His Father's Son

October 12, 2009
As with Joe Schreiber's No Doors, No Windows (see below), this story begins with a man's shocking discovery about his father's past. In this case, though, the father isn't dead, only very ill, and the horror is purely psychological. Steve Nye visits his father, Joe, in the hospital after he suffered a stroke and attacked his wife. In his delirium, Joe admits to killing his wife, and Steve is shocked to learn that he refers to a first wife no one knew he had. Tracking down the facts of this long-buried murder leads Steve to dark insights about what his father, and himself, are capable of. Verdict Horror veteran Little has done a fine job. Readers of serial-killerAfiction by Thomas Harris and the like will enjoy this.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2009
Steve Nyes comfortably bland, Southern California life as a soon-to-be married writer for alumni publications takes a sudden, unsettling turn when his father has a stroke and lapses into a state of babbling dementia. Yet in a moment of lucidity during one of Steves impromptu hospital visits, his father makes a startling confession: I killed her. The victim, Steve soon learns, was his fathers first wife, a woman previously unknown to him, whose forgotten trail Steve follows to New Mexico, where her death was deemed a suicide. Then his father makes a further admission, I killed them, and Steves life begins to spiral downward. In trying to save his fathers reputation from a possible blackmailer, Steve begins to commit his own series of gruesome acts, discovering against his hopes how much his fathers son he really is. Prolific supernatural horror specialist Little has mastered all the indispensable nuances of tightly wound suspense. While his latest outing eschews the supernatural trimmings for more naturalistic horror, his prose remains crisp and irresistibly engaging.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)