Nobody writes "Bad Place" horror novels quite as effectively as Adam Nevill. Ritual, Apartment 16, House of Small Shadows and No One Gets Out Alive all have locations so well drawn that no sane person would want to go there.
In his new novel out now from his own imprint (Link at the end of the review), he somehow manages to give us his scariest location yet.
A young family, Tom and his wife Fiona and 4 year old daughter Gracie, desperate to leave the inner city, buy a decrepit old house in an unnamed village somewhere in the deep countryside in the South of England. The suicide of the last owner isn't really an issue for them. that's history. it doesn't matter any more. They're going to do the house up and make a beautiful family home for dear little Gracie to grow up in.
That's the plan anyway. They hadn't banked on a pair of truly malicious neighbours. From an initial frosty welcome, events start spiraling completely out of control. And who will believe Tom when he says the neighbours have magical powers and are laying curses on him and his family?
As much as I've loved everything else Adam Nevill has written, with this book, he smashes it out of the park. The horror starts in such a grounded way for Tom et al. The financial stakes are so high, this is the greatest gamble he's taken - but we know from the prologue what the neighbours are capable of doing and that things are unlikely to turn out nicely. At the very least, he may well end up financially ruined, or he could lose so much more than mere money. When things start to escalate, they become more vicious than anything I've seen in any of Nevill's other work.
The sense of doom is palpable, the flashes of hope that glimmer through the gloom are extinguished in the cruelest of ways. One scene in particular, and it's immediate aftermath felt like a hammer-blow to the psyche. It's not an unearned shock, or done solely for effect. It's a shock that's been carefully planned and built up to. From that point on it's almost impossible to put the book down.
Despite the oh-so-familiar trope of the family buying a new home and bad things start happening, this feels like a fresh take on the old storyline. The place is a bad place because of the neighbours, not the place itself. The story wrong-footed me several times and I was second guessing myself constantly - and getting it wrong most of the time.
There is a jet black sense of humour running through the book as well, despite the darkness. this just serves to drive the shocks deeper.
This is quite possibly the best thing that Nevill has written to date. Tom's relationship with Gracie and his fears for her feel so true, I wonder how much of the early part of the novel is maybe based on the real experience of buying a place in the country and uprooting with the family.
As usual from Ritual Limited, the book itself is an object of beauty before you even open it. Everything about this book is top quality, the artwork, the feel of the paper, everything.
The only thing I think would have improved this book would have been if the toy penguin was called Fluffy and not Waddles. People who know the other work of Mr Simon Nevill (Adam's brother - a very talented family) who drew that rather terrifying boar's head on the front cover will understand what that means.
This book and all his back catalogue are available through his website
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