Instinct

April 15, 2021
Silvertown, Washington, population 600-ish, is a conspiracy-fueled community deep in the Cascade Mountains, a place where weird stuff often happens. Mary Whittaker is the new police officer in town, one of only two. Opening with the funeral of a local teen who died under strange circumstances, Instinct is an uneasy read from the start, but things ramp up when Mary, still new to town and with her own demons to contend with, is left alone while the chief is out of town. Immediately people start going against their natural instincts and putting themselves in mortal harm. With a strong protagonist and a steadily increasing pace that strains to contain its tension even as it bubbles through some well-placed cracks until it explodes in nonstop action for the final third of the book, this is a deeply unsettling, immersive, and fun read for fans of sf-horror hybrids like Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines series or Jeremy Robert Johnson's The Loop (2020), with a healthy dose of the paranoia found in Now You're One of Us (2007) by Asa Nonami.

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