Graveyard Love

by Scott Adlerberg

Thirty-five-year-old Kurt Morgan lives with his mother across the street from a graveyard. He becomes obsessed with a red-haired woman who visits the graveyard often, watching her through the telescope in his room, wondering whose grave she visits like clockwork. Meanwhile, his mother pressures him to write her memoir. She wants her book finished, and soon. Among these three - Kurt, the graveyard visitor, and Kurt's mother - a twisted triangle develops, with each person pursuing their specific obsession at all costs. Set one cold winter in upstate New York, Graveyard Love is a dark and atmospheric thriller that explores the far reaches of the human psyche. “Another masterful, twisted, deranged tale from the scrambled, fevered brain of Scott Adlerberg, who leads the reader through the dark and winding canyons of a functioning psychopath and makes his personal horror seem normal.” — Les Edgerton, author of The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others “The ghosts of Cornell Woolrich and Edgar Allan Poe haunt the pages of this atmospheric thriller. Voyeurism, obsession and death — Alfred Hitchcock would have loved it.” — Wallace Stroby, author of the Crissa Stone series

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

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2016

Reviews

[Vicki Herbert - Vacation until Jan 2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking For a Dark, Atmospheric Mystery?...

GRAVEYARD LOVE by Acott Alderberg

No spoilers. 5 stars. In this uneasy, stealthy, slow-burning little tale, three people are pursuing their obsessions in the twilight of a cemetery...

One of them will die there...

Kurt Morgan is a 35 year old unemployed man living with his mother in an isolated house in the woods across the street from a cemetery...

He is expected to ghostwrite his controlling, chain-smoking mother's memoirs in return for room and board...

He goes for a daily exercise walk through the cemetery and into the woods because he is bored with his life...

Catherine Embers...

... is a beautiful redhead who also frequently visits the cemetery. She goes to the same tomb every visit...

Each time she enters the tomb's vault...

She lights candles and performs an unknown ritual in the back chamber...

Eventually, she catches the interest of Kurt, who wants to know what she does in that tomb...

And he begins following her...

Catherine is known as a loner in the local pub, the Fieldhouse Tavern. Many men have tried to buy her drinks and strike up conversation...

But she's not interested...

One evening, Catherine shows up at the tavern with a man called Ralph Soames, who appears to be her boyfriend. Ralph is infatuated with Catherine...

But she's not interested in him...

Like Kurt, Ralph follows Catherine to the graveyard one windy, snowy night, sees her go into the tomb, and decides to confront her inside about what she is doing in there...

Unknown to them both,
Kurt is watching...

Well, I can't say any more, or it will spoil the mystery. Despite its title, this is not a love story; it is a compelling, interesting, slyly sinister story well worth reading.

If you are looking for a mystery with bizarre happenings and creepy insights throughout, read this book! No filler and fluff, very little backstory. A rare page-turner up to the last sentence.

This is a story you don't want to miss. It's like discovering an old, never-before-seen black and white Hitchcock thriller.

Note: Be careful which reviews you read so you don't run across spoilers.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve when you begged me to."

One of the reasons I'm such a fan of noir is that I can't seem to resist reading stories about doomed losers and lowlifes making unfortunate decisions leading them deeper into ruin. This book might be a turnoff to some who prefer their fiction to have characters with mostly likable qualities. It's a creepy, sleazy bit of noir about a loser ex-writer that lives with his overbearing mom and the obsession he has with spying on a mysterious redhead who apparently plays with herself in a dead woman's tomb in the neighboring cemetery.

"I wish there was a curse. I sincerely do. I’d fuck you in a second, this instant, if I thought you were going to die afterwards. It’d be the easiest way to get rid of you."

It's a fascinating and brave psychological thriller that is constantly surprising. It takes the unreliable narrator, Kurt Morgan, from being just a man with a crush, straight in to pure stalker territory, and then to potentially something even darker. It's a sly, slippery little psycho-sexual noir that Hitchcock, Patricia Highsmith, or Brian DePalma would love!

I’m not a violent person. I didn’t get into fights at school and I don’t remember scuffling with anyone as an adult. What transpired with Charlotte began as consensual activity, then degenerated from there. And that activity wasn’t violent in the true sense; it involved the use of paraphernalia. None of which is what killed her; the drugs did that. But our time together did leave me with handcuffs.

