Gollancz 2008 ISBN 9780575081864

If you didn’t know by now that Joe Hill is the offspring of legendary horror writer, Stephen King, then you must’ve been chained to an army cot in the grimy basement of the unwholesome looking house on the hill for the last couple of years. Heart-Shaped Box, the follow up to his award winning and best selling collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts is Hill’s debut novel. And some full length debut it is.

After the demise of his band, fifty-four year old, aging heavy metal rocker, Judas Coyne—equal parts Alice, Cooper, Gene Simmons, and Rob Zombie—now fills his time collecting young girlfriends as much as he does curious objects of a bizarre and sometimes distasteful nature. So when the juicy chance to buy a ghost on the internet comes up, Judas bites. A heart-shaped box soon arrives with a stinky suit inside and Jude finds himself haunted by a merciless and mesmerising, knife-wielding ghost. Daylight hours provide no relief: this ghost keeps coming 24/7. Driven from his home, Jude, his goth girlfriend, Georgia, and his two dogs, set out on a search to rid themselves of the relentlessly pursuing ghost and Jude’s other personal demons.

Infused with southern American gothic sensibilities (in the true sense), Heart-Shaped Box sets a cracking pace, slowing slightly in the third quarter of the book, which only serves to heighten the sense of the impending, blood-soaked finale. In Jude, Hill delivers a character that you like despite yourself - and him. He’s a conflicted character with a background of egotistical drive and selfishness that you’d expect of a successful rock musician, yet he’s also polite and heroic. Georgia, initially coming across as the archetypical self-centred, depressive goth, is a perfect foil to Jude. Hill reveals layers to her personality as the supernatural drama pushes her and Jude to undertake increasingly desperate acts.

This is also a story about how domestic violence and abuse influence choices that echo across the years to shape who, and what, people become. All characters, even the ghost, are haunted in their own ways. If there is anything to detract from the novel it’s that the dialogue is sometimes a little clunky, but that’s hardly noticeable.  Hill also has a slight case of ‘chapter-itis’, with the prose breaking for chapters which perhaps aren’t necessary, but again it’s a trivial matter.

Like a newly dead corpse, the writing is fresh and sharp. It is now. Heart-Shaped Box is a great read; one that will keep a host of readers constantly looking over their shoulders, afraid to turn out the light.