Wednesday, February 08, 2023

The Folks by Ray Garton

 

(hb; 2001: novella. Published by Cemetery Dance Publications.)

From the inside flap

“Welcome to Pinecrest, an isolated mountain village halfway up rural Mt. Crag. . . a place of natural beauty and solitude. . . a place where village life has remained unchanged for decades. . . but also a place where dead bodies have a strange way of showing up every couple of years. . . ravaged, mutilated bodies.”

 

Review

Told from the point of view of polite, non-religious twenty-one-year-old Andy Sayers, whose fire-scarred face scares many of his fellow Pinecrest residents, Folks details what happens when a mysterious benefactor offers Sayers a scholarship to the nearby College of Hand of God, and he’s seduced at a Halloween party by a mysterious, wealthy Amanda Bollinger whose familial, vine-covered house is hidden within neighboring Mt. Crag, hotbed of unyielding Christianity (and the aforementioned college).

Folks’s hybrid horror tropes and set-up may likely be familiar to those longtime genre readers but that’s a moot in point in this Old School 1980s, 130-page novella, given Garton’s excellent, tightly edited play-with-cliches writing, quick-but-effective characterization, and equally effective pacing. For Garton fans, the author’s fondness for well-written (brief in Folks) sex scenes and effective/cringe-worthy ickiness may further sell the tale to them. This is a great, hourlong read, with a finish that brings to mind the ending of King Diamond’s Conspiracy (1989) album. Folks is worth owning if the above description appeals to you.


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