Jack Ketchum

In 1965, teenage friends Ray, Tim, and Jennifer liked hanging out in the campgrounds, but Tim and Jennifer didn't know what Ray had in mind for those two girls in the neighboring campground. Four years after Ray murdered the two girls, he's never been charged. Tim and Jennifer thought the worst was behind them. They were wrong.

The Lost

Bryan Alexander

I read The Lost as part of my quest to find the best horror novels of the 21st century. I came to the novel with high expectations, given Ketchum's rep. 

The Lost isn't really a horror novel, although there is some gore at the end. The plot is driven by an ambitious and sociopathic teenage, Ray Pye, who begins the novel with an unplanned murder, then spends the next 80% of the novel exploiting friends, chasing women, and being a manipulative jerk. The setting is a small New Jersey town in the 1960s.

Ketchum's prose is very stripped down and energetic, pushing along quickly. Unfortunately, it doesn't get very far. The main idea of the book is getting Ray to the point of snapping, which he does for the finale.

I found the characters mildly interesting at the start, wearing over several hundred pages. There's wasn't a sense of dread that we might expect from a horror novel. The climax is well done, but too little after too many chapters.

If I'd approached this as a crime novel, I wouldn't have been so disappointed. Even then, it's thin gruel. The local police are semi-competent, but only slowly catch on to the plot. Ray is a weak reed of a criminal mastermind. The best developed aspect of the novel concerns people justifying their continued support of Ray in nearly young adult themes. 

The setting is only lightly historical. The center of the book is the Tate-LaBianca killings, and characters' reactions are plausible, but that doesn't do much for the novel's themes. Is Ray supposed to be a small-league Manson, which doesn't really work? Is the book a portrait of America in transformation? Not very much, as the locale is a retreat from mainstream America. 

Is there a better Ketchum in the horror vein?

The Lost

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