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more I read books, the less I find novels that understand the difference between hardboiled fiction and noir. GRAVEYARD LOVE does and yet doesn't limit itself with the tropes of a single genre. It is a psychological thriller (for lack of a more precise label) strongly influenced by James M. Cain, Robert Bloch and Brian De Palma's creepy obsession thriller phase in the 1980s when he directed films like BLOW OUT and BODY DOUBLE.

GRAVEYARD LOVE is way too dark to be emotional, but it relied on psychological accuracy in order to trick its reader into turning the page over and over again. It spends a lot of energy crafting taut and detail dialogues and eerie atmospheres that linger after you close the book. Maybe the voice not quite strong enough yet to transcend its influence, but it is definitely stronger than in Adlerberg's first publication JUNGLE HORSES and GRAVEYARD LOVE will with you over anyway by its twisted mind and attention to detail.

[Daniel Lorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolute treat of a read!

Graveyard Love is a fantastic noir/psychological thriller and one I couldn't put down.

Brilliantly done, and I look forward to reading more from this author!

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was a self effacing noir that was also fun and kept me guessing. The twists were unexpected and very creepy, my favorite kind of twists!
Highly recommend, I look forward to reading more from this author.

[Patrick Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be shocked if this doesn't make my top ten list this year. Fantastic noir with one of the most interesting uses of first person narrative I've read in ages. The story deals with obsession and voyeurism in such an interesting way, it's difficult to describe with spoiling. Probably one of the best portraits of (probably) psychopathy in the last few years. It also contains perhaps the most succinct review of the 1942 film The Cat People I've ever read. This is not a joke. You'll know it when you read it and read it you must. I could go on all day about this book but I'd rather just move on to Adlerberg's other works so please take my word for it.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sizzling bit of noir. Loved this. A real step forward for the always enjoyable Adlerberg.

[Hannah Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I breezed through this book and not just because it is relatively short. The story moves surprisingly fast; each chapter builds on the next in unexpected ways, ways that made me gasp or exclaim "what the hell" (and startle my cat).

I'm not sure how to describe this book without giving too much away. First, it's dark. Second, it is very uncomfortable; the narrator, Kurt Morgan, is a 35-year-old failed writer living with mom and helping her write her memoirs in somewhat lurid detail (although she is overbearing and intrusive, she has lived a life far more interesting than Kurt's). And that's only the beginning. Kurt is reduced, more or less, to a stenographer and he resents it. To break the boredom, Kurt watches a mysterious red-haired woman who visits the graveyard across the street at dusk. He becomes obsessed with her - who is she and whose grave is she visiting?

Of course, no matter how dark and awful the story gets, you can't look away. The author gives away the barest amount, leaving a frustrating amount to your imagination. There was so much I wanted to know by the end. Even so, the ending is completely satisfying.

[Andrew Nette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thirty five year old psychologically disturbed loner Kurt Morgan lives with his highly strung artist mother in a large house opposite an old graveyard. As if that already doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster, one day Kurt spies a mysterious red headed woman visiting one of the crypts in the graveyard. He slowly becomes obsessed with her and things go very bad from there. If I had to describe this book in a sentence, I'd say, think classic film noir meets Alfred Hitchcock with a large dash of 1970/80ss Italian giallo cinema thrown in for good measure. If you are familiar with any of these genres, I wouldn't say there is anything massively new about Graveyard Love, bit it's what Adlerberg does with these well used tropes, that is something special. This is a wonderfully bent character study fused with a story that delivers some greats twists and surprises. Recommended.

[Christopher Irvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

GRAVEYARD LOVE is a fantastic slow-burn creep of a book. I went into the book knowing nothing about the plot, and I think my reading experience was all the better for it. So I'll be a bit vague and avoid spoilers but I will say that the voice in this book is reminiscent of Les Edgerton's The Rapist and Tom McCarthy's Remainder, in the best possible way. I really enjoyed Adlerberg's JUNGLE HORSES, but he's outdone himself here. Great stuff!

[Derrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

GraveyardLove by Scott Adlerberg is a strange trip inside the mind of a voyeuristic man who falls in love with a redheaded woman who frequently visits the graveyard by the home he shares with his mother. What starts as a curiosity quickly develops into something much darker.

