The Church of Dead Girls

by Stephen Dobyns

A literary chameleon, Stephen Dobyns is as well known for his poetry as he his for his taut and chilling mysteries. The two disciplines collide in The Church of Dead Girls, a lyrical novel that inspired Stephen King to comment, "If ever there was a tale for a moonless night, a high wind and a creaking floor, this is it ... I don't expect to read a more frightening novel this year."

Aurelius is a drowsy bedroom community in upstate New York that is rocked by a vicious, seemingly random killing. A woman is found murdered in her bed, her left hand missing. Just when the grisly details begin to fade, a young girl vanishes. The only clue: a bag with the girl's washed and folded clothes and a mannequin's left hand. Soon two more girls disappear, and when clues remain elusive, conjecture and rumour take over. The town awakens to a nightmare of suspicion and vigilantism. As the killer spirals in to kill again, the town spins out of control, and The Church of Dead Girls heads to a jolting conclusion. It'll give you goosebumps even if you read it at the beach.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Horror, Thriller, Crime, Suspense, Mystery Thriller

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.

Reviews

[Trudi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how they looked: three dead girls propped up in three straight chairs.

The suspicion didn't just go away. It just slipped back to wherever it hid.

Wow. What a meaty and cerebral read -- textured, layered, nuanced. It is a quiet novel that takes its time to carefully contemplate on its subject. And what is its subject? Despite the title, not the disappearance and death of three young girls, not really. Solving the crime, locating the victims, is secondary to the examination of a small town under siege marinating in fear and gripped by suspicion. Dobyns takes a microscopic approach and in rich, solid prose draws a detailed portrait of a townspeople succumbing to the worst of their prejudices and paranoia. It's excruciatingly intimate and painfully honest.

At times, I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. As with Jackson's novel, Dobyns is able to disturb and unsettle me with his insight into dark hearts and the secrets humans keep. What is that stranger sitting next to us on the bus hiding? Our neighbor? Our friend? Our lover? What impulses lurk behind expressions of devotion and fidelity? What impulses do we see when we look in the mirror? Most of us will never act on them, but they lurk there nevertheless. Waiting, for a crack, for a moment of weakness.

I liked how the first person point of view not only kept me in the dark for much of the novel, but kept me off-kilter and suspicious too. Like the town's inhabitants, everyone became a suspect for me as well, including the narrator himself. I did not trust him. I was never able to satisfactorily confirm his reliability. I was on my own, unnerved and watchful, plagued by feelings of dread, outrage, and melancholy.

Don't let the sleepy start in a sleepy town fool you. This book has teeth. For me, no one writes the mad psychology of small towns better than Stephen King. Dobyns makes a helluva case though. Fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History may also enjoy this.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book started out building slowly after an end scene intro of the victims. It is basically a psychological thriller with a touch of horror. It was a good read that tugged me along. The author has a good understanding of small town life and mixes humor into the prose surreptitiously. It has a dark, ironic tinge to it that anyone that has spent any time in a rural town will recognize as truth in a tongue and cheek manner.
This strength is at times a weakness as his character development tends to go nearly over the top. There are entire pages of info dump in which characters are thoroughly described in a manner inconsistent with the first person perspective. Although I found this tendency distracting at times, the overall plot pulled me through these bland moments and I was, for the most part, grateful for this (other than the characters that seemed to vanish from the plot entirely after meticulous introductions) as the story reached it's climax which quickly became unstoppable.
The author knows how to end a story well and that is especially key in a plot that contains this kind of build up. I began to wonder if the resolution would be a let down after the constant character development and ratcheting up of tension, but it definitely was not. The ending satisfies on many levels and surpassed what I expected. This was a good read that kept me up late in order to finish it.
4.5

[Carole (Carole's Random Life) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life.

The best part of this book was finishing it. Seriously, I was absolutely thrilled to finally be done with this one so that I could move on to something else. I actually almost stopped listening pretty early on in the book because it just wasn't working for me but I made myself continue because I didn't feel like I had given it a chance. The last part of the book was a bit better for me but only a bit.

