DEAD GIRLS CLUB BY DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS - BOOK REVIEW

A pre-publication review of The Dead Girls Club, by Damien Angelica Walters


Damien Angelica Walters has hitherto established herself as a real presence in the weird and dark fiction spheres, with collections like Cry Your Way Home and novels like Paper Tigers. This time, in her upcoming book, she has produced a work that sits just as well in the psychological thriller or murder mystery ambit. Which begs the question: how has she done it? And how well does the result work?


To give some idea, the online pre-publication listings and introductory blurbs for The Dead Girls Club don’t pull any punches when it comes to giving a heads-up to potential readers. “In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real - and she could prove it. That belief got Becca killed,” the intro declares. “Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night - that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She’s done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn’t seen since the night Becca died. The night Heather killed her.” Now, if you’re looking for a thriller or a mystery, are you going to take the time to read through a book that has already shown its hand? Well, you’d be a fool if you didn’t.


For one thing, Walters puts the reader in the picture within the first chapter - then starts leading you through the narrative with deft, adroit skill that keeps you hanging on for the next reveal. It’s literally a page-turner: I ploughed through the book in a couple of days. Part of its attraction is the beautifully judged, bitten-off prose that mimes Heather’s guilt, repression, suspicions and possible dissociative amnesia superbly. And when the story dips back into the young Heather’s experiences in 1991, it drops into her youthful idiom and memories poignantly and faithfully. If Stephen King had been born female, and with a darker and less sentimental sensibility, this is the kind of story he would be writing. (The girls in the past narrative reference King repeatedly, but The Dead Girls Club does not suffer from the comparison.)


Is The Dead Girls Club “a supernatural thriller,” though, as its Amazon listing claims? Or is it just a straightforward mundane murder mystery, coloured by the inflamed imaginations of teenage girls? The tragedy of the Red Lady, and her revenge, is so powerful in itself that it’s hard to evade or just dismiss as sheer fantasy. Nothing conclusive happens to prove or disprove her existence either way, but there’s no comforting “it was all just a story” get-out for readers allergic to the supernatural. Nor is there any sense of strain in the poise with which Walters holds the balance between the two interpretations. As she says, “You don’t need flickering lights or doors slamming shut, the parlor tricks of a poltergeist, to be haunted. The true ghosts are made of deed and word and live deep inside the marrow and bone.” It certainly helps that, for all the early revelations, she keeps a succession of twists right until the very end of the story. You could class The Dead Girls Club as an example of fantastic fiction in Todorov’s classic definition of work that hesitates between a natural or a supernatural explanation of the story’s events, but there’s no need to cumber it with that kind of scholastic pedantry. Whether you’re a fan of ghost stories and supernatural horror, or a dyed-in-the-wool materialist who shuns any fictional realization of the uncanny, you’ll be captivated by The Dead Girls Club. It transcends genre distinctions as easily as it does scholarly over-interpretation. It’s that good. I wouldn’t want to confine it to any one genre category: I do say that it’s a story you must read.


Crooked Lane Books, December 2019

DEAD GIRLS CLUB BY DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS 

A supernatural thriller in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts about two young girls, a scary story that becomes far too real, and the tragic--and terrifying--consequences that follow one of them into adulthood.

Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face...

In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real--and she could prove it.

That belief got Becca killed.

It's been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night--that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She's done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn't seen since the night Becca died. 

The night Heather killed her.

Now, someone else knows what she did...and they're determined to make Heather pay.

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