Kurt Morgan has returned to live with his mother and he passes his time helping her write her memoirs and by watching people who visit the graveyard near their home. His interests are piqued when he notices a woman visiting the graveyard frequently. He begins to obsess about finding out who she is and who she is visiting.

After he follows her for a while he learns her name is Catherine Embers, yet much about her remains a mystery. His obsession with finding out about her leads to a fixation with getting to meet her and know her. As you might guess, this leads to another obsession: getting her to fall in love with him and need him as much as he feels he needs her.

Books of this subject matter are often disturbing on many levels and this book is certainly disturbing. Adlerberg does a great job getting inside the head of his protagonist and allowing us to see how he rationalizes his thoughts, actions, and obsessions. At no point does the main character believe himself to be disturbed or in need of help. Instead, he sees his actions as a way to help Catherine deal with the troubles in her life and he believes she will thank him when she learns the lengths he is willing to go to in order to love her and protect her.

This book is hard to summarize without giving away the juicy plot twists that await the reader. In the beginning of the book I found myself comparing it to The Rapist by Les Edgerton, as both books have a simple narrative delivery that allows you entry into the mind of an unbalanced person and allows you to glimpse into the darkness that lies within them.

This book is disturbing in all the right ways. Creepy subject matter, twisted and flawed central characters, and a plot that just keeps sucking you in until you can’t breath, yet you can’t put the book down. A definite page-turner and another winner by Adlerberg who has now written three great novels that all show he has a bright future ahead.

Recommended.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kurt is approaching middle-age, unemployed, and living in Upstate New York with his mother, who keeps him occupied with the writing and editing of the story of her life. The man and his mom live in close proximity to a graveyard, which is routinely visited (maybe "haunted' would be a better choice of words), by a redheaded woman who visits a certain tomb to pay homage to a woman whose exact relationship with her living visitor is somewhat mysterious.

The narrator develops a fascination with the woman visiting the graveyard, and as fascination veers into dangerous obsession, what I found most impressive and intriguing about the story is that it subverts so many expectations in such an original way. There is nothing cliched about the story here, no pat romance, and in fact every painful, creepy, or funny (sometimes all three) moment of the book rings totally true and faithful to human nature.

Adlerberg can segue from terse, minimalist noir writing to painterly, haunting descriptions that leave an eerie aftertaste in the reader's mouth. The novel takes multiple twists and turns, none of which can be guessed in advance. The first two acts are solid, but it is in the third act where the real insight of the book begins to coalesce. The author says a hell of a lot about men and women, and their estrangement from each other, without making the message too blatant or getting in the way of the story he's telling. That's no mean feat. Recommended.

[Suz Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

“...With what I knew of stalking, with what I’d seen of its consequences, I realized that I had to stop. I was playing with mental fire. Once you begin the stalking game, fall into the stalking vortex, there’s no telling where things will end. And I was at the lip of the whirlpool.”

Hearing Scott Adlerberg speak on a panel at Bouchercon piqued my interest in his writing. GRAVEYARD LOVE, a tale of obsession, showcases Adlerberg’s talent for suspense. The protagonist isn’t the most likable dude, but he is believable, serving as a reminder of our own unhealthy addictions.

After a disastrous incident with his girlfriend and the loss of his job, thirty-something Kurt moves in with his mother to ghostwrite her memoir. All he has to look forward to are drunken hookups and solitary horror movie viewings. Once he spies the red-haired woman who frequently visits the cemetery across the street, stalking her becomes his drug.

GRAVEYARD LOVE is a great dark story. I look forward to reading more of Adlerberg’s works.

[David Cranmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott Adlerberg’s storytelling is reminiscent of Julio Cortázar conjuring up the befuddled photographer in “Blow Up” (1959) or Vladimir Nabokov’s unhinged chocolate factory worker, who erroneously believes he’s found his doppelganger, in Despair (1934). Both represent unreliable narration from a first-person psychotic point of view—doing their best to convince us they are 100% sane.

The author is obviously no stranger to mood-setting devices (the cemetery, telescope, femme fatale), and he nicely avoids any of these from falling into cliché, developing instead, a sound structural base all his own.

