The Rivard House

by F. Lambirth

From the back From the floorboards to the rafters, the house reeked of Death. Josh Chronicle was a special breed of freelance investigator. He thrived on walking a tightrope between life and death. When a series of brutal murders took place in the abandoned Rivard House on Longleaf Island, the case drew him like a magnet. But the island's twelve terrified inhabitants refused to speak about the violent history of the old mansion. Then unusually heavy spring rains destroyed the levee, stranding Chronicle, the residents -- and the killer -- on the island. But before Chronicle could zero in on the mad slasher, the murderer zeroed in on him.

Genres: Horror

Paperback

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bunch of people stranded on a small island while a maniac is loose? A mansion with a history of supposed supernatural shenanigans? Normally I would say sign me up, but this novel commits the cardinal sin (for me) of having the characters speak each others’s name constantly while conversing, and it’s super distracting. It just sounds so unnatural. I know it’s a way for the author to denote who’s speaking without having endless variations of “Bob said” and “Judy said”, but I’ve never heard anybody in real life say the other person’s name in every other sentence when having a conversation. That would be creepy and weird.

If you can get past that, this isn’t terrible, but it’s definitely more of a whodunnit mystery (with some slasher aspects) than the “horror” it was marketed as. And there are better whodunnits out there, with more compelling central mysteries, and more interesting characters. It’s also extremely talky, with most of the plot revealed through discussion as opposed to action, which would be tolerable if the dialogue was engaging, but alas.

Mostly I’m disappointed because my previous Lambirth read, Behind the Door, was fun, over-the-top trash horror, and I was really looking forward to checking out more of his work.