Lost Man's Lane

I picked this up without knowing anything about it other than it was set in Indiana and I needed it to complete a challenge. It ended up being a great decision. I loved it. It reminded me of King or Robert McCammon's A Boy's Life. I liked the characters so much I had to keep from reading ahead to find out their fates. The climbing scenes were bright spots of humor that broke up underlying horror of the missing girl and her abductor. It was genuinely a well crafted tale.

This is terrific - one of my favorite 2024 reads.

The essence of the plot: a newly-licensed teen driver (Marshall) is pulled over by a cop who gives the kid the creeps and a ticket. In his rearview mirror, the kid spots a teenage girl wearing the uniform of a local ice crying in the backseat of the patrol car. Turns out, the girl is missing. When Marshall tells others what he saw and shows the ticket, there's no cop by that name and no fingerprints on the ticket. And it moves from there.

It's a small-town coming of age that's Gen X/older Millennial nostalgic (lots of 90s pop cultural references). There's a sweet mother/son relationship depicted, friendships forged as teens that deepen into lifelong best friends, and a crush that evolves show more into true love.

But there's more: the plot also carries a a supernatural aspect with twists on lore: demon snakes, time-traveling ghosts/shapeshifters, and maybe even a nod to vampires/undead.

Somehow this supernatural coming-of-age smashup works beautifully. It's 500+ pages, but I was all in it and sorry when it ended. This might appeal to readers of Joe Hill or Stephen King, but I think it may be better written than both (and isn't as graphic).

Highly recommended. show less

Stephen King calls Scott Carson a master and Dean Koontz says "eerie, gripping storytelling". Since, they're two of my favorite authors, I bought this book! Evidently, I also own his first book that I haven't read yet, so I will be definitely be looking through my bookcases to find it! I loved this book, it reminded me of King's coming of age books. Marshall Miller, the teenage son of a single mother is pulled over literally fifteen minutes after he gets his license. He sees a young woman in the back seat of the cop's car crying. Later, she goes missing. The problem is that no local cop named Maddox exists.

A very enjoyable coming of age/ghost story.

Armed with his new driver's license, Marshall Miller promptly gets pulled over by a strange, over-the-top cop in February, 1999. Marshall notices a very upset young girl in the backset of the officer's car and finds that it's strange she's wearing the uniform of an ice cream shop which is only open during the summer. Turns out, the young girl is missing, but the cop, who gives Miller a ticket, doesn't seem to exist.

A local PI, Noah Storm, comes into the story to help Marshall hunt down this elusive officer, but there's more to Noah than meets the eye. Throw in a female best friend, her father who's flipping out about Y2K, and typical teenage drama, and you've got a pretty good tale.

The story is show more told in first person, which I typically prefer, and author Scott Carson does it well. He's got a breezy style but every now and then delivers a rather clunky sentence. Maybe the clunkiness comes from missing punctuation or something, but this is a relatively minor issue.

I would certainly be open to reading more of Carson's work. show less

A rela page-turner featuring a 16 year old boy caught in the web of an evil power.