Oh, and that ending! A bookend of horrifying excellence that exists as a kind of homage of sorts to Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

[Rory Costello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent psychological thriller, and easily my favorite work of Scott Adlerberg's that I've read so far (the others were quite good, too). I can see why people mention Hitchcock films in connection with this book, but I thought more of Patricia Highsmith because of the central character's obsessive creepiness. I also thought of Polanski's films. But the plotline is quite believable -- it doesn't go all Grand Guignol, though the concluding twist is pure classic horror.

[Karen Heuler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intense and atmospheric tale about a man infatuated with a woman he sees visiting a graveyard. He’s not a great catch, but you root for him, even as his behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive. I fell in love with the opening chapters--the snow, the dark, the feel of winter, the longing to fulfill one's obsessions. Outside my own window, it began to be spring, but I was reluctant to leave the cloak of night and cold and snow and love.

[Dom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea how this book crept onto my Want To Read list but I'm glad it did. A very peculiar and pretty dark book (which adds to the mystery of who recommended it) that kept me wanting to find out what happened on the next page. Would recommend for a good short Halloween read!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

+ außergewöhnliche Thematik rund um Liebe auf einem Friedhof
+ bietet interessante und unkonventionelle Grundlage für die Handlung
+ unerwartete und ungewöhnliche Handlungsentwicklungen

° obwohl das Buch einige krasse Passagen enthält (auf einige hätte ich verzichten können), bietet es auch tiefe Einblicke in das Schicksal des Protagonisten Kurt Morgan und dessen psychologische Entwicklung

- teils heftige Gewalt und ziemlich krasse Passagen
- die Charaktere sind spannend, aber unglaublich anstrengend
- an einigen Stellen fand ich die Handlung nicht nachvollziehbar, an anderen frustrierend

[David Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Graveyard Love is dark psychological noir tale about obsession. The book is written from the perspective of Kurt Morgan who lives at home with his mother in Upstate New York after being laid off from his job. Well, that is what he tells us but there seems to be more to the story. Kurt's mother is obsessed with Kurt (who is a part time writer) completing her memoir. Kurt doesn't enjoy it one bit but does feel an obligation to keep his word and finish the project. Kurt begins to follow a "Red Haired Woman" that frequents the graveyard across the street from his mother's house. What starts out as a crush turns into all out stalking. While following the "Red Haired Woman", Kurt learns from a distance that her name is Catherine Embers and she has a boyfriend. Kurt still doesn't approach Catherine but does start to interact with the boyfriend who he is not happy about existing. Kurt eventually approaches Catherine he witnesses her accidentally killing the boyfriend at the graveyard. Kurt, unbeknownst to Catherine, disposes of the boyfriend's car and body. After doing that seeming favor for Catherine, Kurt finally decides to approach Catherine and confess his feelings. At that point the story really begins to pick up steam and Kurt's mental state begins to decompensate.

There are a lot of things to like about this book, including a magnificent ending. Also, it is perfectly paced. Adleberg does a superb job of slow building the plot to the horrific ending. You are at the mercy of Kurt who isn't the most reliable narrator but that is the fun because its like you can feel Kurt's embarrassment the more you learn about him. It really takes a while before it hits you, and you're all like "wait a second, this dude is fucked up!". Kurt slowly becomes more insane throughout the book but its not like the circumstances are making him crazy, its that Kurt was crazy all along and the veil over his insanity is slowly being lifted.

This the second title I have read from Adleberg, including his previous Broken River Books release Jungle Horses and I really enjoyed them both. I am going to go ahead commit to being a fan of Adleberg. I will definitely read his future work. If you have read Jon Bassoff's Corrosion or Chistopher Conlon's Midnight On Mourn Street then I think you will enjoy this book. Go ahead my fellow Noirheads, get Graveyard Love and enjoy it!

[Adam Howe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kurt Morgan is a mid-thirties writer living in Upstate New York with his overbearing bohemian mother. After losing his job as a journalist, Kurt is making ends meet by ghostwriting his mother’s memoirs, which chronicle her vast sexual history; needless to say, Kurt is struggling with this project.

Mother’s house overlooks a cemetery. From a telescope in his bedroom, Kurt observes a frequent visitor to the boneyard, a beautiful redhead whose nightly vigils to one particular tomb piques Kurt’s curiosity and fires his imagination.

The lonely Kurt projects his fantasies onto the woman, Catherine, and what begins as a seemingly harmless crush – or so Kurt, our narrator, would have us believe – soon spirals into dangerous obsession, and ultimately murder.

