Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
William Morrow, 2007
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 0-06-114793-1
384 pages; $24.95

Joe Hill is the most promising new horror writer on the horizon. His first book, published to date only in the United Kingdom but due here in October, was a collection of short stories called 20th Century Ghosts. It was a revelation: quirky, brilliant and scary. I gave it a rave review when I first read it, and I still return to those stories every now and then just to take pleasure in seeing how Hill pulls it off.

Hill's first novel, and his first U.S. publication, is Heart-Shaped Box, and it fulfills the promise of those short stories. It contains enough change-ups, chases, oddities and horrific images to keep any seasoned horror reader in goosebumps. Far more accomplished than most first novels, Heart-Shaped Box is the best kind of scary pleasure.

Hill's hero -- or his antihero, depending on how you look at it -- is Judas Coyne, an aging death-metal rocker. He has modeled himself around his stage persona, it seems, posing as a foul-mouthed son of a bitch who takes advantage of the pretty and totally messed up young women who are attracted to his music. Just to add some spice, he has the repulsive hobby of collecting grotesqueries: the skull of a peasant who had been trepanned in the sixteenth century to let demons out, a noose used to hang a man in the nineteenth century, even a genuine snuff film. His hobby makes him the perfect mark when an email from an auction site offers a ghost for sale. He immediately snatches it up, without a thought as to what owning a ghost would actually mean. But then, he assumes it's really nothing more than a dead man's suit with an odd reputation.

Jude is surprised, then, to find that the idea of donning the suit, or seeing his live-in Goth girl (called Georgia because that's the state she's from) in it, deeply repulses him. He's taken aback at his own disgust, as he's made a living out of the disgusting for 30 years. But revulsion is only the beginning.

It turns out that Jude really has bought a ghost. A real, live, dead ghost. And the ghost is malevolent, seeking revenge for the death of someone Jude once knew. That someone loved him, and he rejected her, and the ghost is angry. Soon Jude is running for his life, trying to outrun the ghost by tracking it to its source, while he and Georgia accumulate both physical and psychic injuries. And he's running, too, from his own childhood, his own adulthood, his own sins. The tale begins to twist under one's eyes like a snake, shiny and dangerous, very possibly sufficient to keep the reader awake at night. Or at least until the last page is turned.

Heart-Shaped Box does not contain much of the wild experimentation and newness that characterized 20th Century Ghosts. This is not a fault in the novel, however. To the contrary, it is refreshing to read a good, solid ghost story. It is thrilling to follow this rollercoaster, one with unexpected drops and odd, wild turns. The writing is crisp and clean, the characters sharply delineated. Clear your calendar for a day to read this one -- and do so with the lights on.

I should note what is now an open secret: Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King. I only mention this to say that Hill is not King, but his own man. While one can see the influence of the father on the son, it is no more than one would expect King to have had on any writer entering the horror field after growing up on King's novels. This book is entirely Joe Hill's. And it's good.