While Richard Chizmar has been around for some time, it wasn’t until recently that the Maryland-born author started getting serious public recognition for his solo writing. Of course, Chizmar is a New York Times bestselling author with Stephen King with their collaborations on the Gwendy trilogy (Gwendy’s Button Box, Gwendy’s Magic Feather, and Gwendy’s Final Task). Still, outside of a few Bram Stoker-nominated novellas, Chizmar has been an underrated gem.
Chizmar found great success in 2021 with Chasing the Boogeyman and its sequel, Becoming the Boogeyman for their true crime-style mixed with Stephen King-esque character development and nightmarish serial killer story. This spooky season, Chizmar released his longest novel to date, Memorials.
Memorials follows a trio of college students, Billy, Melody, and Troy, as they travel through the back roads of Appalachia to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies course. Referring to themselves as “The Broken Hearts Club” because of their similar familial losses, the three friends meet with families of the recently deceased, digging deep for private information and shooting the memorials themselves.
After a few days on the road, the trio starts to suspect they’re being followed and stalked at their campsites. After reviewing the footage, they notice an odd symbol at each of the memorial sites. Melody and Troy think it’s time to cut the trip short, but Billy’s personal obsession with the project may have gained the attention of someone or something nefarious.
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On a personal level, I’m already a fan of Chizmar’s writing style and his King-esque need to develop characters deeply and intimately. Billy Anderson is a great character, and we get an exceptionally detailed view into pretty much every stage of his young life, as well as the highs and lows within.
The entirety of the book follows around this trio of friends, so having a strong backstory for all of them is a must. Chizmar expertly explores three people who have dealt with grief in very different ways and are all leaning on one another to process it.
You can’t help but see the pain through Billy’s charm, Melody’s toughness, and Troy’s obvious anxieties. I’m a sucker for good character-building and growth, and Memorials does this especially well.
I did feel like the character development got in the way of the pacing a bit. In a 480-page book, it seemed like 200 pages went by before I was starting to feel like the trio was in any kind of danger. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good slow-burn horror story, but in a tale that was teasing Blair Witch vibes from the very start, I was hoping it would jump into the scary stuff a little sooner.
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This is especially unfortunate because Chizmar is so good at writing the scary stuff. His few-and-far-between depictions of gruesome, haunting nightmares and creepy, anxiety-fueled moments throughout the middle of the book were genuinely eerie. They kept me going through to the sinister and exhilarating ending.
In all, I liked Memorials, but I didn’t love it, and I wanted to love it. The concept had me sold from the start, but it didn’t hook me like the Boogeyman books. The novel still had plenty of great, spooky moments and excellent characters, and it was well worth the read. I totally recommend picking this one up, as it made for a solid Autumn read.
Memorials is available now at all major book retailers.
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