Scowler by Daniel Kraus (review)

It's been nine years since Marvin Burke tortured his wife, Jo Beth, and attempted to murder his ten-year-old son, Ry. Marvin was sent to prison, Mom has since healed, Ry has wrestled with most of his demons, and his sister, Sarah, has grown from a baby into a socially awkward but bright adolescent. Now a freakish meteor strike has ripped open the walls of Marvin's jail, and dear old Dad is on the loose, bent on taking revenge against Ry, who had attacked him on that fatal day in self defense with the jagged limb of a handmade toy nicknamed Scowler. Marvin reaches the family's farm, cuts off telephone communication, brutally murders a neighbor who tries to intervene, and is closing in for the kill when a second meteor lands on the farm and the unbalanced man shifts his attention to prying it out of the ground and selling it to make his fortune. The stench, heat, and magnetic field around the meteorite affects what little reason the family collectively has left, and when Sarah fails in her attempt to run for help, father and son meet in a horrifying showdown. Connoisseurs of the grotesque have come to the right place, as Kraus' impeccable sense of thriller timing spins out the terror to its culmination in a gruesome bloodbath whose horror is only slightly mitigated as Marvin and Ry retreat into their alter egos for the climactic battle. Fans of Kraus's Rotters (BCCB 5/11) have come to expect that beneath his darkest literary impulses flow thought-provoking undercurrents, and this is no exception. At the edge of the horror is a gripping story of a family paralyzed by its own fear, and an examination of the strange places of emotional refuge a tortured mind will find.