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Graphic Novel Review: Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil, illustrations by George Williams

cover art for Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil

 

Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil, illustrations by George Williams

Oni Press, 2023

ISBN: 9781637152362

Available: Paperback, KIndle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

It’s 1979. Mitch wakes up after a terrible assault near the local Y. His friends scold him for going there alone and take him home to recuperate. There’s also been a murder in the quiet suburb of Columbiana, New Jersey. The body of Pastor Holley’s wife, Kelly, has been found with demonic sigils carved into her body.

 

New Jersey Sheriff Mullen and FBI Agent Garrett partner up to investigate the case. At least, that’s how it appears to the locals. Behind the scenes, they are devising a Satanic Panic cover to conceal their own crimes. They set their sights on a group of queer punks; Mitch, Lupe, Terri, and Jackson.

 

Sheriff Mullen hears a rumor that Pastor Holley records extra sermons for himself, and confronts the priest about them. It takes a little convincing, but Father Holley turns over some of the tapes to be played on the local radio station. A federal agent issues a warning, announcing the lurid details of satanic rituals, and asks teenagers to keep an eye out for anyone different. After a violent altercation between Lupe and the manager on duty at the local grocery store, the authorities quickly pin Kelly’s murder on the teens. When the friends flee to a cabin in the woods, they find the building gone and a bloodstained pentacle embedded in the ground. Mitch knows they aren’t alone out there.

 

I love a good Satanic Panic plot. With a diverse cast of characters, each with a unique personality and story, Let Me Out has a unique angle on the “devil in the details”. There is good LGBTQ+ representation, as well as people of color. There are parents and adults who are not accepting of their children, which is difficult to stomach, but is a painful reality some LGBTQ+ teens face. As hard as it was to confront on the page, I am glad that Nahil didn’t shy away from that. The character designs were really good and well rendered, as were the backgrounds and sweeping landscapes.

 

Nahil and Williams opted to include trigger warnings at the beginning of the book. I know there have been conversations in the horror community about the idea of including these warnings in general. My view is that if it makes someone’s enjoyment of a book better to have a warning, I have no problem with that. For those of us who are library workers, we are probably familiar with Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science. Content warnings align well with three of the five laws: every reader their book; every book its reader; and save the time of the reader. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on March 11, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good: Stories by Helene Tursten, translated from Swedish by Marlaine Delargy

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good: Stories by Helene Tursten, translated from Swedish by Marlaine Delargy.

Soho Crime, 2018 (1st edition)

ISBN-13 ‎978-1641290111

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD.

Buy:  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

Maud is an eighty-eight year old woman with a contract that allows her to live rent-free in her apartment as long as she is alive. She lives alone, likes to travel, and likes a peaceful, orderly life… and she knows how to get away with murder.

 

Three of the five stories are previously published. In “An Elderly Lady Has Accomodation Problems”, Maud discovers her friendly new neighbor is scheming to get her large apartment by trying to convince her that her smaller ground floor apartment is a better choice for an elderly lady, with fatal results. In “An Elderly Lady on Her Travels” Maud sees a notice that her ex-fiance is marrying one of her former students, a porn actress half his age, and decides to vacation at the same spa, with unfortunate consequences for the future bride. In “An Elderly Lady at Christmastime” Maud decides to take care of the loud arguments upstairs that are disrupting her peace by setting up an accident for the abusive husband. The last two stories are different perspectives on the same events, from a building resident and a police detective. Maud calls the police after discovering the dead body of a silver thief.

 

Maud is a sharp and canny elderly woman unafraid to use people’s perceptions of older women to influence the way they think of her: better for people to think she is dotty and deaf than a murderer. But she has no problem eliminating obstacles with premeditation and/or extreme violence. These aren’t murder mysteries, they are simply enjoyable stories where you can’t help being on the criminal’s side.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on August 20, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas

Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas

Thomas and Mercer, 2023

ISBN-13 ‎978-1662509537

Available: Paperback; Kindle

 

Samantha, a nurse in a hospital ICU, is rushing to leave Queens and head back to her small hometown in New York, at the start of Kara Thomas’s engrossing thriller Out of the Ashes. It’s late at night, and as she passes a cruiser, she confesses to having been “skittish around law enforcement” since she was a tween. “No need to behave like a criminal,” she says to herself. “I hadn’t killed anyone. Not yet.” But, it is surprisingly soon that she assists in her very sick uncle’s suicide, and it is then that a flood of memories engulfs her as she has returned to the place where her mother, father, and little sister were shot and their home destroyed by fire in an unsolved murder several years ago.

 

Kara Thomas doesn’t waste any time plunging the reader into the fascinating recent history of Carny, New York and the sometimes complicated lives of Samantha’s relatives, friends, and enemies. We learn about the corrupt cop she fears, the addict who was once her friend, her harsh aunt, her loving father, and the men in the family farm business that seem to have some sort of hold over the town. In sharp, spare detail, Thomas draws multi-faceted characters and reveals their unique experiences with each other, experiences that tie them together in unexpected, for the reader, ways.

 

Samantha is an exciting protagonist: gutsy, smart, and aggressive. Her determination to find out whether her little sister might still be alive leads to a fast-paced investigation of people Sam already suspects to have been involved and those she adds to her list. Also, a detective new to the case poses alternative theories for Sam to consider. Whereas other crime novels might show us things are not as they seem, Thomas shows us Sam’s perspective as an unchanging story that steadily becomes more of what it seems. Sam herself tells the gripping story of her own weaknesses and mistakes and is a study in the effects of childhood psychological trauma.

 

There is never a dull moment in Out of the Ashes; it is never predictable. Thomas delves into the complicated: internet research, family histories, and psychological trauma. However, the reader is never forced to accept confusion as the author’s way of deepening the mysteries embedded in the narrative. This is a novel to lose yourself in – and maybe enjoy again someday on the big screen. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Posted on June 17, 2023 by , Reply
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