Not a lot of books get blurbs by both Stephen King and Elmore Leonard, and it's not really hard to understand why; while the two men definitely have some commonalities, their respective genres of horror and crime are usually so disparate that there wouldn't be much call to have them both endorse a book. But here they both are on Niceville, and justly so; it's the rare book that's equal parts crime novel and horror story, and the rarer still that does both incredibly well. Summarizing the plot to Niceville isn't a simple task; suffice to say, the book opens with the disappearance of a young boy that rapidly becomes deeply unsettling, moves on to a bloodbath of a robbery, and finally ends up with a vicious custody hearing that becomes a humiliating defeat for a man with a seething temper. How all of these various plot threads connect is best left for the reader to discover, but rest assured, connect they do, and in such a way that feels natural and satisfying, even as things get more and more violent, the plot keeps twisting, and events keep becoming more and more inexplicable. I've never read Stroud before, but this is enough to make me a fan for years to come; even as he's juggling all of these plot arcs, he never lets his character work drop, creating literally dozens of characters and letting them all live and breathe in their own way, and filling the pages with great conversations and dialogue that makes the Leonard connection all the clearer. More than that, Stroud uses the crime and horror aspects beautifully, playing them off of each other to keep the book unpredictable and constantly unnerving, as you start to wonder when and how these events will connect - and who might survive. There are two more books in the Niceville trilogy, and while the ending of Niceville gives you a good sense of where we're going from here, it's still a self-contained, satisfying story, even if it leaves you wanting more. More than that, it's a good story, moving like a rocket, constantly surprising you, entertaining you, and giving you a serious case of the creeps when you let your guard down. I absolutely loved it, and I'm diving into books 2 and 3 as soon as I possibly can. And if you're the kind of person who wonders about a book that could get both Leonard and King's stamps of approval, you need to check this out post-haste.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe