Product Description

The citizens of the Canadian town of Davinsport, Ontario, are no strangers to fear. Evil has walked their streets before, leaving in its wake a legacy of murder, and mad-ness. No one likes to talk about it anymore, and most people have managed to convince themselves it never really happened, but secrecy and denial can only hide the truth for so long. Evil can wait forever. By 1967, what had happened was nothing more than a legend, a scary story told around roaring campfires. Four boyhood friends are about to discover the truth, but no one will believe them. Their parents think the boys?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #293467 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 326 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780843961959
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
This memorable debut, first published by Prime Books in 2002, reads like a clumsy but endearing homage to Stephen King. Four engaging boys from Dunville, Ontario, dub their 1977 club The Knights of the Round Room after finding a bomb shelter on Johnny Page's farm. In 1955 Jacob Harrison killed his family and hanged himself on that same spot, and Johnny's tumble into a well awakens a creature who has possessed what's left of Harrison's corpse. It confronts the boys and tempts one of them into evil. By 1986, the boys are 19 and the creature is rampaging again, framing Johnny's friend Peter for the Ripper Killer's 12-victim crime spree. The sometimes cartoonishly gory descriptions and awkward prose find their foundation in Rollo's skillful borrowings from horror's top writers. (Mar.)
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Customer Reviews

Fiction... not Art
As a long time fan of horror, I found this book to be exceedingly average in every department. The narration itself is as plain and literal as can be... don't even bother looking for a higher meaning. No clever phrasing or play of words, no subtle allusions or ambiguity. Generic story with generic characters. It's not bad, but I look for something more than "competent" when I'm committing the time.

Dark, relentless stuff!
This is dark and relentless stuff, from someone who doesn't want to give you too much time to catch your breath. Author Gord Rollo is obviously someone knows and loves the horror genre, and that makes "Crimson" a lot of fun to read. Sure, it has some flaws (a first novel in the small press always does) but the author's intensity and wicked gleefulness more than compensate for them. For a macabre, Halloween-style kick in the butt, try "Crimson." It's a blast.

Hellishly advancing
Reminiscent of It, Crimson revolves around four friends who are entangled in a living nightmare. The plot is gripping and intense, a true page-turner. Also, even though it carries the same air as King's, this one is It's superior in every possible way and as you read the only overshadowing the previous book carries is your amazement that you thought it's power would hold forever.

The pace in the book is constant. Never pushing you ahead or lagging behind, the speed carries the story faultlessly. The atmosphere in the book is nauseatingly thick. As you read the pressure builds, increasing in both dread and anticipation. The setting in the story changes locales constantly, but maintains the normalcy of home and the expectations of reality.

Rollo's style of writing is clear, concise and direct. Never one to use $.10 words, he writes without pretension, realizing he doesn't need to show off his large vocabulary to impress us. I thank you Gord, the readers thank you, but mostly dog-eared ten-year-old dictionaries around the world thank you.

The characters start out great, both intelligent and genuine. Notice I said start. For some reason, as we follow these boys through adolescence into adulthood, their intelligence seems to dwindle. Their personalities, oddly enough, never changes. Rather than have their identies mature along with their age, they still act like scared little boys.

One other problem occurred. It was on page 139. The sixth paragraph, thirtieth line, 349th word on the page. For the love of all that is nasty let Jack the Ripper rest in his murderous hole. There have been countless murders more gruesome and more mind-boggling than the case of Thee Who Shall Not Be Named.