The Taken

I am forever on a quest to find good horror authors, and as a rule I almost always prefer the Brits. I'm also forever on a quest to find good female horror authors, and Sarah Pinborough has stepped into that sparsely-populated spot rather well. I discovered her through Dorchester/Leisure's large line of mass market horror paperbacks. Not only do I love the way Brits tend to write, but I also love English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish settings. In this story, Alex(andra) is a young woman who, after the demise of her marriage, has come to stay for awhile with an aunt in the rural English village of Watterow. One of the most startling and effective devices in this story is the fact, known only to Alex and to the reader, that Alex is dying of ovarian cancer, and dying quickly. She only has a few months left, and the cancer is the real reason her marriage ended, although no one knows this because Alex has decided to keep the cancer a secret from everyone for as long as possible, until she literally cannot hide it anymore. For the reader, knowing this and being inside Alex's head as she struggles with her pain, despair and internal rage, brings out an intimacy and dark edge to the story that really changes one's perception of everything that takes place. Not really ready to deal with anything beyond the very immediate present, Alex runs straight into an old secret the town has covered up for decades. All Alex knows at first is that a supposedly long-dead, angelic-looking 10-year old girl named Melanie Parr has something to do with a sudden rash of shockingly violent deaths in the once-peaceful little town, and that whenever the girl's name is mentioned the locals - including Alex's own cousin - glance at each other, clam up, and radiate fear from every fiber. Who on earth was this girl, Alex wonders, and what kind of sinister hold does a little girl lost in a storm 30 years ago have on these people? Who, too, is "The Catcher Man" people whisper about - often in the same breath? Once a pagan forest legend about a fertility god, twisted into a sinister being who steals children, it poses an interesting if indirect question about what kind of genuine power the human `thought form' can give to something and truly make it real. I was thoroughly captivated by this book and have already ordered Pinborough's other novels. She's definitely one author horror fans should be watching for if they haven't discovered her already.

Sarah Pinborough impresses me each time I pick up one of her novels. She lays her cards face-up on the table and if you dont like it, you can just piss off. Classic ghost/revenge tale with a twist on the British version of the American Boogeyman. Melanie Parr disappears in a violent thunderstorm 30 years ago. Shes not an ordinary girl ( picture Damien from The Omen without that pesky son of the devil stuff and the kid form The Bad Seed). Secrets abound in this sleepy British town. A little predictable on the revenge front. People start dying and although the gore factor is pretty much nil, the deaths are imaginative. So how did she come back? Enter the myth of The Catcher Man who steals bad kids. how does Alex, the main protagonist, fit into all this? Shes dying of ovarian cancer and unbeknowist to her has a special link to the Catcher Man. And whats up with all those creepy kids? I really dont want to give to much away but this book is really a must read for anyone who likes a good scare with quite a different twist

A small town in the remote British countryside falls under seige by a small army of malevolent ghost-children. Melanie Parr, the leader, blames certain residents of the town for her death 30 years earlier, and has returned to claim vengeance. This is what I knew about the novel before reading it, and it is more or less what I expected. This alone amounted to a good 3-star horror novel - mysterious events, scares, gore, etc. presented competently by a good writer. However, what I didn't expect was that this isn't what the novel is truly about. Intertwined, yet effectively hidden for the majority of the novel, is another story, more important and more compelling in my opinion, where the horror hits at a much more personal level. The author masterfully conceals the subtle, more effective horrors of this hidden story among the more visceral, in-your-face terror found in most of the novel. Aside from a few hints that there might be something more going on, I was pleasantly surprised by the direction the author took the story. Upon finishing the novel, I closed the book and thought about it... for hours. This is atypical for me as I usually eagerly jump right in to the next book, or at least browse my collection considering my next read. Only a handful of stories have ever had this effect on me. The novel went from 3-star to 4-star after finishing it, but after contemplating some of the plot points my opinion continued to rise. While the initial pretense of the story is the common good vs evil, monsters vs innocent, army of ghost-children vs sleepy town theme, the true story here is much more complex. A unique story disguised as standard horror fare, I was won over by the outstanding plot - 4 and 1/2 stars!

Thirty years ago, ten-year old Melanie Parr disappeared in a violent thunderstorm. Now she seems to have returned to seek revenge, along with a group of children in another raging thunderstorm. The inhabitants of the small town of Watterrow, England soon begin to die in horrible ways. Alex, a woman afflicted with cancer, seems to have a connection with the children. Along with her cousin Paul and his friend Simon, they'll try to get to the bottom of this, uncovering the town's darkest secret. A creepy and enjoyable read. For her fourth book, Pinborough took the ghost story to another level with The Taken and avoided falling into the clichés of the genre. We learn that Melanie Parr wasn't some poor innocent girl killed off by evil people; she was a monster herself when she lived. There's a lot going on here; Alex is dealing with the reality of her imminent death, the town and its residents are cut off from the world because of the endless thunderstorm, strange children are playing in the streets around the town, meanwhile, the body count escalates and starts hitting a little too close to home. All this contributes to give the reader a sense of all-encompassing doom. Some of the deaths are pretty gruesome and inventive (the death involving fishhooks stayed with me for some time after reading the book). I also liked the legend of the Catcher Man; a tale told by parents to scare their kids into behaving. Does the Catcher Man really exist? Is Melanie really back from the dead? And where do all these kids wandering about come from? There are a lot of characters to follow, but the focus is mainly on Alex, whose terminal cancer allows here to go between life and death. She's a very sympathetic character and Pinborough develops her fully, along with Alex's cousin, Paul and his mother, Mary, who seems to know a lot more than she's letting on about what happened thirty years ago. The story moves at a quick pace and is always very engaging and has genuinely scary moments. The flashbacks reveal some of the most intriguing parts of the story. Usually with a story like this, the third act is often a let-down. I was glad that it wasn't the case here. For the third part of the book leading to the grand finale, she went in a very interesting direction and brought the story to a superb climax. If you're a fan of Pinborough's, you have to read The Taken; it's a solid effort and one of horror's best books so far this year. If you enjoy ghost stories, this isn't a conventional ghost story about a little girl haunting a town; it's much more than that, and should even satisfy avid readers of the genre. Highly recommended!