#18: Devil House by John Darnielle

A true crime writer decides to move into a house where a "Satanic Panic" killing happened years before, and explores his own past while unspooling the case in John Darnielle's Devil House.

I thought Darnielle's first book, Wolf in White Van, was really notable, and his second American Harvester readable but ultimately unsatisfying; unfortunately for me Devil House leaned towards the second.

Darnielle is a good writer, and a pair of killings is spookily set forth, but I felt the ending was a bit of a cheat; or to be more generous to Darnielle, he might have been going for something I didn't quite grasp.

Ultimately I would say well-drawn characters and unsettling situations, but a hairpin plot twist at the end left me flat.  

I still will look for his next novel, and always find him interesting.

I checked this book out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#21: Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

A young man in Iowa--working in a small town video store at the end of the VHS era--finds unsettling clips spliced into tape rentals, upending his world in John Darnielle's Universal Harvester.

Darnielle's second novel, after the acclaimed Wolf in White Van, is both a sketch of rural midwestern life and at the same time a very creepy horror-flavored story with more questions at the end than answers.  Without ever showing its hand, the novel gets under your skin--to the point that I picked it up and put it down several times, but ultimately finished it.

Darnielle carefully sketches a world that shows the serenity of an endless cornfield, but the underlying uncertainties of how a rusty car got left in the middle of it all.

A mix of literary novel and early Stephen King thriller, Universal Harvester is rewarding for interested readers.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.

#34: Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

A young man, his life transformed by an act of violence, lives out his life managing a play-by-mail adventure game in Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle.

Darnielle's novel reminds me a lot of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Fortress of Solitude, both novels also infused with a life listening to genre music, watching b-movies, reading comics, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.  And, like these other novels, the cultural touchpoints are veined with melancholy and sometimes tragedy.

Darnielle is the front man for a band called The Mountain Goats, of which I am not familiar; although this will probably get this book more attention, Darnielle's writing can stand on its own merits.

Recommended, for like-minded readers.