In this book, he gives us a very Malerman take on the slasher genre.
Daphne is a seven-foot-tall denim clad ghost in KISS makeup who kills basketball players in the town of Samhattan.
If you think that sounds far-fetched, the most famous slashers out there are a school caretaker who was burned to death and invades teenagers; dreams, a super strong guy who wears a captain kirk mask and gets up every time you kill him, and a nine-year-old boy who drowned and somehow came back as a hulking killer in a hockey mask. Daphne is almost normal by comparison.
Being a Josh Malerman book, there's more going on here than just a bunch of shreddies getting shredded (or in this case crushed). He uses the traditional tropes of the slasher to look into the causes of fear and anxiety. Daphne is not just an unstoppable ghost; she is a personification of fear itself.
The book manages to be a tense and scary horror story with plenty of teens dying horribly, and a close look at anxiety and its effects.
As usual with Josh Malerman, I raced through this in a couple of days. His distinctive style is remarkably easy and fast to read. His characters are all well drawn and relatable. His shreddies are given just the right amount of background before Daphne folds them into shapes they were never supposed to inhabit.
There's surprisingly no gore in any of the killings but they're still wince inducing as the mental pictures given to us don't need the addition of buckets of literary blood. Daphne is a scary villain, and the story has a few surprises up its sleeve.
Malerman is one of those writers, who, despite an instantly recognisable style, seems to be able to write vastly different novels in different styles of horror equally well. This is no exception. Highly enjoyable, slightly silly in a good way, but thought provoking when it wants to be. Another excellent read from Mr Malerman.
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