Synopsis
TUCSON, ARIZONA — 1996
“Some places don’t stay closed…”
Camp Ketchum has been shut down for a year. The gates are rusted. The cabins are rotting. The desert has almost swallowed it whole.
Almost.
Luna and her friends break in for one night of fun—beer, dares, and a thrill they won’t forget. The owner’s nephew gets them inside. Easy.
Too easy.
Because something else is already there.
Across Arizona, a killer is moving through the night. They call him Rafe Ramon… the Night Valley Snake. And tonight, his trail goes cold in the Tucson Mountains.
Inside Camp Ketchum.
No phones. No signal. No escape.
What starts as a party becomes a massacre replaying itself… and this time, the camp is ready to finish what it started.
WELCOME TO CAMP KETCHUM.
YOU’RE GONNA WISH IT STAYED CLOSED.
Review
I’ve read plenty by the author at this point (just a few FanFi reviews: The House on Moon Creek Avenue, Night of the Jack-O’-Lantern, The Love Song of Nathan Crane, a novelette triple feature), so I know that if he offers me a copy, I’ll read it ASAP. This is another worthy addition to that list.
Rafe Ramon is known as the Night Valley Snake. A breaker and enterer, a thief, a killer, and worse. He wreaks havoc across counties and finds his way to Tuscan, naturally ending up at the closed-down camp where a heinous murder spree took place. When a group of friends decides to take a cooler full of drinks to the camp, eager to party their hearts out before it inevitably reopens to the public, things get a bit dicier than they hoped for. Rafe’s the worst of the worst, actually pledging himself to the devil, but after finding and donning the same mask the previous killer wore, he’s even more dead set on a second massacre.
As ever, Reyes knows how to perfectly encapsulate the things we love about the slasher genre and deliver them here in a new adventure. The opening of the story gives us just a taste of what life is like as Rafe, the depravity and lowness of a natural-born killer. The camp gives us everything we love about our earliest slashers: a mask, alcohol-drinking teenagers, mid-party cabin sneak-aways, the gruesome backstory, and the wonder if anyone can survive the night. It felt like a blend of In a Violent Nature and Friday the Thirteenth. And although it’s set in the 90s, Rafe’s living proof that there’s just a little Satanic Panic left over.
I love that I’ve read enough now to pick up on the little connective tissue the author peppers throughout his writing, how all the areas surrounding the author’s Devil’s Hill bleed into each other in gory and dangerous ways. Even the simplest thing, like a name drop or a remembered news headline … this time I caught After the Pink Moon, which is another read I enjoyed. I also really like how Reyes keeps us reading with different sub-genres; the books never feel the same, but they always deftly capture the vibe they’re after. I’ve said it before; I’m sure I’ll say it again: Reyes really knows his horror.
He gives us inventive kills. Brutal, bloody ones too. Rafe is both larger than life and still a man, kind of like how the earlier Friday movies still felt like a beatdown could stop what was coming, like maybe he wouldn’t be able to get back up. Like how Michael was surely laid out and dead, but when you turn back, he’s gone. It has all the makings for a sequel, and hell, I’m going to say it: franchise time, baby! It also had me thinking of McAuley’s Candy Cain in that regard, too.
A perfect read for horror fans. It was a great read for spooky season. And it’ll especially be a hit with slasher fans. Reyes doesn’t miss with these things.
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