I was ready for an exciting mystery and hoped that it would be creepy and a bit gruesome. Just look at the title - I expected a equally amazing story. This book did start strong and I really enjoyed the opening scene. I wanted to know what happened to those girls. Unfortunately, the book went back to a time before the crimes and was really more of a character study than anything else. I couldn't believe how many characters were brought in the spotlight. We would learn one community members backstory and then move on to the next person's story. It was too many character to keep up with for me.

Once the girls had disappeared and the mystery moved into the spotlight, I did enjoy the story a bit more. I think one of my main issues was that all of the characters bored me in this book. I didn't feel anything for any of them - not even the girls. Even when the plot sped up, I didn't really have anything invested in the story. I actually think that this book could easily be made much shorter and the result would be a much more enjoyable story.

I didn't realize that I had read anything by Stephen Dobyns before I started this book. I guess I really haven't but I did read about a quarter of Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? before I gave up on it. I think that I had many of the same issues with that book in that I had a really hard time connecting with any of the characters. I did learn that this book was actually first published in the 1990's even though the audiobook was just released.

I did enjoy George Newbern's narration. This is the first time that I have listened to this narrator and I was really impressed. He had a very pleasant voice and was able to handle a very large cast of characters quite well. I thought that he did a nice job with both the male and female voices and enjoyed the overall flow of his narration. I will definitely look for this narrator in the future.

I wouldn't recommend this book. I was disappointed on so many levels with this story and really regret not following my initial instinct of putting this one on the dnf pile early on.

I received a review copy of this audiobook from Dreamscape Media, LLC via Audiobook Jukebox for the purpose of providing an honest review.

Initial Thoughts
I am so glad to be finished with this book. I can actually move on to a book that I will like now that I am finally done. I literally had to force myself to listen to this one and if I didn't have a review copy, I would have just quit early in the story.

[Maciek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an underrated gem of a novel by a little known author.

The classic theme of a murder in a small, quiet town has been done in decades by authors of many mysteries and thrillers. Those who approach The Church of Dead Girls with hope of discovering a fast-paced, nailbiting murder mystery will be most likely disappointed, because it's anything but. For all the better.

The victims, three dead girls are discovered in the first chapter; the book opens with the conclusion, though the who murdered them and why is not revealed. Dobyns will take his sweet time with introducing the town and its inhabitants, and he is surprisingly good at that. He creates believeable locale, believeable and complex characterization, and makes the whole thing interesting and compelling. He is a surprisingly good writer; after all, he is also a poet, and his prose is a delight to read.

The thing that makes The Church of Dead Girls stand out above other similar titles is the narration method. It's easy to use the third person omniscient narrator, and create suspense by narrating the story from different points of view. The novel is narrated in the first person by the school teacher, who is just as puzzled and surprised as the reader; each new occurence affect him just as it affects us. The narrator is not entirely sympathetic, and his character doesn't even play a major role in the novel; he admits to knowing little, and tells the story as he sees it.

The really disturbing aspect hits home when the townspeople start to distrust one another. Suspicions arouse, questions are asked, and not everyone is benevolent. The lines begin to blur, prejudices begin to blossom and everyone falls under suspicion - including the narrator.

The Church of Dead Girls is carefully structures, deliciously creepy and unpredictable. With it's sheer realism, it's one of the most convincing portrayals of a small town under pressure that I have read. It gets under your skin. It's been almost a year since I've read it, but my thoughts still return to it. Dobyns's powerful writing carefully reveals the dark impulses and secrets that lie in every closet. Delightfully complex, it's worth seeking out, owning, and of course reading.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not much of a re-reader. But, I actually kept my copy of this book and have read it twice. This is much more a than just a mystery. The way the author builds the suspense as our narrator tells a chilling tale of how a town turns in on itself after a young girl goes missing.
Human nature is explored as people began to eye their neighbors and secrets are brought to light in a small town.
There is a murderer among them and the reader gets sucked into the vortex of the investigation and maybe we even become a little like the town folk ourselves as we suspect first one ,then another.
This is a very absorbing book that should be a part of literature as well as a good old fashioned mystery. Very haunting novel that stays with you after you have finished reading it. Highly recommend!

