Synopsis
A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons is a crime horror novel which blends It Follows and The Outsider, with a pinch of The Evil Dead, in which a criminal and the cop she’s taken hostage must find their way to safety – pursued by threats both human and supernatural – after a failed bank robbery.
In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin – a secluded shack in the San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death.
Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics of her mother and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin.
Anne’s quest to uncover more is interrupted when Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. She and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, the dead man comes back, seemingly risen from his grave to knock at the cabin door. Not a dream, not a hallucination, but not exactly Jessup, either. Something else. Something wearing her friend’s face. Something hungry…
The cops aren’t the only ones after Anne, and unraveling the secrets of her mother’s past may be her only hope of getting out alive.
A Mask of Flies is a gritty, heartfelt meditation on death, family, and the ever-changing, monstrous nature of grief.
Review
A huge thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the eARC!
Establishing an exciting tempo from page one, A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyon is a genre blend of the darker sides of life defined by pain, violence, and grief. Anne is a felon, one who has taken part in a bank robbery gone sideways. In an effort to lay low, she flees to her dead mother’s cabin, a place best remembered by the violent demise Anne witnessed there. With one cop taken hostage and a friend she’s trying to save in her party, Anne unearths more than she could fathom in this cabin in the woods. The result is a boldly bloody venture into criminal enterprises, repressed family memories, and the struggle to see another day.
A Mask of Flies is a horror crime novel that’s best thought of as a marathon rather than a sprint. At 448 pages long, Lyons proves that this is an endurance exercise, showcasing gnarly body horror, unthinkable gore that leaves you wincing, and vivid imagery of pain, both emotional and physical. The breakneck pace established at the novel’s outset is hard to maintain, and rightfully so. It’s hard to top the adrenaline of a high-stakes bank heist gone wrong that results in unwanted hostages and festering gunshot wounds. This intensity ebbs and flows, resulting in mixed speeds of pacing but delivering intense bouts of action and sheer horror.
Lyon’s “monster” bares its sharp teeth repeatedly with an insatiable hunger for Anne, feeling rather symbolic of her forgotten childhood. Of course, the air of mystery surrounding this being and its unrelenting warpath of violence works quite well to build suspense. Yes, there are cops and felons abound in this story, but the matter that deserves investigation is Anne herself. We meet a slew of characters along the way that help to shed light on the fog of her past. Yet, each newcomer provides the opportunity for more death and more bloodshed as this thing carves its way through the shambles of Anne’s life. This novel reads like a Tarantino movie mixed with a healthy dose of The Evil Dead and maybe a guest star appearance by Jim Jones?
With this many moving parts, there is more than enough room for this story to lose its way. And while some parts read much faster than others, Anne’s grit and tenacity keep things grounded enough to ensure our investment. Remember this being a marathon and not a sprint? Lyons balances the propulsive nature of violence and action to explore the wounds of Anne’s past, accelerating her character growth and development. You can’t help but root for this beaten and battered felon who refuses to stay down in the midst of all this mess.
A Mask of Flies combines the gritty compulsiveness of a crime thriller with the chilling, horrifying imaginings of horror to deliver an entertaining, expansive tale. Anne’s character complexities keep this wild novel from spinning too far out of control in the mix of multiple conflicts and plot lines. It’s a busy novel that Matthew Lyons writes with a great emphasis on gory detail and violence displaying visceral terrors. This is a solid novel, through and through, one that just may leave you breathless.
A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons releases on August 6th by Tor Nightfire.
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