Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
With this spooky supernatural novel of doppelgängers, sorcery, and demons, author Golden continues to play in the horror sandbox he returned to so superbly with 2014’s SNOWBLIND. Golden gives us a particularly frightening and vivid backstory to the events of the novel and caps it off with a thrilling climax. In between, he gives us what he knows readers are really interested in: convincing, well-drawn characters dealing with realistic issues in their lives — in this case, adults dealing with adult issues like divorce and parenting, which believe it or not is a breath of fresh air in a genre that is often so fascinated with youth and social transgression. DEAD RINGERS would make a good movie, in many ways a throwback to the more adult horror dramas of the 1970s like THE CHANGELING, but of course books don’t need film adaptations to validate them. DEAD RINGERS stands well on its own novelistic feet. If you liked SNOWBLIND, you’ll like this one, too.
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