REVIEWS+

Vacation

by Matthew Costello
Thomas Dunne: St. Martin's. Oct. 2011. c.320p. ISBN 9780312680077. $24.99. HORROR
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NYPD cop Jack Murphy spends his days protecting his city from "Can Heads"—cannibalistic creatures who feed on other humans. It's not long before Jack suffers a near-fatal Can Head attack that leaves his partner dead. With his family living behind barbed wire fences in increasingly smaller protected areas of the city, Jack longs to take them to a safe place and get away from the chaos that has become their daily routine. Sounding like the ideal vacation spot is the Paterville Family Camp, which touts itself as a heavily protected and isolated compound in the mountains with plenty of "real food," swimming, hiking, and outdoor family fun. But all is not what it seems in Paterville, and it soon becomes a race against time for Jack to get his family out alive.
VERDICT Video games writer and novelist Costello (Rage) is an expert at transforming mundane scenes into nail-biting suspense. His solid, fast-paced storytelling, laced with just the right amount of violence and gore, will appeal to zombie fiction aficionados as well as other fans of horror. [Library marketing.]
Reviewed by Amy M. Davis, Kent State Univ., Columbus, OH , Oct 15, 2011
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