[David H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the past, I would find an author that I liked and then read nothing but their works until I was saturated. These days, I have decided to read as many different authors as possible. I found this paperback in one of my father's bookshelves. I had never heard of Stephen Dobyns, but I am hardly any kind of expert on literature. The Title, " The Church Of Dead Girls" seemed dark and preverse to me (which is my favorite genre). The novel even had an endorsement from Stephen King.. "Very Rich, Very Scary, Very Satisfying".

I absolutely adored this novel. The setting is a small village in rural New York state, where everyone lives normal, but somewhat puritan existences. Suddenly, young teenage girls start dissapearing. At first, the residents believe that an outsider has invaded their peaceful community to harm their children. As the police flounder in solving these dissapearences, the citizens turn their focus to each other.

I am sure that I will be reading another Stephen Dobyns novel in the future. But not immediately; I don't want to fall back to my old ways.

[Repix Pix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sobra todo lo que va entre el prólogo y las 50 últimas páginas...

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is another novel that has been on my bookshelf for an embarrassingly long time. Once upon a time I read a book of poetry by Stephen Dobyns, Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides, which I absolutely adored. I still have a copy lying around, and every so often I think about re-reading it to see if I still like it (but also scared to re-read it to see if I still like it). Then I found out Dobyns also wrote fiction, so I found a copy of this one and Boy in the Water a long time ago... and then I never read either one. Once my semester wrapped up this fall, I wanted to read something that took my mind off of life, something that would be interesting and engrossing. A nice mystery, perhaps. I found this book on my shelf, noticed its length, and decided this would be a good time to get it off my shelf.

The story begins promisingly enough. It's another story about young women who are abducted, and we know from the very start that their abduction is going to be pretty disturbing because that's what young women are there for in mysteries, right? To be the objects of desire, abduction, and... well, your imagination can fill in the rest.

The story is told from the perspective of a homosexual teacher in the town where these disappearances take place (though his sexuality was an unnecessary addition, in my opinion - man, the late 90s were a weird time). This perspective was frustrating to this reader on occasion - there were things he knew and relayed that were way too detailed for him to actually know and relay. It's that whole tricky omniscient narrator thing. It was distracting.

Not to mention the disappearance of the young female characters was really just background noise. The story was about all these different men, probably as a red herring to throw the reader off and think that everyone is the suspect. The disappearances themselves were very limited and almost added as an afterthought.

The climax was not all that thrilling. I found the read a bit of a bore and a chore, actually. For someone I consider a poet, I was less than enthused with his fiction writing. It felt stilted and not at all lyrical. One could argue that is the nature of the teacher from whose perspective Dobyns wrote, but I worry that this is just how Dobyns writes fiction. Even for "genre" fiction, such as a thriller or mystery, this left a lot to be desired. A lot of "Then [this happened]. Then [this other thing happened.]"

It was still dark and he could see stars.
(p191)

As far as novels about a small town disturbed by a murder (or a series of murders), it wasn't too bad. It was certainly better than that other one I read not that long ago, that I thought of while reading this one due to some similarities in the story (but not in the story-telling, thankfully), Reservoir 13.

I will say that this book has reignited my interest in reading Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession about this obsession Americans have with dead women in literature and film.

[Rachel Bea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dreadful and startingly realistic portrait of how a small town deals with the disappearance of three young girls. It explores hysteria, scapegoating, and how all of us have secrets. The prologue and the ending were bone chilling and everything in between was written so well - I felt like I was there. This was a great horrific mystery that totally crawled under my skin and gave me pause. so good!

[Karyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

After three girls go missing from a small upstate New York town, the town is ripped apart from the effects of suspicion. Where are the girls? Who has abducted them? Are they still alive? Who should be suspected and why?

It's been said that this book is more about the effects of these horrible events on the small town, and less about the murders of the girls. I have to agree with that assessment, but I don't think it was the best choice on the part of the author. I didn't find this book particularly creepy or even interesting, except in snippets, until about thirty pages from the end. For me, there was far too much setting detail, down to who was related to whom, and where they worked, and what role they played in the town, even for the most minor of characters that are never mentioned again.

