​Valerie Nieman – To the Bones

West Virginia is no place to be stranded on Thanksgiving….

 
 
For much of the time Valerie Nieman’s entertaining To the Bones read like a straight thriller, which potentially had some supernatural murmurings dancing around the side-lines which are explored in more detail as the novel develops.  The story opens with Darrick MacBredhon waking up, disorientated, in a sunken ditch and in a blind panic to pull himself out of it believes he discovers human bones, lots of them. Through an early flashback we realise a local policeman tried to kill him. 
 
The story is set in the town of the remote town of Redbird, Carbon County (West Virginia) on the evening of Thanksgiving. Lourana Taylor is working in the local casino, snow is falling, she is looking forward to locking up and going home when the injured Darrick staggers in looking for help.  Looking worse for wear he claims to have lost his car, keys and wallet. Against her better judgment Louransa decides to help him, sensing he is telling the truth and is not a threat, takes him home with her after closing the casino.
 
Due to lack of transport, the weather and the holiday Darrick is stranded and they quickly realise the cops are looking for him. Darrick is not the only one with problems; Lourana’s daughter disappeared and she suspected this might have something to do with her employers, the powerful local industrial family the Kavanaghs. This family controls the local factories, police and newspapers and their company Kavanagh Coal and Limestone is rumoured to be responsible for the terrible pollution, which is responsible for destroying the local river, forests and for dropping acid drainage into the systems. But even if there was evidence, they rule with fear and money and nobody would speak against them.
 
For a while this novel teetered dangerously close into heading into Erin Brockovich territory with Darrick and Lourana going on some sort of crusade to find her daughter and stand-up against the evil of industry. You might even have expected Julia Roberts to make a cheeky guest appearance! It does this to some extent, but it also heads into a strange supernatural direction involving psychic abilities. I was not entirely convinced this balance of thriller and something which you might come across in Stranger Things worked but was happy enough to go along for the ride. The scenes with the weird psychic ‘pushing’ were well played, but for any readers who were expecting a straight thriller might think they seemed slightly left-of-centre.
 
Darrick and Lourana were convincing central characters, with some of Darrick’s past revealed as the novel developed. Other characters are thrown into the mix including the policeman Marco who helps them, a reporter Person, who is one of the few people not to be in the pocket of Kavanagh. Along the way there are some terrific scenes, the most impressive being the collapse of a bridge, when a group of Christians are praying on it, due to metal corrosion caused by pollution. When the people hit the water, they begin to burn. It takes a long time for the reclusive Kavanagh family to finally appear, but it is worth the wait, and they are a seriously nasty bunch.
 
The supernatural element of the story becomes more crucial as it reaches the climax and if I flicked flick back to the beginning it really was not the book I thought it was going to be, which can only be a good thing.  I enjoyed the downbeat nature of To the Bones and although it was a decent mic horror and thriller is lacked something which would have made it stand out in a very crowded horror market.
 
3/5
Tony Jones  

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