Synopsis
From beloved horror author Jonathan Janz, Marla is a slow-burn, full-throttle horror novel about the families we inherit, the guilt we carry, and the terrible gravity of a gaze you can’t forget. Turn the page-if you dare.
Every small town has ghosts. King’s Branch has Marla.
A reclusive young woman who lives with her mother in a creepy Gothic house, Marla Gorman is the stuff of urban legends. Some believe she’s a prisoner. Others claim she’s a witch.
The evening of the first murder, Detective Carl Lancaster sees Marla leering at him from her bedroom window. He sees her again at the exact moment a second man is killed. And though Marla was nowhere near either murder site, Carl is convinced she’s connected to the crimes.
To Carl, Marla is a menace. To social worker Annie Frost, Marla bears a bizarre connection to her past. To Dylan Ellison, a struggling college student, Marla might be the companion for whom he’s been longing.
But none of them understands Marla’s true nature. She’s about to plunge them-and everyone in King’s Branch-into an unspeakable nightmare. And teach them the true meaning of terror.
Review
Ever since its publication as a signed, limited edition hardcover by Earthling back in October 2022 (and good lord, does it ever feel like it’s been so much longer than that!), Janz fanz have been clamoring for a wider release. Thankfully, a new three-book deal announced in February saw Janz joining Blackstone’s Weird Tales imprint, with the long-awaited Marla first up in August. Well, dear readers, having just read an ARC, I’m happy to report that Marla was worth the wait. Cue the waving of Janz handz!
Strange things are afoot in King’s Branch, starting off with the discovery of a murdered man whose body appears to have been pile-driven headfirst into the ground. Soon thereafter, another victim is found whose head has been caved in following a violent collision with his living room ceiling. Little connects one corpse to another, save for their uncommon demise, violently bloodshot eyes, and the terrified expression frozen on their faces. Detective Carl Lancaster believes there’s something even stranger connecting the dead men — a young woman named Marla Gorman. He’s seen her watching him each time he’s called out to a scene, either from her bedroom window or inexplicably standing in the road. Little is known about the Gorman’s, with both Marla and her mother, Irene, shrouded in local rumors. The girl is a shut-in, her mother possibly abusive. Or they’re witches or cultists or god only knows what else. The only thing that’s certain is that Marla is somehow involved, despite never having left her house, and the secrets she keeps could tear King’s Branch apart.
Janz opens Marla with an epigraph quoting Stephen King’s Carrie, tipping his hat early and letting readers in on what they can expect in the pages that follow. While Marla is clearly an homage to King’s classic, and King himself if the town of King’s Branch is anything to go by, it’s very much its own book and Janz treads his own ground within some now very familiar tropes. Or so it seems initially.
We know early on the kind of talents Marla possesses, so much of what drives the story is Carl’s attempts at figuring out and understanding what, exactly, it is he’s dealing with here. While Marla is gussied up as a bit of a horror mystery, readers will inherently know more than the characters — to a degree. Yes, Carrie White serves as an inspiration, but Marla couldn’t be further from that bullied, telekinetic teen. Any initial similarities are lost in the sheer odiousness of Marla, and the more we learn about her and her grand designs, the further she distances herself from her literary forebear. Rest assured, there’s plenty of secrets to uncover and Janz lays in some pretty damn good surprises along the way. For the most part, though, the central focus is on the journey, not the destination. Getting there, after all, is half the fun. And although Marla is a slow-burn, it’s far from slow-paced.
I really dug the point of view Janz brings to the table here, couching it all in familial themes. Carl has lost both his wife and daughter to a tragic accident and the only thing that gets him out of bed is the energetic puppy he’s adopted, and his job, of course. Then there’s Annie, who’s recently returned to full-time employment and is having trouble balancing work and family life, a job in its own right that’s made even more difficult by her idiot husband’s constant sabotaging of her efforts to both connect with and discipline her children. When she forbids her daughter to go to a party, Brian’s right there giving the girl his car keys so she can go enjoy some underage drinking. Brian’s the kind of toxic asshole male Janz is so good at writing, the kind you instantly hate and want to see suffer. Carl’s partner, RJ, has kids of his own and a wife he’s not there for nearly enough, and even less now that bodies are stacking up all around town. And then there’s Marla and Irene, but the less said about them, the better.
As he often does, Janz dangles and unravels the horror through Gothic aesthetics, and there’s few horror contemporaries that plumb the depths of Gothic horror half as well as Janz. He knows the genre inside and out, and he clearly has a deep affection for it, having penned a number of other such works over the years, like The Sorrows, House of Skin, and The Dismembered, to name a few. An ever-present gloom resides over King’s Branch, and the decaying Gorman house is a nasty piece of work. The interior feels claustrophobic and dark, and that’s before you even get to the playroom where… well, you’ll see. Even in the sunny-set scenes, you just know there’s trouble lurking beneath it all. There may be a party going on all around you, but you’re Chief Brody, uneasily sitting on the beach waiting for shit to hit the fan when the shark attacks once more. That’s you, and that’s Carl, too. I suppose that makes Marla Jaws, but I’m pretty sure it’s Janz who’s the real shark here, the sharp-toothed son of a bitch you don’t see coming with a nasty surprise of a lifetime.
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