Number 60 - Night of the Mannequins - Stephen Graham Jones

 

Nearly a year to the day since I read my first of his books (The Only Good Indians), I finally got round to reading another of his.  When your TBR pile is as out of control as mine, these things happen.

It certainly has an opening line for the ages. 

"So Shanna got a new job at the movie theater, we thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I'm really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all,"

That's now a firm fixture in my favourite opening lines ever.

This book has cemented Jones in my eyes as a major talent, and proved that The Only Good Indians wasn't a fluke.

It's a slim volume, and I read it in just a couple of hours, making it a perfect cheat read.  

Sawyer Grimes is a high school student who, as mentioned in that opening sentence, plays a prank on one of his friends, along with his little gang. they sneak a mannequin into the theatre where she works.

The prank backfires and things turn nasty.  Sawyer finds himself taking desperate measures to save people from Manny the mannequin's reign of terror.

This is all told in Sawyer's chatty, conve4rsational voice. As unpleasant as proceedings become, he remains upbeat and hopeful that he's doing the best he can for everyone. 

Sawyer is one of the most delightfully unhinged unreliable narrators I've experienced in several years. Teenaged angst rarely comes with this shade of psychosis thrown into the mix.  of course, it rarely comes with the idea of a killer mannequin either... 

This was a much easier read than The Only Good Indians, and the story a lot easier to follow. Definitely a contender for best cheat read of the year. Psychologically all kinds of messed up and one of the best examples of the villain being a good guy in his own story that you'll ever find.