Because of the great attention to detail in setting the scene, the book moves along at a snail's pace. The first abduction doesn't even occur until a quarter of the way through the book; the first 110 pages are taken up with describing the town, and the members of a particular club at the college that will later come under suspicion. Interpersonal relationships are described, along with the discord that is already present before the abductions had wreaked their toll on the town.

I had a hard time even relating to the narrator of the story. For one thing, I'm not even sure we find out his name. And for some reason, it's written from a first-person viewpoint yet most of the events occur in the third person. The narrator is a teacher at the high school, so it's not like he would have insider information like the publisher of the local newspaper would have, and the fact that he's discussing all these events which he shouldn't have known about tended to rankle with me as I read the book.

There is, throughout the book, discussion of who in the town is gay. That was another point that really bothered me because I couldn't really see how gay men would be suspected in the abduction of small girls, except that by being gay, they are different, and therefore subject to suspicion. But that whole theory wasn't ever really fleshed out, so there was this subject of "GAY" just sort of hanging there on the side. It made the book flow even worse, in my opinion.

The last thirty pages, however, were quite interesting and made me want to keep reading and turning pages. I wanted to figure out WHO had done these awful things and why, and the way in which the guilty party was apprehended was pretty dramatic. I read the first twenty pages of the end last night before bed, and it was enough to give my sleep-deprived nightmares, but I have to say, it's not worth the 330 pages of slow-moving detail to get to these last thirty pages. The end almost made me angry because it's clear that the author can write exciting prose, yet he chose to bog it down in 330 pages of dreck.

What a shame.

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Church Of Dead Girls" is as perfect as it is unusual. Half cerebral literary fiction and half mystery thriller, this book tells the story of a serial killer targeting preteen girls through the eyes of a nameless narrator who serves as the lens and the conscience of a small-town community in upstate New York.

Dobyns, who developed his ability to create a community with a cast of intriguing dozens in his "Saratoga" mystery series, broadens his palette even as he narrows its focus — Aurelis, N.Y. is much smaller than Saratoga, but it seems bigger because it introduces us, in remarkable depth over its 432 pages, to more than 40 locals. Many seem innocuous on the surface, and those who appear to be the most outwardly sinister often prove to be anything but. And the breaking points of nearly all are exposed with a strange blend of the narrator's sympathies and empathies.

There are some great ones. Aaron McNeal, who left town after his mother was murdered a few years before, returns with a murky agenda and immediately sets most Aurelians on edge. Barry Sanders, a gay albino known to all as "Little Pink," and Harriet Malcomb, a silent but seemingly corrosive young woman, become his curious recruits in an undeclared war. Ryan Tavish is the bewildered town cop with secrets of his own, and his best friend is newspaper editor Franklin Moore, a man who drowns his own deadly sorrows in his role as the community's unwanted mirror. I could easily list a few dozen more.

Even as these characters are developed, all under the benign but watchful eye of the narrator, more girls disappear. More people snap. More people take on authority with more bluster than competence. More people are needlessly destroyed. A once pleasant, even sleepy community threatens to collapse needlessly under the weight of malignant paranoia and suspicion. And that breaking point finally flushes the killer out into the open in a way that makes the entire town his accomplice and jury in the same strange surging final moments of this stunning story.

I pretty much see "The Church Of Dead Girls" as Booklist did: "Methodically peeling back the veneer of civic pride and community harmony that holds the town together, Dobyns reveals the dark impulses and tangled relationships that lie underneath. He's not as interested in the pathology of the serial killer in their midst as he is in the pathology that exists within us all. An unusually thoughtful psychological thriller."

It's one of my favorite novels ever, one that grows richer and more rewarding with repeated readings.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you can semi-ignore the 180 minor characters and just concentrate on the 60 major ones, you'll have a much easier time reading this intelligent horror novel. Also, accept the fact that the novel will unfold very slowly.

