Deathsong

by Jack Scaparro

They cut his hands off because they thought he was the Devil. How else could he play the piano without ever taking a lesson? As they threw his mangled body over the cliffs, into the boiling sea, he uttered a curse: death to every one of the descendants of his murderers. It was 1788, and most people in the sleepy town of First Landing, Maine believed in black magic. They were glad he was gone.

* * *

Nobody believed in curses anymore, especially sensible Diane Whitehead, who brought her husband and two children to Maine for a vacation—and to trace her ancestry in the picture-perfect town of First Landing. Diane was delighted to be able to rent the very house where her forebears had lived—until strange things began to happen. Poltergeists. Precipices that fell into the sea. Disembodied hands. Hideous deaths. Eerie music. And then one night, Diane's pretty seven-year-old daughter began to play the piano—without ever taking a lesson. The music was beautiful. Too beautiful to be anything but a deathsong.

Genres: Horror

346 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1989

Reviews

[J. P. Wiske · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is (for my money) squarely in the realm of the very best that 80s/90s mass market paperback supernatural horror had on offer. I realize there are a lot of modifiers there (particularly "mass market paperback") that could make the previous statement seem like damning with faint praise or outright contempt. I assure you, it's not.

This book (like the best of its ilk) is engagingly and competently voiced without slipping into outright simpleness. The horror elements are creative while retaining a weirdly pleasant familiarity. It balances impactful violence and creeping supernatural terror without succumbing to extreme sadism or toothless mysticism. It's sincere and self-aware, avoiding both ponderous over-importance and pulpy pastiche. I just enjoyed it, thoroughly.

Plotwise, you get what it says on the tin: New England intergenerational curses, with a (literal) slice of possession, madness, and serial murder. Like I said, pleasantly familiar.

Criticisms? Very few. The last act—the last 5 or 6 chapters, really—drag a bit. These last few chapters are characterized by covering shorter and shorter periods of time (relative to the earlier chapters) while taking a longer page count to do so. I'm not sure it would be a problem if I hadn't been conditioned to the earlier chapter pacing.

The only other shortcoming is that it's just not got much to say about much at all. It's fun, it's easy... it's disposable. To be fair, this is not much of a criticism; it's like critiquing a shoe for not being a carrot. This kind of book is meant to be entertaining, not thought-provoking. If it were anything else, I couldn't recommend it as quintessential "80s/90s mass market paperback supernatural horror"; it'd be something else.

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice chilling little ghost story. An innocent man convicted as a witch has his hands cut off and is killed. Fast forward 200 years later, now descendents of the man's killer has arrived back in the town and the ghost is looking for revenge.

My major complaint with this book is that it CRAWLS. The pace of the book is so slow that I was about ready to call it quits halfway through.

If you need a cheap thrill and like horror that's not too gory, this may be up your alley, but all in all, this book is pretty forgettable.