Review: The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi

Rating: 8.5/10

Rose DuBois is not your average final girl.

Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home.

When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn’t too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age!

Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can’t help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister?

Together with her best friend Miller, Rose begins to investigate. The further she digs, the more convinced she becomes: there’s a killer on the loose at Autumn Springs, and if she isn’t careful, Rose may be their next victim.

A warm, moving and clever take on the slasher, Philip Fracassi’s latest is well-crafted, unreservedly violent and simultaneously, very wholesome. Whilst I was reading this book my dear Mum glanced at my kindle, scoffed and gave me a look that could curdle milk. She’d assumed that a horror novel entitled “The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,” was some cheap, tasteless bloodbath reliant on shock value and bad jokes about broken hips and Werther’s Originals. As I promptly (and smugly) informed her though, she couldn’t have been further from the truth. With a hell of a whodunit at its core, wonderful writing and a genuinely delightful cast of characters, here Richard Osman’s “The Thursday Murder Club,” or Netlfix’s “A Man on The Inside,” meets the slasher, and it’s as superb as you’d think. “The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,” is out from Tor Nightfire in the US and Orbit in the UK September 30th. 

We follow Rose DuBois, a formidable septuagenarian, amateur sleuth and unforgettable bad-ass. She lives at Autumn Springs and it seems like a rather nice place to spend your sunset years frankly. There’s movie nights hosted by Gopi, a retired film director, at the community center, around the clock care for when it’s needed, even a few late-life romances. One of them comes to an abrupt end though when Angela Forrest dies. A slip and fall in a retirement home certainly isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, but Rose has her suspicions, ones that are heightened when, amidst reports of a peeping Tom and other increasingly strange goings-ons, there are more deaths. Something is wrong and Rose DuBois is not going to let it go.

As I couldn’t help but mention earlier, our leading lady, our final girl, Rose DuBois is a super-star. She is fierce and determined, she is witty and almost self-deprecating, without ever losing an ounce of dignity, she is gentle and kind and flawed and human. To address the elephant in the room though, she is also in her late seventies. Fracassi’s character-work is sublime beyond Rose. Miller is stoic and loyal and has feelings for Rose that she’s fighting not to reciprocate- she’s too old for boy trouble. Gopi has a wonderful flair for the dramatic. There are three witches and a conspiracy theorist and not a single character who comes off as a stereotype. They’re spunky and spiky and colourful and endearing, and in a slasher (about old people) that is an absolute recipe for disaster let me tell you.

Not one character reads like somebody without aspirations and hopes for whatever remains-  relationships, friends, family, a little more life. They’ve certainly earned their rest- paid taxes, buried partners, lived through a lot- but when there is trouble at Autumn Springs, a lot of them find that their lives have been reduced to the same hallways, the same routine. Fracassi’s writing gives aging weight and dignity, but is also preoccupied with themes of mortality, trust, memory and the gradual fading of connection. I would hazard that that is the main horror in “The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,” that of feeling forgotten, of having worked hard and raised kids and done everything right and still being alone in the end. You know, before this year really, I prided myself on not crying at books, but it seems now I’m semi-permanently a blubbering mess, and I think that simply makes me human. 

I’ve heard it said that the slasher is a tired trope, all screamed out, with little left to offer. Well “The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,” in which Christie meets Craven, is one I’ve added to my roster of recommendations to shut that nonsense down. With its short chapters, extreme pathos, wonderful character-work, and an afterword that will break you, just on the off chance the book itself didn’t, this is a novel that proves the slasher has plenty of life and death left in it.