Crone by Keith Rosson (2026)
All lovers of Take-No-Prisoners, Leave-Nobody-Unscathed blood dripping, gore drenched horror.......... fasten your seatbelts and try to keep your stomachs in the upright position. Because what goes on in author Keith Rosson's Pacific Northwest little town is more than equal to any of the monstrosities lurking in Stephen King's New England burgs.
It seems to start out like a grungy, gritty crime noir, filled with psychotic low level drug lords and their pathetic hopelessly addicted customers. Trapped amid them is disgraced ex-cop and ex-addict Eli Lamp, with a backstory riddled with gut-wrenching tragedy, a life strewn with all the wrong roads taken. Eli, when still on the skids of addiction, was utterly destroyed by the disappearance of his nearly blind teenage daughter Hannah, who foolishly accepted a van ride in the middle of a dark rainy night. His further descent into violence left him in a vise-like obligation to drug kingpin Dave and reduced to eking out a dissolute existence as an enforcer and delivery boy of Dave's graft payouts to the town Chief of Police.
And now Eli's bedeviled life takes an even darker stranger turn. Anton, one of Dave's two thuggish sons has been found mutilated beyond all rational description.......and Dave's offered Eli a way out of his eternal servitude as a gang minion - to use his rusty skills as a detective to hunt down and deliver up Anton's killer to a revenge frenzied Dave.
To Eli's growing dread and Dave's stunned amazement, more mutilations and impossible happenings unfold before their disbelieving eyes. And the very last thing victims see is something humanoid, something female, something with enormous jet black wings that block out all light. This escalating carnage appears to coincide with the return of Hannah's best friend Avery,, who's lived with the guilt of doing nothing to stop Hannah from getting into that van. Avery's been drawn back to town by nightmare visions of Hannah and she brings her own set of troubles with her, feeding her powerful drug addiction with money belonging to one of Dave's rival drug lords.....a certain death sentence.
Beyond the endless, graphic horrors that erupt every few pages or so, I felt equally gripped by the overwhelming sadness and inescapable tragedy in the beleaguered lives of Eli, Avery and Hannah. Even in the constant churn of the cruelty and grotesque supernatural events on display, the book still manages to make you ache and worry for these poor accursed characters. To me, that's what lifted this book into the level of Stephen King excellence and why I'm giving out 5 stars. "The Crone" packs in more fast moving thrills and scares than any multi-episode streaming horror series I've seen in the last few years.
It seems to start out like a grungy, gritty crime noir, filled with psychotic low level drug lords and their pathetic hopelessly addicted customers. Trapped amid them is disgraced ex-cop and ex-addict Eli Lamp, with a backstory riddled with gut-wrenching tragedy, a life strewn with all the wrong roads taken. Eli, when still on the skids of addiction, was utterly destroyed by the disappearance of his nearly blind teenage daughter Hannah, who foolishly accepted a van ride in the middle of a dark rainy night. His further descent into violence left him in a vise-like obligation to drug kingpin Dave and reduced to eking out a dissolute existence as an enforcer and delivery boy of Dave's graft payouts to the town Chief of Police.
And now Eli's bedeviled life takes an even darker stranger turn. Anton, one of Dave's two thuggish sons has been found mutilated beyond all rational description.......and Dave's offered Eli a way out of his eternal servitude as a gang minion - to use his rusty skills as a detective to hunt down and deliver up Anton's killer to a revenge frenzied Dave.
To Eli's growing dread and Dave's stunned amazement, more mutilations and impossible happenings unfold before their disbelieving eyes. And the very last thing victims see is something humanoid, something female, something with enormous jet black wings that block out all light. This escalating carnage appears to coincide with the return of Hannah's best friend Avery,, who's lived with the guilt of doing nothing to stop Hannah from getting into that van. Avery's been drawn back to town by nightmare visions of Hannah and she brings her own set of troubles with her, feeding her powerful drug addiction with money belonging to one of Dave's rival drug lords.....a certain death sentence.
Beyond the endless, graphic horrors that erupt every few pages or so, I felt equally gripped by the overwhelming sadness and inescapable tragedy in the beleaguered lives of Eli, Avery and Hannah. Even in the constant churn of the cruelty and grotesque supernatural events on display, the book still manages to make you ache and worry for these poor accursed characters. To me, that's what lifted this book into the level of Stephen King excellence and why I'm giving out 5 stars. "The Crone" packs in more fast moving thrills and scares than any multi-episode streaming horror series I've seen in the last few years.
Anyone fearlessly devoted to seeking out the darkest reads of the spooky season.(or any other time), your search ends here. 5 stars (*****).