In a small town in upstate New York, a middle-aged woman who happens to be the town slut is murdered and her left hand cut off. Over the following months, three young girls, ages 14 and 13, are abducted. We find out in the novel's opening flash-forward scene that they have been killed, set on chairs in an attic, and their left hands cut off too. At this point we don't know their identities. The girls' disappearances cause the town to erupt in a frenzy of distress, panic, paranoia, and vigilantism. A young gay albino man is bullied mercilessly. An Algerian Marxist college professor is hounded for no good reason and killed with a baseball bat by drunk, ignorant bullies. Another gay man is murdered. A large group of volunteers set up shop to try to find the missing girls, interviewing town residents they find suspicious and instituting car patrols on the town's streets. The way in which the members of this group intimidate, harass, and scapegoat becomes just as alarming and frightening as the actual crimes, in a manner reminiscent of Shirley Jackson. This is a very unique horror novel, made especially so by its first person narrator, a male high school biology teacher who goes unnamed. Its lesson, that fear and ignorance are dangerously corrosive, ought to be applied to situations even where girls are not being abducted and hands being cut off.

[Asghar Abbas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly chilling and hypnotic book. A literary thriller that deals with aftershocks of horrific events in a small town, very Stephen Kingy that way. An unique prose and a nameless narrator made it an interesting read.

[Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is ok but i anticipated more from reading King`s comments its a slow moving story more a cerebal mystery. One by one, three teenage girls are abducted from a small American town. The only trace of them is their clothes returned, washed, ironed and neatly folded. With each disappearance suspicion spreads among the townsfolk,initially falling on anyone 'different' the college Marxist group, the gay community but soon extending to friends and neighbours, even the narrator himself. As panic grips the town, repressed desires, old angers and violent impulses rise to the surface, tearing the community apart to reveal the horrific darkness at its heart.

[Angel Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the writing was good, but overall, I felt like it moved at a glacial pace and spent time judging people through the lens of an unreliable narrator. Might revisit at a later date.

[Berengaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

It's not the actual crime that makes this novel so good, it's the narrative and structural choices that Dobyns made in telling the story. He could have written a straightforward serial-killer thriller with the same general story line and we'd have read it, said "not bad but rather predictable...I mean, how many motives do serial killers have that haven't been done to death in fiction?" Closed it and forgotten it.

But Dobyns makes "The Church of Dead Girls" into something unique.

First, he gives us a town that smugly prides itself for being so idillic. People are nice. They don't lock their doors, they attend church, they support the high school teams, and they'd never think of living anywhere else. Why, when they already live in heaven on earth? (Pride cometh before a fall, right? And Aurelius, NY has some incredible hometown pride.)

Second, he gives us a narrator who is at once a real character - a biology teacher at the local high school - but at the same time acts as an ancient Greek "chorus", recounting in an almost omniscient way what is going on all over town and documenting the town's slow slide into paranoia and chaos.

The mixture of single POV vs "town" POV is done in a such a fluid style, you almost forget who is speaking over long stretches as you peek into this part of the investigation, or that house, or the other conversation, getting a real-time overview of events.

The writing is stylish, the clues subtly placed and the rising tension and witch hunt vibe absolutely palatable.

Themes are many, but the strongest are centred on male psychology about their role as "protector of women, children and society" and how the fear of the unknown leads to paranoia and the slippery slope down to suspicion, accusation, violence and vigilanteism. In the final toll: 4 murdered women, 3 murdered men and hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage...all of it wilful, all of it intentional, and only the serial killer feels guilty about any of it.

I'd read Dobyns' Boy in the Water some years ago and very much enjoyed it, but not as much as "The Church of Dead Girls" which is no less than a class act.

Recommended highly for fans of criminal literature & intelligent psychological thrillers.

[Matthew Iden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review of The Church of Dead Girls is a moderately long analysis I did on the book in an attempt to get at why I liked it so much as a reader and how I could emulate the parts that worked as a writer.

As a result, what follows might be a little dry for some readers, since I'm reviewing from an author's perspective. And it's chock full of spoilers. But that shouldn't keep you from running out and grabbing a copy of this imminently creepy, thoughtful, and suspenseful tour de force. If you do, come back and see if you agree with my thoughts.

BTW, I highly recommend reading it as close to Halloween as possible. :)

Summary
The Church is a crime fiction/thriller/whodunit set in upstate New York in the fictitious? town of Aurelius. Three teenage girls and two adults are killed in classic serial killer fashion, throwing the town into a state of chaos and fear. Reminiscent of Twin Peaks, but without the zany antics and humor.

