them! and The Blob among them, as well as more modern cinematic fare like Tremors, Arachnophobia, and Eight-Legged Freaks. The story follows Brown’s police procedural as he tries to solve a series of disappearances. Once he figures out the culprit is a giant spider, he’s able to wrap things up fairly quickly with a few pumps of his shotgun (though Taggart leaves the door open for potential sequels). THE PLAYGROUND makes a few rookie mistakes. The lack of a female lead for Brown to play against hurts this novel’s overall dynamic. There’s no B-story romance brewing; just grown men acting dumb and shouting at each other. And spider attacks; the horror scenes in this novel are well rendered and genuinely suspenseful.
While THE PLAYGROUND pays homage to the storied history of big bug cinema, it doesn’t seek the same inspiration from killer insect literature, like J.F. Gonzalez’s Clickers, Tim Lebbon’s The Nature Of Balance, or H.G. Wells The Food Of The Gods. In Dean Koontz’s hands, the giant trapdoor spider would have escaped from a government lab and be chased by federal agents, bounty hunters, and an unlikely couple falling in love. THE PLAYGROUND only gives us angry Jim Brown and a cast of fools. Taggart knows how to tell a fun story, but his next story needs…well, more story.
Enjoyable for fans of creature-feature horror flicks but thin on plot and characters, THE PLAYGROUND –wherein a giant spider stalks people and pets in a tiny Texas town–is a good choice for readers looking for cheesy, pulpy big bug fun.
~Rob Errera for IndieReader