Joe Schreiber, Chasing the Dead

Chasing the Dead

Joe Schreiber

Ballantine, October 2006, $16.95

ISBN 0345487476

In Boston, thirty-four year old Sue Young is on the phone with her daughter's nanny, when Marilyn says someone is heading towards her. They agree to meet back at Sue's house, but when the single mom arrives home, neither Marilyn nor her eighteenth-month old Veda is there. The phone rings; the person on the other end insists he abducted her infant daughter as just remittance for a crime she and her estranged husband Philip Chamberlain committed as children. The kidnapper makes demands of the former ambulance driver that he expects her to perform if she wants Veda back alive.

She travels to Gray Haven to dig up the corpse of the baby she and Philip buried there. Next a teen doe Jeff, who she never met, jumps into her car to tell her to follow his instructions closely, not the voice on the phone otherwise the dead will return to life if she does. Before leaving her he tells her not to continue on her quest. Jeff and others return to life, even as Sue drives to White's Cove expecting to get Veda back. However, to achieve her goal, Sue has one more trial of fire, and that is to figure out how to destroy an evil that is playing her like a master puppeteer.

Joe Schreiber pays homage to Stephen King with this incredible New England horror novel that begins as a nightmarish thriller, but turns into something more horrifying. The protagonist is a loving mother coping with her worst fear until she realizes that what she is dealing with is even more horrendous than a child killer. Her feelings of foreboding grow stronger, gripping readers who anticipate the worst at the end of her journey. Deserving of a Stoker nomination, CHASING THE DEAD showcases a new star in the horror realm.