Themes
The story tracks the actual events of the murders, of course, but the book is more a treatise of the evils inside rather than the covert evil of the actual killer: how do we treat one another, what do we suspect of each other, when someone starts breaking the accepted rules of civilization? And what evils are we hiding from each other and to what degree do those evils run (from vandalism to promiscuity and infidelity to racism and homophobia/bias to hatred to murder committed in the most heinous fashion)?

Style
The single most significant thing about the style of the book--and maybe just the book itself--is that the P.O.V. is first person (“authorial omniscient”), yet the story is told from a naturally limited third person style most of the time. This is a daring and difficult use of P.O.V. on Dobyns's part, but pulled off with grace.*

The four modes are:

1. Regular first person as the narrator either talks about himself or describes events that he actually witnessed or participated in.
2. Flashbacks as told to the narrator by another character so as to widen the scope and allow the narrator to impart story that he wouldn't otherwise be able to (“Ryan told me later that...”).
3. Deeper flashbacks (e.g., Franklin's interview with Donald Malloy near the end in complete dialog).
4. Standard, limited third-person with no real acknowledgment or reasoning; it just is and the reader goes along with it at that point...kind of like Dobyns is dispensing with the props of #2 or #3, above.

The reason for the P.O.V., and why it's so devious yet necessary, is that the narrator is himself a suspect until the last 40 pages of the book. From the very beginning, we have doubts about the narrator and Dobyns (purposefully, of course) plants red herrings all over the place suggesting, but never demanding, that we choose the narrator as the killer. This is the “unreliable narrator” taken to extremes, but done effectively. It works especially well in a modern literary context because we have the 20th/21st century's familiarity with the “gentleman serial killer”, i.e., an educated and otherwise rational person given to obscene behavior, a person that can diagnose themselves and/or otherwise recognize that they are a monster and articulate it well (e.g. Hannibal Lecter). This isn't something that an early 20th century (or earlier) audience would be able to recognize or read, but a modern reader has no issue with (potentially) listening to a first-person account of a serial killer's actions.

Secondarily, it's a perfect vehicle to impart the moral message of the book, as well: a town being torn apart at the seams because of its hidden corruptions. The narrator can reveal what he thinks of his neighbors, colleagues, and friends (rightly or wrongly); how he remembers the town in a more golden era (the 50's and 60's); the perversion of children (his students) into ignorant and violent or prejudiced adults. A distant third person narration wouldn't have been able to do justice to this second but arguably more important subject.

The theme of “who knows the evil in men's hearts” is capped by the narrator stealing Donald's hand at the end. It's creepy, outlandish, but he does it for the best of reasons: to be reminded of the lesson of Donald's inner corruption.

* First pointed out in Fiction: The Art and Craft of Writing and Getting Published by Michael Seidman, pg. 139-140.

Issues
1. Many, many characters and relationships to keep track of. This is a necessary evil, as Dobyns wants us to know the town like our own and the people in it. Life is messy and complicated; this book can't be otherwise. But that doesn't keep it from becoming difficult for some readers (these complaints seen on Amazon's reviews).
2. Revealing the killer 40 pages from the end took the sting out of the discovery. How else to do it? Perhaps a quick unveiling, then more on the retrospect end (since you can't leave the reader hanging with “What?! It was the pharmacist? Holy crap!”, you have some explaining to do). But Dobyns drags out the chapter from the discovery of Donald Malloy to the end, THEN does retrospect.
3. Other Amazon reviews complained of the slow pace. This might be inevitable for a story like this. Pace is what sets the tension.

Miscellaneous
1. We never know the narrator's name.
2. We never find out the unfortunate things that happened to the narrator in New York City.
3. Latent political commentary with the IIR (Communist reading group) being the focus of so much of the (assumed) right-wing/conservative community.

Quotes

1. Frightening description of being alone in a house:

Imagine being alone in a house at night and hearing a noise, a floorboard creaking or a window sliding up. The mind at once interprets what it might be: something benign like wind or the house resettling or something wicked. You wait for another sound. You hear the furnace click on, the humming of a light, a clock ticking. Lists of alternatives roll through your mind. If you feel guilty or scared, maybe, you fear the worst. If you feel content and live in a place you think is safe (but what is safe?), you might return to your book. Then comes another noise.

