House of Bones

Dale Bailey is such a good writer. Even with such a contrived plot the book was a pleasure to read. Basically this is The Haunting of Hill House transferred to the 'hood. Retired millionaire Ramsay Lomax has purchased the soon to be demolished Dreamlands, the vestiges of a 1960s vintage high rise housing project that turned out to be more of a nightmare than a blessing to the inner city impoverished it was meant to house. He's invited four guests that all have some connection with Dreamlands and to each other, but only Ramsay knows what the connections are. As far as the four guests are concerned they are all strangers to each other. Each person is deeply emotionally scarred and has been running from something in their past. In their show more own way they are all failures. Their failures give Ramsay some sway over each person, they each want something that Lomax promises to provide, but only if they will stay in Dreamlands with him for two weeks in the dead of a Chicago winter cut off from the outer world. But what does Lomax get out of all this? He's not saying. What is each person's connection to Dreamlands? He's also not telling.

The novel plumbs the psychological depths of each character in excruciating detail. We gradually get to know each one and what their secrets are. In the meantime the evil that is pent up in Dreamlands is waiting for each one to weaken to a point where it can take over.

Pluses: prose is excellent, Bailey is a true literary horror writer. Characters are real; we believe these are actual people. There is real supernatural evil here, not some BS natural explanation for what is going on or some weak ending based on deux ex machina. The author makes you believe this is possible. The suspense is sustained; the novel becomes a real page turner.

There were a couple of weaknesses in the novel. The constant jumping from each character and forwards and backwards in time, while not confusing, seemed to take some of the steam out of the pace. Bailey was reaching for sustained suspense by only gradually feeding us tidbits, but really overdid it. The plot is pretty contrived and derivative. There are countless mysteries, spook stories, movies, etc. based on the "locked in a haunted house" theme. Bailey's talent as a prose stylist is the thing that saves it. In a lesser writer's hands the entire thing would have fallen apart. He is somewhat of an expert on the literary haunted house story having written a book about it. I suspect that is why he decided to have a go at it.

Bailey deserves to be better known. His output, while not prolific, is all quality stuff, well thought out and executed. His two mass market novels are both OP but pretty easy to find. So far he seems to excel at the short form and his one short story collection is a solid five star. He shows up in a lot of Night Shade anthologies. I do really like his one novel length collaboration with Jack Slay Jr though. I only wish he wrote more stuff. show less

There is no more tired and overdone trope in the horror genre as the haunted house. I’ve read so many versions of these types of stories that it’s hard to get excited about it. Unfortunately this novel is just one of the many of this sub-genre that fall short. In about the most cliché of all possible ways of doing a haunted house story, Dreamland was a large house that was abandoned and partially dismantled before being resurrected by a wealthy man with an agenda. Even that aspect of the haunted house story has been done and done again. The story moves very slowly and is a bit of a yawner. There is just no new ground taken on in this story. The end result is a novel that is uninspiring and not worth reading. I would skip this show more one.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street show less

Painfully slow, it tries to hard to be something more than scary and ends up something less.