Kin Dread

Private investigators Quin St. James and Mike McCleary set out to rough it in the Florida Everglades only to have their weekend adventure escalate rapidly into a nightmarish struggle for survival. The trip begins on a wretched note as estranged spouses Quin and Mike, with their friends Lydia and Beau Nichols, paddle through seemingly endless rain to reach a vacant campsite. But it's not quite empty, as Lydia discovers when she stumbles over a pair of corpses. Shaken, the group settles in for the night, but only briefly: the two murderers and their son, who have returned to hide the bodies, take the four friends prisoner. They escape their captors, but in the melee, the son--who carries a spear--falls on his own weapon and is killed. Quin and her companions soon realize they are tracked not just by the enraged parents, but by their entire vengeful and sadistic clan: glades dwellers who, during almost a century of isolation and inbreeding, have all but become part of this swampy grassland they haunt. MacGregor's ( On Ice ) extended chase is not for those of faint heart or weak stomach. (Oct.)