Heart Shaped Box
by Joe Hill
Rock star Judas Coyne is a collector of the bizarre and the grotesque. He has a used hangman's noose, a cookbook for cannibals, a snuff movie. So naturally when he learns there's a ghost for sale on the internet, Jude doesn't think twice. Some impulses require no consideration.
But this ghost is different from the spirits that have haunted Jude most of his life: the abusive father he fled as a boy, the bandmates he betrayed, the lover he abandoned and who killed herself. This ghost isn't just in his head; it's real. Delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box, the latest addition to Jude's collection means to chase him to the limits of sanity -- and beyond.
If ever there was a case of caveat emptor, this is it....
In addition to being a supernatural thriller, I also think it's a story on a classic American theme -- the possibility of reinvention, of casting off the person you used to be, and creating a new and more satisfying identity for yourself. Because before he was Judas Coyne, my hero was Justin Cowzynski, a lonely, desperate country kid, a person so unhappy he finally could not stand to be himself anymore, and so had to become someone else. The book is at least in part an investigation into whether or not anyone ever really walks away from their past clean. Furthermore, it also features a nicely pornographic sprinkling of goth sex, and several scenes of violent dog-on-man combat.
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Rock star Judas Coyne is a collector of the bizarre and the grotesque. He has a used hangman's noose, a cookbook for cannibals, a snuff movie. So naturally when he learns there's a ghost for sale on the internet, Jude doesn't think twice. Some impulses require no consideration. But this ghost is different from the spirits that have haunted Jude most of his life: the abusive father he fled as a boy, the bandmates he betrayed, the lover he abandoned and who killed herself. This ghost isn't just in his head; it's real. Delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box, the latest addition to Jude's collection means to chase him to the limits of sanity -- and beyond. If ever there was a case of caveat emptor, this is it.... In addition to being a supernatural thriller, I also think it's a story on a classic American theme -- the possibility of reinvention, of casting off the person you used to be, and creating a new and more satisfying identity for yourself. Because before he was Judas Coyne, my hero was Justin Cowzynski, a lonely, desperate country kid, a person so unhappy he finally could not stand to be himself anymore, and so had to become someone else. The book is at least in part an investigation into whether or not anyone ever really walks away from their past clean. Furthermore, it also features a nicely pornographic sprinkling of goth sex, and several scenes of violent dog-on-man combat.