I Was a Teenage Slasher

Jones’s (“Indian Lake” trilogy) latest is a gore-filled yet tender coming-of-age story full of gruesome nods to the slasher genre. Listeners meet Tolly Driver, who, 17 years earlier, embarked on a horrific killing spree during the summer of 1989 in the small Texas town of Lamesa. During a house party gone terribly wrong, Tolly, a good but fragile kid with a peanut allergy, was transformed into a slasher. He rampaged through the town, with the body count steadily rising. Despite the horrifying content, Michael Crouch narrates Tolly with engaging tenderness, making the quintessential slasher into a sympathetic character. Listeners may find themselves rooting for Tolly, someone who’s faced many obstacles and is forced to kill owing to circumstances beyond his control. Jones narrates his acknowledgments with appealing casualness, describing his memories of growing up in a West Texas town 45 miles from Lamesa.