2. Verisimilitude, we've all done this:

Sheila had both hands on the bar, leaning towards Ryan. He was turning his stool slightly to the left, then to the right. There was something almost childlike about it.

3. In general, Dobyns's excellent descriptions of the quiet of falling and fallen snow, the ambiance of mid- to late autumn in a northern town, Halloween in a traditional American way, the catalog of a typical small American town.

[Brian Hodges · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started off amazingly. It's all about how a string of murders rips a small town apart as everyone begins accusing the wrong people. As the product of a small town I could totally see the people I knew growing up in this exact setting. Unfortunately it fell off toward the end simply because the revelation of the actual killer was never going to live up to all the intrigue and suspense that had been built up over the course of the book.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you don't mind sorting through a million different characters, this is a gem of a read. This is the beginning:

"This is how they looked: three dead girls propped up in three straight chairs."

The pacing is slow, and it kind of builds and builds until the discovery maybe isn't quite as important as discovering how small town mentality bent on justice is just as deadly - anywhere.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Utterly engrossing psychological thriller with murders [one committed before our eyes] and the disappearance of three teenage girls. Massive hunts go on for each of them in case they may have been abducted and are still alive. But, in each case their clothes, laundered and neatly folded, and severed left hands are returned to the townspeople. We see the unpleasant details in the everyday life of this small upstate New York town, the fictional Aurelius, which add to the creepy atmosphere. Study of how suspicion can tear a once close-knit town apart.

[Rita Moura de Oliveira · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tinha este livro debaixo de olho há anos e não me lembro bem porquê, mas tenho uma vaga ideia de que mo aconselharam vivamente. Como já não existe na editora há muito tempo, comprei-o no OLX e até nem foi barato (€10 por um livro já antigo).

O livro começa com a constatação de um facto: a descoberta de três meninas mortas num sótão, vestidas com túnicas ornamentadas e cujas roupas foram sendo devolvidas lavadas e passadas à medida que elas iam desaparecendo.

A partir daqui o narrador retrata uma pequena cidade norte-americana, descrevendo com algum pormenor todos seus habitantes e as ligações entre eles. Ao longo do livro, as três raparigas vão desaparecendo, mas até muito perto do final não somos encaminhados de forma evidente para quaisquer suspeitos. As investigações arrastam-se por mais de 400 páginas, cheias de personagens e com poucos caminhos, numa leitura aborrecida que me fez ter vontade de acabar depressa o livro.

Cheguei ao final farta, ainda por cima sem ter achado a conclusão fantástica ou surpreendente. Continuo é a matutar no motivo por que queria tanto lê-lo.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so much a genre mystery as an exploration of the damage that suspicion and fear can wreak on a community, in the manner of The Crucible or the classic Twilight Zone episode, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. The characters are well-drawn and the writing adept (I was not surprised to discover that Dobyns is also a poet), while the narrator -- an outsider in more ways than one -- is an interesting choice on the author's part that adds a somewhat unsettling sense of objectivity and distance to the events that unfold. The eventual revelation of the murderer is almost a sidebar to the main event: the psychological deterioration of the residents of the town. A good enough read that I plan to try another of Dobyns' books.

Oh, and also a dog dies. Damn it.

[Kelley Tackett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am ambivalent about this book. The book tells you the mystery right off the bat and you have to work towards that place again. I have never had so many characters introduced in a book. It was set in a small town and the narrator (you never learn his name, only that he's a gay man that teaches biology at the local school) felt the need to introduce lots of people and give you their whole backstory. Dobyns is a good writer. I would like to read more of his books but I wouldn't recommend starting with this one.

