Grave Robber's Daughter

by Richard Sala In this original graphic novel, when the carnival comes to town, parents in the town of Obidiah's Glenn began to get sick, followed by the teachers, doctors, and the sheriff's department. The children of Obidiah's Glenn become suddenly wild, roaming about at night with crazed looks in their eyes. Sixteen-year-old Paisley Curtain realizes she has to do something to stop what she sees is happening - but there isn't anyone left in town that seems to be able to help. So she sends a letter to someone she hoped might listen, someone who would know what to do - a friend of her late sister's from college, a self-styled "girl detective" with a questionable reputation named Judy Drood. Her only hope is that Judy will arrive in time to save her town, and to prevent her from ending up as yet another exhibit in the dark carnival's Hall of Embalmed Abominations!

From Publishers Weekly

When Judy Drood's car breaks down outside of Obadiah's Glen, the foul-mouthed Nancy Drew stand-in wanders into town for assistance and gets caught up in a bizarre hallucination brought to life. The town appears deserted save for a group of teenagers gathered inside an old house, an eerie little girl named Nellie Kelley and a small army of ever-grinning, sinister clowns. The answers to the many questions raised by this queer scenario unfolds at a brisk pace, revelations punctuated with fisticuffs, a tentacled sideshow mutant, ghoulish shenanigans in an accursed graveyard and a most unusual potion housed in the bottles of a dank wine cellar. Sala's David Lynchian world possesses the feel of a spooky mystery tale, but his illustrative style echoes a retro children's book, and the visual style adds a friendly yet disturbing quality to the proceedings. Sala (Evil Eye) has always offered something different, and this piece leaves the reader eager for the further exploits of Judy Drood in a world so similar to our own, but with one toe over the line into the Twilight Zone. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up–Judy, a young woman with a foul temper and a mouth to match, leaves home precipitously and finds herself in the nightmare of Obadiah's Glen. This tiny town used to attract travelers with its carnival, but the new freeway rerouted traffic and the carnival closed. Judy's first impressions of the hamlet confuse her: no one except for aggressive teenagers, threatening clowns, and a grim little girl seems to be in evidence. Nellie Kelly, the grim little grave robber's daughter, however, turns out to have more power than the unsuspecting passerby might suppose. Fortunately, Judy is not prone to going through life without suspecting every oddity or nuance. Sala's black-and-white drawings are suitably rough and include creepy expressions and arched teenage eyebrows that fill out the narrative's characterizations. Judy's tendency to swear fulsomely is introduced in the first panel, so no one will be surprised later when the going gets tough and her brawn turns out to be as sharp as her vocabulary. This is a tidy little tale of vengeance, corruption, and the scary side of clowns.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Judy Drood, dung-tongued, coed-cutey heroine of Sala's crime-on-campus epic, Mad Night(2005), returns in a caper kicked off by that old creature-feature canard, the car conking out in the middle of nowhere. Stranded Judy hikes to the nearest town, a weird and dangerous place. The only inhabitants are a little girl, teens with bad 'tude and . . . clowns. The latter aren't precisely what they seem, as any self-respecting Killer Klowns from Outer Space cultist could have told you. Sala's angular, high-contrast, Charles Addams-meets-Chester Gould artwork and John Waters-ish dialogue guarantee a ludicrous good time. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Richard Sala grew up in Chicago. He has an MFA from Mills College, has collaborated with Lemony Snicket, and illustrated a Jack Kerouac script. He spends his time in Berkeley, CA.

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