As autumn creeps in and the weather gets darker and colder, who doesn’t love a good horror story? (If you don’t, avoid this book—especially if child death, blood and gore, or body horror are triggers for you.) A child separated from his family on a hike gets lost and is found dead, torn apart by some mysterious beast. Police Chief Wolfe is charged with finding and relocating the animal who killed him, but the boy’s death may be only one in a series of mysterious disappearances related to strange glowing glyphs with hallucinogenic properties. With a little trimming, or perhaps with the first two stories to add context and a solid resolution for their plotlines, Alex J. Knudsen and Charlotte Zang’s BLOOD ON THE TRAILHEAD: A Lost Grove Mystery would make an excellent horror movie.
There’s a lot here: danger, adventure, creepy stories, scary supernatural creatures (as well as a few very likeable ones), some demented evil-scientist-level body horror, and suspenseful build-up to some truly terrifying action scenes. Intriguing and creative speculative biology can also be found here, with a lot of fascinatingly creepy implications that could readily be explored further in any subsequent books. The characters are numerous, but have solid, well-developed personalities with a few odd quirks that add color and mystique to the tale. The writing is vivid and descriptive, and the authors are brilliant at painting emotional contrasts in sharp tones that heighten the story’s drama. Again and again, warm, bright descriptions of ordinary life—a family outing, teens hanging out at the beach, a lively county fair—make the traumas, destruction, and danger that follow even darker and scarier by comparison. For example, a group of teens gather as “The light hung heavy and golden over the Eel River, its light brushing the still water into molten ripples. The air smelled of wet stone and sweetgrass, the hills beyond the bend blurred by a lazy haze.” But then the tone changes sharply: “A strong breeze kicked up, chilling all their flesh and rustling the boughs of the ancient trees nearby.”
While this is the third book in a series, and the reader would be well-advised to read the previous two first, there is enough here that stands on its own to make a satisfying experience. Indeed, it would probably be a better book if it were standalone; the plotlines that carry over from the previous novels aren’t really followed through to a resolution, and the main plot in this one could do perfectly well without them. It’s as if the town is still dealing with the ramifications of the events of the previous novels while facing a completely new threat, and those ramifications have been left hanging.
Hopefully, there will be subsequent stories. After all, a few dangling threads are perfectly normal in real life, but they’re frustrating in a novel. With that said, there’s a great horror story at this book’s core, and it’s still worth a look.
Written by Alex J. Knudsen and Charlotte Zang, BLOOD ON THE TRAILHEAD: A Lost Grove Mystery is an action-filled adventure with almost too much going on—stuffed with interesting characters, ancient stories, body horror, and supernatural spookiness.
~ Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader