Novelist Adam Senft is walking his dog in the woods when he comes upon his neighbor Shelly sucking off the statue of a satyr in the woods. After fleeing the scene, Adam comes to discover that not only is Shelly missing, but the womenfolk of the town are disappearing one by one to the accompaniment of weird flute tunes on the wind and cloven hoof prints on the ground. Big Steve, his dog, reacts in fear to these places, as though the territory has been marked by a ferocious predator.
Adam is faced with a quandary: how do you get help from your friends to fight a mythological being that may not even exist? How do you even get them to believe in it? And when the inevitable confrontation occurs, how do you even fight a creature that doesn't have the household familiarity of a vampire or zombie and therefore doesn't have a single piece of common knowledge on how to defeat or destroy it?
Brian Keene whips up a terrific story with Dark Hollow. The pacing is great and Keene's style of telling a story in an everyday Joe conversational tone keeps the book from ever getting too much like a lecture or dissertation; you could easily imagine the narrator recanting this tale over beers in his backyard with his buddies using the same exact wording. And truth be told, I generally hate the 'novelist as protagonist' idea in books - it's a lazy way of avoiding researching a skill or trade for your characters in my opinion - but Keene makes it a point to emphasize how difficult it can be to be a novelist, especially at first, and I find that candor refreshing.
Not only is the mythological creature aspect of the satyr a refreshing change of villain in Dark Hollow, but Keene continually caught my eye by dropping references to Terminal (an earlier novel of his and the first review I did for Book Fetish), F. Paul Wilson's absolutely incredible Repairman Jack series (which I strongly encourage you to begin reading immediately) and, of all things, furries. A subplot of Adam's wife's past miscarriages adds a significant amount of tension early on and heartrending misery later. And of course, Keene's setting the book in his usual Harrisburg/Baltimore locations add a nice element of additional realism to those familiar with the areas.
My only true complaint is the ending; seen it before, read it before, could have been better. Otherwise, we have a solid novel from Keene that is perverted, twisted and ultimately satisfying.
-----------------
Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Leisure Books (January 29, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0843958614
Buy the Book