It's a page-turner with no pretensions, just lots of homicide and gore. He just gets right to it: big, mean, momma is pissed that her boy got maimed, and proceeds to wreak vengeance on the town with a cursed amulet. It's got some rough edges and plot holes, but mostly because McDowell doesn't waste time with exposition or creating a complicated plot. I think he was really quite a gifted and underrated writer. I've enjoyed every one of Michael McDowell's bloody little supernatural Southern Gothic thrillers, published in the 80s during the paperback horror boom. As the inexplicable murders continue, Sarah and her friend Becca Blair have no choice but to track down the amulet themselves, before it's too late. Sarah believes the amulet has something to do with the rising body count, but no one will believe her. Jo blames the entire town for her son's mishap, and when she gives a strange piece of jewelry to the man she believes most responsible, a series of gruesome deaths is set in motion. After long and tedious days on the assembly line, she returns home to care for her corpse-like husband while enduring her loathsome and hateful mother-in-law, Jo. When a rifle range accident leaves Dean Howell disfigured and in a vegetative state, his wife Sarah finds her dreary life in Pine Cone, Alabama made even worse.
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