Book Notices | Twisted Lives by Tim Tigner / 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Tim Tigner, Twisted Lives

Amazon   Tim Tigner's latest thriller tells the story of a federal air marshall, Felix Sparks, whose career and family life are upended after an incident on a plane with an entitled Chinese princeling. Sparks is framed for murder so convincingly that he feels it's imperative to avoid arrest in order to find the real killer himself. The plot sometimes strains credibility, and events sometimes feel too rushed. Also, a scene or two in which great emotions are expressed didn't ring true to me. But it's nonetheless an exciting page-turner that I don't hesitate to recommend if that's the sort of book you're in the mood for. The real surprise is that this crazy plot is apparently based on something that happened to the author (presumably not in every detail), a story told in his book What New Hell Next?: One Thriller Writer's Personal Horror Story, which I have yet to read.

Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts

Amazon   I read Joe Hill's Kindle short "The Ushers" one night recently just before bed. It hit exactly the right spot: a good length, nothing too serious, kept me off my phone so I could fall asleep at a reasonable time. The experience was very much like reading an episode of The Twilight Zone. And because that was such a pleasant experience, I ordered the author's 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of short stories first published in 2005. This too hit the spot. The edition I read contains 15 main stories plus another hidden in the Acknowledgments. I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, of course, and I'll remember some more than others. Some qualify as horror and some do not, but all of them depict a world where things aren't quite right—a boy wakes up as an insect in "You Will Hear the Locust Sing," another builds creepy cardboard forts in "Voluntary Committal," an old man runs a museum in which the last breaths of the dead are collected in bottles. "The Black Phone," which was made into a movie a couple years ago, and "Abraham's Boys" are among the most memorable of the stories, in my opinion. And I'll certainly remember "Best New Horror"—in fact I'd like to forget it!—because it totally creeped me out.