Product Description

Unemployed actor Jack Wade takes his comatose wife to an isolated spot in the mountains, a place where a man once murdered his entire family. Frankie was a successful movie producer, but now they have run out of money. This dilapidated cabin is all they have left. As the long, lonely nights stretch out before him, Jack's dreams overflow with nightmarish images. The isolation loosens his grip on reality. He believes Frankie is capable of leaving her bed and moving around. And as Jack falls apart inside the cabin, someone or something else begins stalking the woods outside. Is the mountain evil, the cabin haunted? Or is poor Jack just going insane? Harry Shannon's disturbing novel is a relentless, non-stop exercise in terror.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1012321 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

Customer Reviews

Based on the Lionsgate movie...
The author based this novel on the screenplay for the new Lionsgate DVD "Dead and Gone," added a few extra characters, fleshed out some of the story line and delivered a lean, mean old-fashioned horror tale that remains true to the 80's roots of the original motion picture. Dead and Gone
The result is a backwoods tale of evil run amok in the blackly comic tradition of "The Evil Dead" and "Mother's Day."

Dead and Gone
After an excellent series of serious horror/action/suspense novels, Harry cuts loose and has fun in this wildly over-the-top horror romp. He lets go and doesn't hold back as Dead and Gone gets more outrageous and entertaining as the book progresses. Zombies, ghosts, rednecks, madmen are all blended into a toxic stew in this throwback to the heyday of fun 80's horror. Very highly recommended.

A Jolly/Scary Romp Through the 1980's
The author clearly has a ball both tweaking and honoring the tropes of 1980's horror; the deserted cabin with a ghastly past, the crazy rednecks who live in the area, even an old Indian burial ground. The novel version in many respects surpasses the Lionsgate DVD. Screenwriter Harry Shannon here has no budget constraints to content with, no actors unable to nail difficult scenes in one or two takes, no technical difficulties to cover up in editing. He expands several subplots, including a sweet crush between Sheriff Pete Johnson (played in the film by Shannon himself) and the much younger, and very troubled Constable Kate Eidson. Adds a maniac named Billy Bob Mercer, who may or may not be one of the reasons people are dying in horrible ways. Booger and Moss Rose, minor characters (in the case of Moss, the appropriate word would likely be caricature) here become fleshed out human beings with an odd and disturbingly believable symbiosis. Those moves all make the denouement of the story more weighty than the climax to the swift-moving cult film. Shannon has authored seven other novels in the horror and crime genre, and his writing is top notch. It's a cartoon of a read, bound to elicit chuckles as well as gooseflesh, and highly recommended to fans of the genre. Those with writing aspirations may want to watch the DVD and then sit back with the novel and some popcorn and see how a real master spins a magnificent horror yarn from relatively thin material.