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Mister Lullaby

A Novel

ebook
1 of 2 copies available
1 of 2 copies available
From J. H. Markert, the author Peter Farris calls the "clear heir to Stephen King," Mister Lullaby brings our darkest dreams and nightmares to life.
In the vein of T. Kingfisher and Christopher Golden, the boundary protecting our world from the monsters on the other side is weakening—and Mister Lullaby is about to break through.

The small town of Harrod’s Reach has seen its fair share of the macabre, especially inside the decrepit old train tunnel around which the town was built. After a young boy, Sully Dupree, is injured in the abandoned tunnel and left in a coma, the townspeople are determined to wall it up. Deputy sheriff Beth Gardner is reluctant to buy into the superstitions until she finds two corpses at the tunnel’s entrance, each left with strange calling cards inscribed with old lullabies. Soon after, Sully Dupree briefly awakens from his coma.
Before falling back into his slumber, Sully manages to give his older brother a message. Sully's mind, since the accident, has been imprisoned on the other side of the tunnel in Lalaland, a grotesque and unfamiliar world inhabited by evil mythical creatures of sleep. Sully is trapped there with hundreds of other coma patients, all desperately fighting to keep the evils of the dream world from escaping into the waking world.
Elsewhere, a man troubled by his painful youth has for years been hearing a voice in his head he calls Mr. Lullaby, and he has finally started to act on what that voice is telling him—to kill any coma patient he can find, quickly.
Something is waking up in the tunnel—something is trying to get through. And Mr. Lullaby is coming.
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    • Library Journal

      November 18, 2022

      The small town of Crooked Tree is home to Dr. Robert Bookman, a well-known specialist in the field of nightmares, and his grandson, horror novelist Ben Bookman. It's also where veteran detective Winchester Mills and rookie Samantha Blue investigate a murderer who sews his victims into corn husk cocoons, a crime that mirrors details in Ben's new book. Now the detectives must find the link between Ben, his grandfather, and the evil plaguing Crooked Tree before another written death becomes real. The town of Crooked Tree is less Stephen King's bucolic Castle Rock and more a darker version of Batman's Gotham City, meaning the villains' acts could easily strain one's suspension of disbelief. The characters themselves read like archetypes, from the grizzled detective to the quirky, haunted writer. This might be a plus for those fans who love Dean Koontz thrillers, however, as the book's pacing doesn't give the reader time to poke at plot holes but lets them simply enjoy the dark ride. VERDICT Markert's (Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel, published under the name James Markert) first horror novel is both a literary thrill ride and a supernaturally satisfying guilty pleasure.

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      November 1, 2022
      The Patersons haven't been seen on their family farm in some time, and detective Winchester Mills is investigating with his daughter, Blue, a rookie detective. When they make the first of several disturbing discoveries, things go downhill. Meanwhile, Ben, a writer nicknamed the Nightmare Man, is uneasy about promoting his latest book, especially with a shocking event at the launch and the revelation that scenes that seem to have come straight out of his books have been happening in real life. Readers who enjoy the writer-as-protagonist trope in horror will enjoy this aspect, made famous by Stephen King (who gives Ben's newest book a blurb, incidentally). Ben's strained relationship with his wife and family becomes worse when more grisly incidents occur. The interesting premise is slightly bogged down by dual points of view and flashback scenes, but Markert maintains a tense pace throughout. Fans of dark murder mysteries with an edge will enjoy this one, as will those who like Cassandra Khaw and Stephen King's short stories (like "1408").

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 26, 2022
      This over-the-top horror thriller from Markert (The Strange Case of Isaac Crawley, written as James Markert) follows the residents of a small town with a surprisingly high number of serial killers in its history, as they attempt to solve a slew of recent killings. Bestselling author Ben Bookman doesn’t remember writing The Scarecrow in a three-day fugue at Blackwood Mansion, his family’s mysterious estate, but the specifics of the plot are starting to come back to him—mainly because the novel’s gruesome death sequences are beginning to occur in real life. As the authorities—including fresh-faced Detective Blue and grizzled veteran Detective Mills—close in on the answers, Ben contends with two possibilities: that he himself is the killer, or that it’s something old and evil that’s been waiting within Blackwood Mansion for a chance to be unleashed. The resulting tale is a fairly standard thriller: its plot points are ripped from a dozen other well-worn stories, and its characters react to the story’s hyper-stylized murders in ways anybody faintly familiar with the genre would expect. Markert’s clipped style works well for this unsubtle celebration of the genre, however, making the plot’s hammier excesses easy to get through as it reaches its bloody conclusion. Fans of old school horror will want to check this out.

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