Whisper down the lane

The ritualistic disembowelment of Professor Howdy, the school rabbit, opens Chapman's (The Remaking, 2019) deeply unsettling and unputdownable latest, which mines for inspiration the real trials that launched the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Told from two alternating first-person perspectives--Richard in 2013 and Sean in 1983--the novel follows the gut-wrenching experiences of one of the defendants in those trials, and one who is living with the repercussions of those events in the future, repercussions that are coming back from the grave to rear their demonic head and punish him. Readers can tell from the start that Richard is hiding important information, and yet he will draw them in, urging an uneasy and discomfiting emotional participation in both stories. When the dots between the narratives begin to connect, that's when the terror unspools, spilling all over the page. Creepy and engaging, this is a tale for readers who enjoy true crime like We Believe the Children by Richard Beck (2015), horror like Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism (2016), and intensely disorienting psychological suspense like Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (2017).

Chapman (The Remaking) evokes the "satanic panic" that convulsed schools and day care centers in the 1980s, destroying reputations and lives, in this spellbinding psychological thriller. In 1983, five-year-old Sean Crenshaw is goaded by seemingly concerned adults into fabricating accounts of ritual abuse of students by teachers at his school. Thirty years later, with the resulting witch hunts behind him, Sean has renamed himself Richard Bellamy and works as an art teacher at the upscale Danvers School in Virginia. But a series of disturbing incidents pulls him back into the nightmare of his past: a school pet is found ritually slaughtered, and kids in his class begin blaming bruises on their bodies on a fellow student named "Sean"--even though Richard has no student of that name. Chapman skillfully toggles between 1983 and 2013, tantalizing readers with the possibility that Richard's suppressed past self might somehow be expressing itself in the present, and he laces the text with interviews between young Sean and manipulative authorities who are horrifying in their own right. The result is a suspenseful tale of paranoia that will keep readers riveted until the last surprise is sprung. Agent: Emily Dayton, Gotham Group. (Apr.)