April 28th, 2009
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Jude Coyne is an aging rock star with a perchance for the macabre. He has a collection of gruesome artifacts, including such things as a cannibal cookbook, a snuff film, a used hang-man’s noose… so when his assistant sees an auction for a suit claiming to contain a dead man’s ghost, Jude has him use the “buy now” button to purchase it.
When the suit arrives, Jude finds out that it’s claim is true. When he contacts the seller, he discovers that he has been set up to buy the suit from an ex-girlfriend’s sister, and that the dead man now haunting him is the dead girlfriend’s stepfather, who was a powerful hypnotist and spiritualist. The ghost and his family tell Jude they blame him for the girlfriend’s death, and have come to exact revenge on him, and anyone who helps him, including his present girlfriend.
As Jude and his girlfriend seek to find a way to stop the restless spirit, they realize not only things within themselves, but within the haunting family as well.
The story has a good plot to it, and the characters are well written. I had a hard time getting past the beginning of the story, where Wiccans and Satanists were lumped into the same category, and almost stopped reading it because of that inaccuracy. However, if you can push past the stereotype, it has a nice story that will have you double checking that reflection in the window-pane.