“You have a choice. Stay and do your job or take your family and get out. Make this decision RIGHT NOW. You won’t get another warning.”
Schreiber’s second book a serial killer breaks loose in a hospital that’s shutting down and goes on a terrorizes and manipulates people into killing each other but . . . it is not the serial killer that the skeleton staff at Tanglewood Memorial Hospital need to worry about . . . its what’s inside him. . . .
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TITLE:
EAT THE DARK: A NOVEL
WRITER:
by Joe Schreiber
GENRE:
Horror Fiction, Suspense Fiction.
DESCRIPTORS:
Serial Murderers, Serial Murder, Manipulation, Terrorize, Terror, Games, Hospital, Doctors, Technicians, Police, MRI Technician, Tanglewood Memorial Hospital, Family, Marital Affair,
CHARACTERS
Mike Hughes, An MRI technician working the last shift at Tanglewood Memorial Hospital.
Sarah Hughes, Mike’s wife, she’s afraid he is having another affair.
Eli Hughes, Mike and Sarah’s son.
Steve Calhoun, The alcoholic security guard at Tanglewood.
Jolie Braun, Another MRI Technician.
Frank Snow, A serial killer known for giving his victims one chance to escape — which they never take.
Dr. Walker, The doctor who arranged for an MRI for Frank Snow.
SUMMARY:
Mike Hughes is working Tanglewood Memorial Hospital’s last shift before it closes when a small squad of police rush a man in to get an MRI reading. The man is the notorious serial killer named Frank Snow. As Mike loads Frank into the MRI machine, the killer slips him a piece of paper with a child-like scrawl in black marker on it. It warns him to take his family and leave or else. A moment later, Sarah and Eli arrive surprising Mike.
At that moment Frank goes into convulsions. Instead of following the note, Mike shoves his family out and tries to help save the patient. It turns out to be the wrong move. Before Mike get his family out of the building, the power is cut and the doors lock. Mike, his family, the skeleton crew and the cops are all trapped in the hospital building with Frank Snow. And Snow? Despite the misadventure in the MRI, he’s now doing fine and setting up his maze for the scared trapped people to run.
Frank Snow, it turns out, doesn’t seek to kill the people stranded in the hospital, he sets up instructions — things they must do to stay alive and runs them through the building to each new message like lab rats. He terrorizes them with the threat of his presence and the things he demands they do — he puts pressure on his few lab rats and then watches them explode.
But he has special plans for the boy Eli.
APPEAL:
Joe Schrieber writes in a clear spare prose. He puts in only enough description to convey the scene and then moves n to the action or dialog. The novel is short — under 200 pages in trade paperback. The chapters are short and the size of the paragraphs vary a great deal, but are often broken up by dialog or thoughts in italics.
Eat the Dark brings in Frank Snow quickly and begins to build tension until the ending. The monstrous character of Frank is eluded to early on but only slowly does Mike learn or discover, just how he operates — including his note to let Mike escape if he leaves right then.
The story is told in third person past tense limited omniscience. Most of the time you see events from Mike, Sarah’s point of view but there are times when he switches to Eli, Steve and Jolie.
Steve and Sarah are fully fleshed out characters, going through a crisis in their marriage — although Mike is only vaguely aware of it — before they have to fight to get themselves and Eli out of the hospital. Both draw from great reserves of inner strength to save Eli when otherwise they might have quit.
READALIKES:
Joe Schreiber wrote another horror novel called Chasing the Dead which reads a lot like this one. Its about a woman who learns that her daughter has been abducted and she has only the rest of that night to do as the kidnapper says, dig up a body and drive through a series of forgotten New England towns. Unfortunately it’s a supernatural trap.
Eat the Dark read a lot like Stephen King’s The Mist
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