While this month's Books of Horror Go To List selection is written by a woman, as was last month's, they couldn't be much more different. 'Man Cave' was an extreme horror novel that felt far more substantial than its story, which was confined for the most part to a single location and a tiny cast of characters led by a man. 'The Sun Down Motel' is a pretty standard-sized trade paperback that explores one story across two timelines with an ensemble cast primarily composed of women. It's also as much a mystery as it is a horror novel. Unlike 'Man Cave', which could have been written by a misogynistic male author, it's obviously written by a woman who cares deeply about the concept of female empowerment.

My first two notes were that St. James writes very smooth prose and her approach is very similar to that of Jaime Jo Wright, with only subtle differences. I wondered at a few points if she's a fan, even checking up on a book that one of the lead characters says she read, 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond', because that title is quintessentially Jaime Jo Wright. It turns out to be a Newbery Medal winner from 1958 though, written by Elizabeth George Speare. I should check it out for my classic children's genre novel project.

For those that don't know, Wright crafts mysteries with a gothic element that alternate chapters between two times, each with their own female lead, which are both set in the same place. That's exactly what St. James does here, except that her two stories are merely thirty-five years apart, whereas Wright's tend to be separated by a century or so and, while there could well be a family connection, her two leads obviously never met or knew each other personally.

Also, Wright tends to alternate her chapters strictly between the two times but St. James has less compunction about doing so, weighting her novel more to the present than the past. Both authors tell two separate stories in such a fashion that they eventually and inexorably merge at the finalé to become one. So, there are many similarities in Wright and St. James in approach, but that's it, because this is a completely new story that stands or falls on its own merits.

We start out in the past chapters, which revolve around Viv Delaney in 1982. She's from Illinois but left home at twenty to become an actress in New York. More honestly, she left in rebellion against her mother, who may or not have been abusive to her but certainly served as an overbearing figure in her life whose shadow she needed to escape. She ended up in Fell, NY, a small upstate town that seems to attract the lost and the strange. We first meet her after she's been there three months and is working the night shift at the Sun Down Motel of the title, which appears to be haunted. At the end of the chapter, she disappears and we continue her story in flashback.

The present chapters revolve around Carly Kirk, who's running from her mother too, but in a very different way. Carly's mum died, which left her reevaluating her life choices and wondering what value she'd ever get out of a business degree. So she hits the road and ends up in Fell, NY, where she's always wondered about why her aunt disappeared there in 1982. Yes, you guessed it. Carly is Viv's niece and she's there to look into what happened to her.

She stumbles into Viv's apartment and Viv's job as well, working the same night shift at the same Sun Down Motel, which is far less convenient than it's ever going to sound here. It's simply the sort of thing that happens in Fell, which is phrased to be a sort of nexus of weird, like Twin Peaks, Goblin in Josh Malerman's novel of that title or, from a different book I reviewed this month, Walpurgis County in Kyle Toucher's 'The Medusa Psalms'. That approach isn't pursued too far though, as it's not the point of the novel.

If Fell is a generally weird place, the Sun Down Motel is a notably weird place within Fell. The pool is fenced off because a boy drowned there years ago. The doors to the rooms open at night, with no human agency opening them. It's always at night and three in the morning is the worst time. It isn't a busy motel and the guests are fleeting, though they do sometimes return. They're made up of the sort of characters that Tom Waits sings about: people of the night, like cheaters, truckers and insomniacs. And maybe a serial killer.

There's clearly a supernatural angle to the story at the Sun Down Motel but there's also a prosaic angle in the fact that young women already had a habit of being taken before Viv. The difference is that they're generally killed and dumped, so their bodies are found. Viv's never has been. Cathy Caldwell's body was left under an overpass, Victoria Lee's on a jogging trail and Betty Graham's at the construction site that became the Sun Down Motel. Needless to say, Viv is given an impetus to investigate these murders in 1982 and Carly, who's never heard of any of them until she looks into her aunt's disappearance, ends up doing exactly the same thing. The two stories are weaving into one already.

I liked both leads immediately, so it was easy to find sympathy for both Viv and Carly. I liked some of the supporting characters even more, which are mostly female but very different.

In Viv's time, it's less her roommate Jenny and more Alma Trent and Marnie Mahoney. Alma is a local cop and a good one, but in 1982 that meant relegation by a male-dominated profession onto the night shift, which is how she encounters Viv. Strange things happen at night and they have an abiding habit of happening at the Sun Down. Marnie is a private investigator who visits the Sun Down to take photographs of cheaters but she grows into a substantial character. That she's black doesn't matter except that it helps marginalise her in Fell as much as Alma is marginalised within the police department. Many of the night people live on the margins.

In Cathy's time, it's mostly Heather Atkins, a student of mediaeval literature who happens to live in Viv's old apartment. They hit it off after she comes clean why she's there and, as a true crime buff, suggests that she move in so she can help her look into her aunt's disappearance. That leaves two young men, almost anomalies in this story but both marginalised characters in their own right. At the Sun Down, Carly discovers Nick Harkness, son of a murderer, who stays there secretly because it's the only place that he can sleep. At the library, she finds Callum MacRae, a history geek who's at his happiest digitising old issues of the local newspaper simply because he can.

The mystery isn't quite as deep as it could be, because the trigger for all Viv's investigations is her discovery of a suspect and we never really find another one. Therefore this story is less about the search for a serial killer and more about the search for proof that he's a serial killer. However, the search clearly ended in 1982 and Carly has to pick it up thirty-five years later, without any of Viv's knowledge or research, so there's still plenty to be enjoyed in these searches. There are nuances to how they end too and in how St. James introduces twists into the tale in the process.

I found that I liked this a lot. It's relatively cosy for a horror novel, its supernatural elements there and integral to the story but never particularly dominant or driving. They're background and best seen that way. There could have been more on that front about why Fell is weird but St. James had no real interest in going there. While the story of Viv and the serial killer is wrapped up here, thus needing no sequel, I don't think she ever saw this as the kick off to a series of otherwise unrelated stories set in Fell. It easily could have been.

The stories she did write here, that eventually all weave together into one, are strong characterful pieces clearly written from a female perspective. It's clear that Alma Trent and Marnie Mahoney had the paths they had in life because they were women and, had they been born with penises, the paths that unfolded for them would have been very different. To a lesser degree, the same applies to Viv Delaney and Carly Kirk. Their gender informs their experiences, both before and after their arrival in Fell. As a male reader, I found it fascinating to read those perspectives.

This is my first book by Simone St. James, but she has a number of others to her name, with a set of awards in both the romance and crime genres. Others seem to have supernatural elements to them as well, so may fit under horror, but I have a feeling that she isn't that easily pigeonholed. I like how this novel spans multiple genres and I should check out 'The Broken Girls', which seems to garner her best reviews and spans similar genres to this while following the same approach with multiple stories across different times but the same place gradually weaving together. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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