Jokers Club

January 2, 2012
A failed writer reunites with a group of former childhood miscreants in order to clear his troubled conscience in this neatly sewn-up horror tale. Geoffrey Thorn, 30-something, single, employed at a textbook company, and newly diagnosed with a brain tumor, returns to the picturesque New England town of Malton for a gathering of the Jokers Club, a band of local boys who used to play pranks such as removing corpses from the cemetery and putting bubble bath in the municipal fountain. But when the boys were 12, they went too far, punishing a new member by locking him in an abandoned refrigerator for the night. The results were lamentable, but no one ever discovered the truth. Now grown men, the groupâs members reconvene at a local inn and are picked off one by one by a murderer. Bastianelli does an excellent job of creating distinct identities for the former members of the Jokers Club. However, some of the bookâs ominous details (e.g., Shadow Drive; a funeral director named Mr. Under) are merely corny. Overall, the work is as tidy as the town and as pat as a familiar horror film.