The Witches of Wildwood: Cape May Horror Stories and Other Scary Tales from the Jersey Shore

The stories in Curran’s collection echo the mid-1980s New Jersey resort town setting of Wildwood: a little tawdry and rickety, not a great return on value, but possessing weird, kitschy entertainment appeal. The standout tale, “Neptune’s Revenge,” strongly evokes the nightclub scene and the compulsion generated by a performer’s siren song. “Jersey Devil” features a confrontation between the legendary Pine Barrens monster and the thinly disguised megalomaniac tycoon Ronald J. Tate. Curran’s prose is strongest when he is describing boardwalk attractions and character backgrounds, as with the title character of “Captain Harvey’s Wildwood Seafood Palace.” However, his female characters are all victims or monsters or both, there are detail missteps (such as repeated mentions of a character imitating Chucky, the evil doll from Child’s Play, three years before the movie came out), and the impact of the horror elements diminishes with repetition. The stories all feel the same: monster appears, monster terrorizes protagonist, protagonist battles monster and wins. (Sept.)