Christine Doiron penned this review.
… there are small pockets out here in the boonies where people stumble around and bump into each other. They aren’t particularly good, or particularly bright, but they halfway try to take care of each other.
It’s a hard and fast rule among the locals that you just don’t drive the road alongside Hood Canal after midnight. It’s narrow and winding, there are no guardrails, and once or twice a year, late at night, the canal “turns ugly” and swallows up a vehicle. The bars close early so folks can get home safely, and the victims have always been strangers: tourists, or others who don’t know any better.
But when an intolerable monster comes to town and a usually gentle man loses his temper and kills him, things change dramatically. Following the child molester’s murder and the disposal of his body in the canal, thirteen cars are taken within just a few months. Enough deaths to draw the attention of the state police and others, and to necessitate a cover-up to protect the murderer.
Though most bookstores would shelve The Hauntings of Hood Canal under horror, fans of that genre will likely be disappointed. Short on gore, this book is really about an ancient war between good and evil, and the ordinary folk who “incidentally” get caught in the middle of one minor, “nearly meaningless” battle.
I’m brand new to Jack Cady’s work, but this won’t be the last book of his I’ll read. To me he’s the kind of writer whose style is so compelling, so seductive, that it matters not in the slightest whether I like the story he has to tell.
Cady’s cast of characters — none of them can honestly be called heroes — are a down to earth bunch, and that’s putting it kindly. They include pool hustlers, bartenders, a fisherman, a druggie, a distinctly mediocre witch, a tow truck driver, and others inhabiting the fringe of society. In Cady’s hands, these characters are pulled up from the dregs — which is where they would live in the pages of most novels — to a place where we can actually see them and relate to them.
Cady is nothing if not a minimalist. Pay close attention, as he rarely tells us anything twice, often explains things only halfway, and — here and there — leaves us entirely in the dark. Though at times frustrating, in the end it’s a highly appropriate method of forcing us to ask questions and to come to our own uncertain conclusions, just as each of his characters must.
I’m in trouble again, thanks to Jack Cady. I guess I’ve been reading a lot of garbage lately, as it’s been a while since I’ve felt this way about an author. It’s a good feeling, but it’s hard on my checkbook, and even harder on my time. It means I’ll be staying up later at night, leaving the house less, and neglecting my family a little more — all in the name of reading everything this guy has to offer.
(St. Martin’s Press, 2001)
