Slippin' Into Darkness

Slippin' Into Darknessby Norman PartridgeThe clock strikes midnight. It's April 8, 1994, and twenty-four hours ofterror begin in a town on the California coast:12:03 A.M.: In a quiet cemetery, a man throws beer bottles at his lostlove's tombstone. Graveyard baseball is the name of the game. The pitcherhasn't thrown a baseball or a bottle since he graduated high school in 1976,but his concentration is perfect, his control unmatched... until someonedisturbs the game, and the pitcher explodes in a violent fury.1:12 A.M.: A secretive photographer climbs the stairs of his basementstudio. Shadows drift across the cool green felt of a pool table in hisliving room. A young woman waits for him in the darkness. She is naked, herskin ghost-white, and her cold laughter stirs memories of a terrible nightin 1976.1:38 A.M.: A wealthy thirty-five-year-old woman leaves her young lover'sapartment, thinking of the husband she plans to divorce. Outside she meets aman from her past... a man from 1976 with a camera in his hands and atwisted blackmail scheme in his heart.3:31 A.M.: A battered pick-up truck bashes through the gates of an abandoneddrive-in theater. Five members of the class of '76 project an old home moviethat hides bitter secrets from the past... secrets that will forever changethe future.So begins Slippin' Into Darkness, a wild ride of terror combining therelentless suspense of Thomas Harris, the moody atmosphere of Twin Peaks,and the sad longing of a Bruce Springsteen ballad. But ultimately this bookis Norman Partridge, writing with the gloves off, taking horror and suspensein a direction all his own.

Amazon.com Review

His style is unique, to be sure, but Partridge is in the same ballpark as Joe Lansdale and Ed Gorman -- bright-colored comic book imagery, embattled and flawed protagonists, and a melancholy tone that seeps in around the edges. This story is reminiscent of "Twin Peaks": a sweet, lovely high-school girl stars in a scene of sex and violence that continues to haunt her male classmates long after her death. This time, though, "Laura Palmer" gets her revenge. The prose is vivid and satisfyingly detailed, the characters are crisply delineated, and the mood is like a sad rock-n-roll song with a good backbeat.

From Booklist

Eighteen years after high school, a former cheerleader turned "trailer trash" prostitute kills herself. Shortly thereafter, her ghost (or perhaps just her memory) becomes the focus of a dire set of events involving old classmates, from her admirers to her rival to the jocks who raped her, shattering her life. Their lives changed, too, and not for the better. One's a pornographer, one's a drugged-out insomniac, one changes husbands faster than hairstyles, and all lead meaningless, desperately despondent lives. In the 24 hours the story occupies, what they did and saw and condoned 18 years ago comes home with dreadful but condign intensity. This is a story of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and it is informed by the spirit and the lyrics of 1970s pop culture. Partridge writes with a rock beat--disco crossed with hard-slammin' punk--that gives the book a savage tempo in keeping with its horrific events. Dennis Winters

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