The Nightmare Man

This over-the-top horror thriller from Markert (The Strange Case of Isaac Crawley, written as James Markert) follows the residents of a small town with a surprisingly high number of serial killers in its history, as they attempt to solve a slew of recent killings. Bestselling author Ben Bookman doesn’t remember writing The Scarecrow in a three-day fugue at Blackwood Mansion, his family’s mysterious estate, but the specifics of the plot are starting to come back to him—mainly because the novel’s gruesome death sequences are beginning to occur in real life. As the authorities—including fresh-faced Detective Blue and grizzled veteran Detective Mills—close in on the answers, Ben contends with two possibilities: that he himself is the killer, or that it’s something old and evil that’s been waiting within Blackwood Mansion for a chance to be unleashed. The resulting tale is a fairly standard thriller: its plot points are ripped from a dozen other well-worn stories, and its characters react to the story’s hyper-stylized murders in ways anybody faintly familiar with the genre would expect. Markert’s clipped style works well for this unsubtle celebration of the genre, however, making the plot’s hammier excesses easy to get through as it reaches its bloody conclusion. Fans of old school horror will want to check this out. (Jan.)