From Publishers Weekly
A festering supernatural scourge provides a group of aging Gen-Xers with one last opportunity to revive the idealism of their youth in Spector's horror redux of The Big Chill. In the 1980s, a band of seven high school rebels who called themselves the Underground accidentally accessed a dimension of evil during a drug-fueled party at leader Josh Custis's ancestral Virginia mansion. The event left one dead, one trapped in the dark realm and the rest forever conscious of the hazards of wayward youth. Twenty years later, Josh persuades the survivors to help save their buddy Justin, who's just forced his way across the dimensional divide, though this will involve neutralizing the Great Night, the evil overmind of the other dimension, and freeing the souls of slaves and other sacrificial victims who have been fed to it by generations of Custis men in exchange for political power. While the two main plots—the otherworldly rescue mission initiated by the Underground, and the Custis family's legacy of supernatural evil—never quite mesh, Spector (To Bury the Dead) writes (and occasionally overwrites) with the brio and energy of his splatterpunk heyday to yank readers in and keep their attention. Agent, Scott Agostoni at William Morris. (Apr. 16) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"In To Bury the Dead, Craig Spector has achieved a mature, hard-won narrative authority that will be deeply gratifying to all, as well as to the many thousands of readers who have enjoyed his earlier work. The novel moves its protagonist from believable heroism into an equally convincing moral darkness terrible to behold, and it carries us with it every step along the way. This is what horror wants to be when it grows up, a vision of tragic inevitability rooted in character, ruthless and inexorably unfolding, yet shot through with the possibility of grace."--Peter Straub
"Craig Spector's solo debut is a riveting marvel: funny, powerful, and wise. Amid aching emotion are insights almost unbearably poignant, truths transcendent. The writing is exquisitely uneasy and holds the reader spellbound in a harrowing opera of loss and hope. This is a complex world where courage is religion and all things burn except faith. Spector has written a stunning novel."--Richard Christian Matheson on To Bury the Dead
"Spector (The Light at the End) is a strong writer who convincingly re-creates the dark, often gruesome world of paramedics and firefighters. Most impressive is his exploration into Paul's character and how ordinary people cope with extraordinary grief and horror. Not for the faint of heart, Spector's latest is for lovers of the best psychological thrillers, along the lines of Ruth Rendell's."--Publishers Weekly
Book Description
Once upon a time there were seven good friends. They were the forgotten little brothers and sisters of the Big Chill generation, born in the turbulent year when the flames of Watts lit the City of Angels and napalm kissed the war-torn skies of Vietnam. They called themselves The Underground. For Justin and Mia, Josh and Caroline, Amy, Seth, and Simon, there was nothing but drugs and music, combined with boundless cynicism and a deep yearning for something that really mattered.
As graduation rolled around, they knew they would drift apart. By Labor Day weekend, there was just enough time to throw one last private party. But where? Creepy old Custis Manor was temporarily uninhabited. So they motored out to the moldering southern plantation, ready to party the night away.
They could not have known that on the other side of the mirrors, something watched: a corrupt, voracious force, neither fully living nor truly dead. It was a soulless spirit of evil that had spent more than two hundred years cultivating its terrible powers.
It was the Great Night. And Custis Manor was its domain.
In one terrifying night their lives were forever shattered. One died. One disappeared. The survivors were scarred both inside and out. For twenty years, they couldn't face the truth of what had really happened.
Until now.
One has gone back, and through the mirror. And now the remaining friends are forced to confront the demons of their own pasts and a greater nightmare beyond their comprehension. Together they must face the Great Night, lay waste to its vicious legacy, and free the thousands of souls still trapped there, as the reunited Underground meets the Underground Railroad of souls.
A truly original metaphysical thriller---gory and intense, satisfying and unique, Underground is a startling vision of the nightmare dimension from one of the true masters of the genre.
About the Author
Craig Spector is a bestselling author and screenwriter, with millions of copies of his ten books in print, including reprints in seven languages. His previous work includes the psychological thriller To Bury the Dead and the modern vampire classic The Light at the End. Spector's film and television work includes projects for Beacon Pictures, ABC, NBC, Fox Television, Hearst Entertainment, Davis Entertainment Television, and the Wonderful World of Disney. His last feature film project, Repairman Jack, is an adaptation of the bestselling F. Paul Wilson novel The Tomb. Underground is Spector's eleventh book. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Underground FROM THE PUBLISHER
Once upon a time there were seven good friends. They were the forgotten little brothers and sisters of the Big Chill generation, born in the turbulent year when the flames of Watts lit the City of Angels and napalm kissed the war-torn skies of Vietnam. They called themselves The Underground. For Justin and Mia, Josh and Caroline, Amy, Seth, and Simon, there was nothing but drugs and music, combined with boundless cynicism and a deep yearning for something that really mattered.
As graduation rolled around, they knew they would drift apart. By Labor Day weekend, there was just enough time to throw one last private party. But where? Creepy old Custis Manor was temporarily uninhabited. So they motored out to the moldering southern plantation, ready to party the night away.
They could not have known that on the other side of the mirrors, something watched: a corrupt, voracious force, neither fully living nor truly dead. It was a soulless spirit of evil that had spent more than two hundred years cultivating its terrible powers.
It was the Great Night. And Custis Manor was its domain.
In one terrifying night their lives were forever shattered. One died. One disappeared. The survivors were scarred both inside and out. For twenty years, they couldn't face the truth of what had really happened.
Until now.
One has gone back, and through the mirror. And now the remaining friends are forced to confront the demons of their own pasts and a greater nightmare beyond their comprehension. Together they must face the Great Night, lay waste to its vicious legacy, and free the thousands of souls still trapped there, as the reunited Underground meets theUnderground Railroad of souls.
A truly original metaphysical thriller--gory and intense, satisfying and unique, Underground is a startling vision of the nightmare dimension from one of the true masters of the genre.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
Spector (To Bury the Dead, 2000, etc.) premises his latest horror novel on the moral dilemma of souls trapped in a Virginia mansion. Seven rebellious kids at Stillson High call themselves the Underground to signal their disdain for the school's "tidal pool of fractious cliques." Come graduation, they sneak into historic Custis Manor for a beer bust. Among them: Justin Van Slyke, his beloved Mia Cheever, and Josh Custis, who has ties to the fabled old mansion. Fellow member Simon Baxter, feeling left out of the party, spikes their wine with ten tabs of LSD, and soon all are on a bad trip. Mia dies, apparently having fallen through a big mirror into another world. Justin tries to save her by going through the mirror, but it closes, severing his hand. Twenty years later, the remaining five regroup at Stillson Beach for news about their missing friends. Justin's hand turns up at Custis Manor, and Chief Medical Examiner Elizabeth Bergen finds that it's not only alive but has a pulse (the author's best device). Flashback three centuries to Silas Custis, who buys a huge tract of prime Virginia land and imports slaves to work his plantation. One slave, Papa Josephus, survives endless whippings with no sign of pain; it turns out he's the "Great Night, practitioner of a particularly vile and mysterious amalgam of African and Caribbean witchcraft." So Silas joins Papa Josephus as an apprentice sorcerer and learns all sorts of ghastly stuff before he feels strong enough to boil up his mentor in the big stockpot for spells and himself become the Great Night. Time comes when Silas, age 167 but looking 60, chooses to murder his 800 slaves. Although he burns and boils them, their souls become locked upin the attic of Custis Manor. Now the five Undergrounders return to the manor and find themselves wandering through the very Underworld itself. Onward to a cosmic explosion, gigantic storm and fireworks. Grisly fun for the fans.
Art & Photography
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