Since his debut novel (Heart-Shaped Box), Joe Hill has been hailed as a talented writer with some entertaining novels. The fact that he was Stephen King’s son just added to his aura. Since I’ve not been a fan of King’s later work, I was a little hesitant to jump on the Joe Hill bandwagon. But I decided to grab his latest book (Horns) and see what I thought. And I was pleasantly surprised. While the book did have some faults and was obviously influenced by Stephen King, it was a solid novel that had some really good parts. Let’s see who has the Horns.
Ignatius (Ig) Perrish is still a little drunk (again) and starting his hangover when he wakes up to discover that he has horns on his head. And the horns seem to convince people to tell him their worst secrets. He can also suggest things to people that influences what they do. His live-in girlfriend confesses an affair with his ex-best friend, his parents confess that they want him gone and you don’t want to know what his older brother confesses.
Ig is a pariah. His last girlfriend (Merrin) was found raped and murdered hours after they broke up with a vicious fight. Ig swears that he was passed out drunk at the time of the murder, but no one believes him. And when the crime lab burns down before the DNA tests can be run, he is set free on a technicality, but he also has no chance to prove his innocence. But now his powers let him know who was behind the murder and Ig has a devil of a time deciding how to handle this new information.
The story is basically structured in three parts. The beginning lays out the current setup and introduces the characters. Then we go back in time to when Ig met Merrin as well as his ex-best friend Lee. We also learn a lot more about Ig’s older brother Terry. Then the final part covers Ig’s actions after he learns what happens.
One of the things that Hill does wonderfully in the novel is show us the crime from multiple people’s points of view. With each viewing we learn new wrinkles and nuances and motivations. Since each telling is from a specific person’s POV, we see things through their eyes. And when we see the same thing through another character’s POV, our perception of what actually happens changes.
Overall, it was a really good novel, but I was a little disappointed by the ending. It seemed like a fairly banal ending where it was decided that there needed to be a big fight scene to resolve things. That felt completely out of place and was detrimental to the overall story. But the first 90% of the book was really good. Hill does a great job with characterizations and (as I mentioned above) the way he handled the murder that kicks off the events in the book was superb. The book was good enough to make me want to read his first novel and look forward to future books. Recommended.