Small Town Horror

The horror genre has taught me how to deal with events that happened in my childhood. If you and a bunch of friends accidently run over a homeless person or set fire to a witch, the best thing is just to admit it without delay and take your lumps. You see, no matter how many years pass, they always know what you did that summer and sooner or later it will be the inevitable clown in the sewer drain or string of mysterious deaths. Ronald Malfi adds to the misadventures of youth impacting you as an adult genre with Small Town Horror. 

Andrew Larimer has a successful job as a lawyer in the big city and swore never to return to his childhood town once his father had passed away, but the past has a way of catching up with you. A childhood friend needs representation; his wife has disappeared, and he is the prime suspect. Something happened in Andrew’s past, and that of his small group of friends, that means he cannot refuse the request. Now back in Kingsport the friends are having a reunion, but they are bringing a curse with them. 

Malfi is a tenured horror writer in their own right, but Small Town is a book that treads over common ground. I do not like to compare all spooky writers to Stephen King, but in the case of this book, it is necessary as the setup is very King like – the group of friends haunted by the events of the past. The book even jumps from the present to what happened then to reveal the truth and give the reader a twist (if you are unable to see them coming or have never read a horror book before). 

What separates this book is the characterisation. King leans heavily into characters, but also the horror, Malfi dominates with the character and there is not a huge amount in terms of scares. This is a book about fractured relationships and the past coming back to haunt you. It is the human condition that is explored and not the supernatural. 

This is not to say that the undead are not ever present in the book, the past is always just around the corner, it is that we are walking down the corridor a long time to get there. If you are a fan of long form character-based horror, there is a lot to take in in this book. The friendships are complex and have a lot to reveal. You cannot trust any of them, what they see, but also their actions – they may be covering up a deeper truth. I still feel that if they had come forwards originally, they could have taken their punishment and moved on. Also, it felt that one individual was mostly to blame, I would throw that curse right at them. 

Small Town feels like comfortable horror from the 90s/00s, not too scary and covering well-known tropes. A reader looking for some solid uncomplex horror will happily read this book. As a jaded reader who needs something different or disturbing in my horror to catch my attention, this book felt like a well written also ran.