​WHERE STARS WON'T SHINE BY PATRICK LACEY - BOOK REVIEW

I meet up with Patrick Lacey once a year. We both attend what is honestly one of the best conventions/gatherings around, Scares That Care. Yes, I'm plugging it in a review for his book because the fact we both attend means that we both support the amazing good this organization does.

Look 'em up, help them out, Please!

Now, when we usually talk obscure shitty horror films or deep heavy metal. This kid knows his stuff in both areas and that knowledge comes through in his work. It usually has a VHS tone to it...like something I'd have plotted to stay up way past my bedtime to sneak watch on pay cable.

His most recent solo book, Where Stars Won't Shine is no exception. It delivers enough creepiness and violence to satisfy the eagerest of horror fans.

Here's the nitty gritty:

Tucker Ashton is a serial killer...and more than just a guy whose cheese was never very close to his cracker, a guy who went out and killed random folks and added the numbers--he did that stuff BUT he plopped a big ol' cherry on top of his carnage sundae by returning to his hometown and murdering it. Nearly the whole damn town.

--Slow golf clap--

After a few years, Tucker goes missing from his prison cell and a survivor of his earlier crimes is being called to his hometown. Also on the same trajectory is an overzealous fan of all-things-serial-killer, dragging his less than enthused girlfriend to the hometown of his "hero." Throw in a young man on the run from the law and the return of a vile figure who may or may not be human and we have the nightmare quilt that is pulled over our heads and held in place while we squirm and holler.

Where Stars Won't Shine is a darkly dreamy collage of images and emotions. If the "It's A Good Life" episode of The Twilight Zone and Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer procreated--this would be the slavering offspring.  This book will do for parades what Duel did for rural road sharing with big rigs. It is a tense and sure story, draped in bloody shrouds and black arm bands. It's a gruesome good time.

Where Stars Won't Shine is available from Grindhouse Press
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Scares That Care-- check them out here--https://scaresthatcare.org/
 

Where Stars Won't Shine ​

I'll be seeing you.That's the note left behind for Ivy Longwood when infamous killer Tucker Ashton murders her boyfriend. Several years later, after Tucker vanishes from his jail cell, Ivy travels to Ashton's hometown of Marlowe, Massachusetts. Not for closure or therapy. She's being called there. Steered by forces beyond her control. What she'll find is not the quiet suburban town Marlowe once was. It's something new. Something dark. Something that answers the question: Where did Tucker Ashton go?

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