Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill)

Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
William Morrow
Fiction, Horror
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: In his fifties, death metal legend Judas Coyne is on the downside of his career; even though his music enjoys a healthy following, he hasn't toured or even cut a single in years, and frankly lost the heart for it after two of his bandmates died. He spends his time on his isolated New York farm with his shepherd dogs, his restored Mustang, his macabre personal collection of darkness and death-related items, and his latest young live-in lady whom he calls Georgia, a habit from his heyday when it was too much work to remember specific names of bedmates rather than the state he picked them up in. When he gets word of an online auction where an actual ghost is supposed to be up for sale, Judas feels a thrill unlike anything he's experienced for years, an eagerness that makes him buy it before he can think twice. What he gets is an old silver-buttoned black suit in a heart-shaped box... and a ghost who is not only all too real, but who is determined to destroy his life, and the lives of everyone around him, to fulfill a very personal vendetta.

REVIEW: Heart-Shaped Box doesn't dawdle too long on the setup, nor does it pull its punches once the terror begins and Judas realizes what a mistake he's made... and how much damage the vengeful ghost, a former hypnotist who learned his trade torturing enemies during the Vietnam War and whose voice has a way of worming into one's head and pulling a person's strings before they realize what's happening, can do. Judas has lived a hard life after a hard childhood on a Louisiana pig farm, becoming jaded to others - particularly friends and his companions - in ways that have come back to haunt him in a literal sense. The young woman "Georgia" turns out to have more to her than even Judas realized, another victim of childhood abuse who turns out to be a fairly solid companion as they endure the ghost's campaign of horror and death; though the ghost targets Judas specifically, the effects of the haunting expand to include everyone around him, even strangers, who risk becoming casualties by association. The long shadow of abuse through the generations and the scars it leaves, the lives it warps, are running themes through the story. In fighting the ghost, Judas finally faces demons in his own life and past that have haunted him since childhood, paying a hefty price in the process. With decently-realized characters and a truly terrifying haunting, it all makes for a fairly solid horror title.

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