Mar 9, 2007

Author pens heart-stopping debut

By Terri Shlichenmeyer / Book Reviewer

"Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill
William Morrow
$24.95, 384 pages

Every collector knows what must be done when one acquires a prized item for the collection.

You display it.

Maybe the new Crown Jewel goes in a glass case with a special light box, or perhaps it is placed on a shelf somewhere for everyone to admire.

So, what do these people collect?

Judas Coyne collects macabre things: death masks, real skulls, a witch's confession, a noose that a man died wearing. Jude's latest acquisition, though, is quite interesting. In the new novel "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill, it might also be the most deadly thing Jude owns.

"Just one thousand dollars," the online ad read. "Buy it now and don't be outbid." A thousand bucks and you could own a ghost. How could Judas - a man who lives his life catering to Goths, vampire wanna-be's and heavy-metal music fans - pass on a chance like that?

With the click of a mouse, Jude had himself a ghost.

Or he had a suit, anyhow. When the black heart-shaped box arrived, it held a moldering Johnny-Cash-type suit that, coincidentally, looked as if it might have been made to fit Jude. The thing smelled terrible.

And on the first night with the new suit, the ghost of an old man appeared on the landing outside Jude's bedroom.

It wasn't a cute and cuddly cartoon-Casper kind of ghost. This one had black scribbles for eyes and he carried a shiny razor blade on a chain. He was tall and gaunt and made it very, very clear that he and Jude needed to go down a long highway together one nightfall. Jude would die. Georgia, Jude's latest Goth girlfriend, would die. Jude's dogs would die. Anyone who gave aid to Jude would die.

How does one get rid of a very unwanted ghost? When Jude calls the woman in Florida who sold him the spectre, he learns that his ownership was planned. Now Jude and Georgia must leave Louisiana to find the woman because Jude has a dead man on his tail and the past is coming back to haunt him.

Wow.

Do you know who Joe Hill is? Probably not, and I'm not going to reveal his secret. I can tell you that he's the son of a famous gazillion-selling writer father and a famous-writer mother. And he's better than both of them.

I took "Heart-Shaped Box" to bed with me the first night I got it and I had to force myself to stop reading and turn the light off.

That was a mistake because I was too creeped to sleep.

This novel sinks its claws into you on the first page and makes your skin crawl, through to the deliciously malevolent end. Author Joe Hill's use of phrases is first class, he gives his characters good senses of the absurd, and his plot is I-can-barely-stand-to-imagine-it believable.

Pick up a copy of "Heart-Shaped Box," and be ready for some heart-stopping horror. This is the first novel from the soon-to-be-as-famous-as-his-parents author, and the first don't-miss book of the year.