Do you love horror? Thrillers? Chillers? Did you wake up this morning feeling a knot of strange expectation in your chest, a strange, unwordly pull around the area of your naughty bits? Don't worry, it's not a heart-attack or the onset of some horrible social disease. It's Joe Hill's new novel Horns. It's on bookshelves today. And it's calling you.
The story is straightforward and compelling. Ignatius Perrish is having a bad year. It began with his girlfriend being brutally murdered. Ig was the primary suspect, but beat the case, which doesn't exactly clear him in the eyes of those around him. He's fallen into despair and degradation, and just when it couldn't get any worse he goes off on a bender and wakes up the next morning with a pair of horns and a nasty new talent for picking up people's darkest secrets.
Shouldn't make a murderer too hard to find, then, should it?
The novel follows Ig as he develops his new ability and discovers the truth behind the death of his beloved Merrin. It's a juicy, gritty premise, and Hill plays it for all that he can. He wallows around in the easy bits up front, having Ig read the nastiest inner desires of the nicest people around him, revealing layers of hypocrisy and nastiness all around him. But then Hill twists the knife, having Ig inadvertently confront those closest to him, friends and relatives, finding out exactly what they think of him during his darkest hours.
Hill has a natural gift for knowing just how to play on our expectations. He lets us see pompous blowhards be exposed for the jerks we've always hoped and prayed they would be, but then he subverts these set-ups by throwing in moments of completely exposed, raw nerve humanity. Just when you're most thrilled at watching the devil get his due, Hill reminds you, at times heart-breakingly, whose side you're actually on.
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