[Catarina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro soberbo! Nunca esquecerei Aurelius nem os seus habitantes com as suas muitas peculiaridades. De ressalvar a escrita do autor, o livro é bastante descritivo, o que poderia fazer com que se tornasse maçudo mas não é o caso, o autor tem efectivamente o dom da escrita e leva-nos a querer saber tudo e mais alguma coisa, de modo que nos embrenhamos na história e quando cheguei ao fim senti que era capaz de ler outras 450 páginas. Recomendadíssimo, 5 estrelas mais do que merecidas!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very slowly and deliberately paced, certainly not scary in the more usual 'horror' sense. I found the illustration of how suspicion tears a community apart and insidiously ruins previously long-standing friendships more moving than the actual crimes (though these are indeed creepy) Very well-described characters, and I didn't guess the murderer until the very end.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking this was a five star read. The writing style is so great, rich, detailed, truly immersing...this really is a literary novel with a mystery undercurrent. And, as far as the mystery aspect of it goes, I didn't figure out the killer till the very end. However, upon reading the whole book and pondering it for a few days, I subtracted two stars from my original estimate based on two things. #1 - despite a menagerie of well drawn out characters, there are no likable ones and that is something I would appreciate in a novel, especially one of this size and density.#2 - MINOR SPOILER I didn't appreciate the rampant homophobia throughout the book, clearly the town folk have singled out gays with other "different" members of their society, that aspect of it I understood, and all the gays are suspected of having pedophilic tendencies, also "reasonable" as far as the ugly cliches go, gay males kidnapping young girls seems a stretch even for a small close minded community. Still, that wouldn't have been so bad, if the author himself didn't sound just like the town folk during the last chapter, while talking about some of the hidden thoughts of the narrator.SPOILER END
I've discussed this with a friend who's read the book and I've also read numerous reviews and I can see that this was not a problem for many readers, but it bothered me enough to distract me from the plot, which is why my finally review is three stars, despite an exceptional writing and marvelous attention to detail by the author.

[Callie · Rating 2 out of 5]

“There were many such tributes at the end. They existed for the living, of course, for what could the dead care about such things?”

And who does this book exist for? Because it definitely was not for me.

Some thrillers take time, slowly ratcheting up the suspense until an explosive reveal or finale. This is not one of the books. It is slow, then, it is slow and remains slow, and then finally 40 pages from the end things actually start happening. Coincidentally, I liked the ending. The other 340 odd pages? It was like reading a church directory. Or one of those horrible letters some people send out at Christmas time instead of a simple card (you know the ones - paragraphs filled with pointless updates on each family member you haven’t seen in years, if at all, and do not care to know about). I was taken in by the first chapter. It was a trap. Do not fall into that trap.

[kvazimodla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is absolutely mindblowing and so much more than a plain run of the mill horror! And the narrator is highly suspicious to me. He knows too much :)

Jokes aside, he is an analyst dealing in heavy cynicism in unravelling human motivations, cause and effect connections, individual accountability, ugly core of humanity. He places a merciless mirror in front of ourselves and our communities, and builds the story on a feeling of ominous anxiety of an oncoming catastrophe that cannot be averted.

A social commentary? Loved how almost from the beginning, the town goes from being described as pretty much idyllic, to something much darker; and the story is about human nature and relationships, deep and wide, before it even touches the crime(s).

Actually, and I know this is a sacrilege, but it brings to mind The Secret History by Donna Tart (let's be clear, TSH is no less a masterpeace for this association :)).

[Cate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know how I feel about this book, but I know I didn’t like it. It was horribly slow for the first 150 pages or so, and I’m normally a person who doesn’t mind slow books. We never learn the main character’s name, which is fine, except that we learn literally every other person in the town’s name, first and last, regardless of whether they are only mentioned once. And I never felt anything for the character, except sometimes disgust at a few of the things he did. There’s also so much unnecessary description and filler that isn’t needed. The story did a good job of showing how quickly people will turn on each other for no real reason, but this was less a murder mystery and more a small town story until the last 100 pages or so.

[Koen · Rating 3 out of 5]

De proloog van dit boek deed een standaard seriemoordenaarthriller vermoeden, maar niets bleek minder waar. In plaats van het ontrafelen van een moordmysterie, worden hier de sociale verhoudingen in een klein plaatsje waar iets vreselijks gebeurt ontleed.

Wat mij wel stoorde aan dit boek was het vertelperspectief van de ik-persoon, omdat deze het verhaal als alwetende verteller presenteert en gebeurtenissen vertelt die hij niet zo gedetailleerd kan weten.