To reveal too much of the plot would spoil the fun, for the joy of this book is the telling. Kurt is a classic ‘unreliable narrator,’ an engaging mix of Jim Thompson and Poe. His narration is quite insidious, as he matter-of-factly justifies his increasingly disturbed behaviour; to hear Kurt tell it, it’s quite reasonable to stun gun a woman, and abduct her to a tomb to confront her personal demons.

This creepy and compelling depiction of psychosexual obsession recalls filmmaker Brian De Palma’s early work: Body Double, Blow Out, Dressed to Kill. And of course, in Kurt’s relationship with his overbearing mother, we see shades of Bloch/Hitchcock’s Psycho. Often darkly humorous, events conspire to a bleak and bleakly funny ending that rivals the gut punch of Sluizer’s The Vanishing.

Graveyard Love is a perfectly paced potboiler with a terrifyingly ‘harmless’ protagonist, and just the right recipe of crime, mystery and psychological horror. Stalk it immediately!

[Jon Ureña · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mostly well-plotted, original and unpredictable novel about obsession, a subject near and dear to my heart. But the prose tells more often than shows, and worse, it falls into redundancy. There are more than a few instances in which the protagonist jumps to another location or situation and immediately starts saying how he got there, which distracts unnecessarily. I prefer keeping the narration in a scene chronological unless there's a very good reason.

Regarding the plot, at first I found refreshing that Catherine didn't freak out much about the stalker appearing at her door, but they kept finding ways to be together without much conflict, despite the lunacy of the main character. One could argue that Catherine thought the protagonist might go to the police otherwise, but to me it reeked of wish fulfillment, like plenty of sci-fi stories in which hot girls inexplicably keep sticking around nerds. I want main characters to truly suffer for their achievements.

And at first I planned to rate this with four stars, but I felt there wasn't enough setup for the protagonist's actions regarding the kidnapping and how he freed himself from having to write the memoir.

[Richie Narvaez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kurt Morgan lives (with his mom!) across the street from a cemetery, and he’s been eyeballing a woman who visits (and spends a disturbingly long time in) a vault there. When Kurt stalks to find out she has a lover, he goes to dark lengths to show the woman how much he cares. This lovingly creepy tale is like PSYCHO colliding with the dirty underbelly of a romantic comedy. Adlerberg shows off his strong, distinctive voice once again in this fast read, which has twists to spare. If you’re into horror and/or crime fiction, you’ll definitely dig GRAVEYARD LOVE.

[Travis Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the style of Dostoyevsky and Poe with a touch of Hitchcock, Graveyard Love brings the reader an unpredictable narrator with an inflated ego and less understanding. You never know what Adlerberg is going to do next. Creepy and satisfying.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a wild ride of the mind of 35-year-old Kurt Morgan, a man obsessed with a woman who visits the cemetery across the street from his mother's house.

Enter the haunted settings of upstate New York and the disturbed mind of the narrator at your own risk. You'll be glad you did.

[Philip Meeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful !!!!!

[Maverick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, I'm torn. On the one hand, I get it. The book explores misogyny but from the point of view of a stalker. The novel explores his hatred of women, his mom and the woman, and the growing resentment he has, despite the women being very generous towards him. His mom lets him live rent-free and is very agreeable in giving him the time he needs to do it. But somehow he hates her for pushing him to finish it while acknowledging he himself wants to complete it. He stalks a woman, violates her privacy only for her to agree to be his friend. There are other comments played throughout about the ways women suffer at the hands of men.

On the other hand, the action of the novel was very bland. Nothing really happens until halfway through, then things don't ramp up until the end. The writing was also quite bland, stiff prose with little in the way of creativity.

Other points to note include the novels ability to create a good atmosphere and setting. The ending was also quite bleak and well deserved. It was the ending I wanted. After being forced through the dirty lens of a stalker, it was the ending I needed.

[Zarina Springer · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a read! was not expecting the twists and turns this took me on from the title or summary. I enjoyed the development this character took to go from an easy going guy to what he actually was. makes you wonder, what is the back story there and if we will ever find out?

[Miriam Grobauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Etwas makaber, aber gut geschrieben. Vielleicht nicht für jeden Geschmack.