Synopsis
Brimming with dark humor, violence, and mystery, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is a blood-soaked slasher sure to keep readers guessing until the very last page.
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.
Also by Philip Fracassi:
Boys in the Valley
Review
Thanks so much to Tor Nightfire for the ARC, I really wanted to read this one! I think the cover is simple, but really effective.
Since I started writing I have wanted to write an old person serial killer. Then this year I saw Samantha Downing’s Too Old For This and thought, aww damn. But then I said, wait has there ever been a final grandma? Which began me brewing new ideas until…well this. That’s not to say I can’t or won’t at some point! But this one mentions the Hudson Valley multiple times, with the main character Rose’s daughter even buying a house there, making me feel like a Philip Fracassi book now lives in the same world as my dark little town in Welcome to Cemetery. It can live right next to Black Spring from Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex (the American version). I mean there’s even a young female detective named Williams…so just maybe.
The Autumn Springs retirement home sounds like the place to be! Apartments next to your acquaintances, friends, maybe even love interests. Schedule exercises or classes, meals, movie nights, and of course there’s open visitations, this sounds like a fun-filled place to live. Rose is just one of a phenomenally inventive cast of characters, all filled with so much life and personality. They may have aches and pains, may get sick easily or need special care, but these people have life left to live—and they’re determined to do so to the fullest. That is, of course, until the first accident. An accident that’s followed by several more, some that are growingly suspicious.
I love that Rose and her small group of confidants take on almost amateur sleuthing the continued accidents and deaths. They use their unassuming, and often underestimated, natures to get information from nurses, doctors, and even the police that others just simply would not receive. With multiple Hercule Poirot mentions, an in-world detective named Hastings, and Miss Marple name dropped, this had my Agatha Christie loving heart aglow.
This did a really great job of showcasing the elderly as more than just the feeble or fragile people they so often are portrayed as. There’s life and spunk and continued brains up there—there’s more life to be lived. So while this book does feature death, even having multiple scenes where someone says, “well death must happen here all the time!” it does a great job of subverting that with strong and strong willed characters. The kills are inventive, as well as a killer reveal that still felt real-world enough, and there is enough brutality in that realness to appeal to a wide horror audience. My grandmother is 87 and I’m definitely giving her a copy. She loves mysteries and thrillers.
The ending had a callback I was not expecting, and I loved its ambiguous style allowing you to believe what you want. It’s hardcore and intense, and you know what, they deserved it!
Before this read, I had Boys in the Valley on my TBR, only having read Fracassi’s Shortwave Media release, D7. After finishing this, I’m going to have to get my copy out of storage to bump it way up the physical TBR mountain.
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