REVIEW:

Let’s say you’re a Stephen King Constant Reader, and you’ve gone through his entire catalogue. What to do, what to do??? May I offer Richard Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogeyman for your consideration?

Other than picking up a book by Uncle Stevie’s own spawn Owen King or Joe Hill, you can’t get much more King-adjacent than this. Chizmar not only has coauthored a novella with him (Gwendy’s Button Box), but he’s also mentioned ad nauseam throughout the story. Plus, the overall creepy tone and 1980’s small town New England setting emit major SK vibes.

That comparison aside, Chasing the Boogeyman is a high concept serial killer thriller with an intriguing approach to the genre. Although fictional, it’s written in the style of a true crime memoir in which the author weaves his own real life childhood in with the murder mystery he made up. How very meta! Black and white photographs of the crime scenes and key players are even interspersed throughout the pages.

The end result is a very unique reading experience. Many have classified the novel as horror, but this particular Constant Reader needs more than a serial killer nicknamed the Boogeyman to feel any twitches or tingles. I may be a wee bit jaded after reading so many murder stories, and horror (much like humor) can be subjective. Either way, this boogeyman is worth the chase.

My thanks to the author and Gallery Books for providing me with a gifted copy to review via NetGalley.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Gwendy’s Button Box brings his signature “thrilling, page-turning” (Michael Koryta, author of How It Happened) prose to this story of small-town evil that combines the storytelling of Stephen King with the true-crime suspense of Michelle McNamara.

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman—and he’s playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end.

Recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown just as a curfew is enacted and a neighborhood watch is formed. In the midst of preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into the real-life horror story. Inspired by the terrifying events, Richard writes a personal account of the serial killer’s reign of terror, unaware that these events will continue to haunt him for years to come.

A clever, terrifying, and heartrending work of metafiction, Chasing the Boogeyman is the ultimate marriage between horror fiction and true crime. Chizmar’s “brilliant…absolutely fascinating, totally compelling, and immediately poignant” (C.J. Tudor, New York Times bestselling author) writing is on full display in this truly unique novel that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.