by Robert Irvine
1982 Pinnacle Books
This book doesn't deserve this cover, so I'm going to go ahead and spoil the hell out of this one.
The book opens straight up with a "this is not a boat accident" followed immediately with "if you close those beaches, we're finished", so I figured we're in Jaws knock-off territory. I one-handed artist returns to Moondance, Utah, where he finds the town council wanting to open a private hunting ground. A Johnny Carson type is coming soon to film a hunting segment, despite his advance crew being brutally slaughtered.
We get about six hours of the artist feeling sorry for himself and the town council being jerks about him not selling his land. Riveting stuff. Johnny Carson and the lead characters head out into the woods where I hoped we would finally run into the giant bear or whatever, but shame on me for assuming - this is an Indian magic horror novel. The group find an Indian who gets blamed for the murders, then people start dying from their greatest fears, like catching fire from fearing old age. Look, they can't all be poetic.
Once we get down to our hero he discovers it's not Indian magic after all, Scooby, it's a mixture of hallucinogenic herbs that the Indian has been sneaking in people's water. A mixture of peyote and whatever that drug is that guarantees an ironic suicide, the one in Young Sherlock Holmes.
Irvine should have gone all the way and had it all be a dream, seeing as how he was intent on killing off what little tension or horror he managed up to that point.
The audiobook didn't help as the reader paused way too long between lines. At least a full second every comma and two or three every period, dragging this novel out to over eight hours.
Available for Kindle and Audible from Amazon
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