Review: Fast, Tense, and Claustrophobic.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2013
Greg F. Gifune continues to impress with his dark fiction, this time stranding a small group of people at a roadside motel in the middle of the blizzard.  The raging storm, however, is only one of the problems.  The other?  The demonic serial killer that continues to hunt our main characters with a passion.  I'll be the first to admit I'm a sucker for any thriller taking place in a snow storm, and this book really hit the spot.  Author Gifune's characters are rich and believable with emotional back stories to keep you rooting for them when faced with the overwhelming danger they go through.Always well written, Gifune's dialogue is solid and he is very good at keeping the action moving without bogging down the narrative by being overly descriptive.  Although the villain reminded me too much of the bad guy in the movie Jeepers Creepers, my only real problem with this book was a chapter near the very end that had me quite confused.  The story jarringly jumps away and then returns for a bit of a M. Night Shyamalan-style ending that I think could have been handled more smoothly.  Setting up earlier chapters with small hints would have certainly helped.  But after re-reading the final chapters, the story fell into place, although still a bit clunky.  That aside, this horror/thriller was a lot of fun to read.  It was fast, tense, claustrophic, and loaded with atmosphere.