Cold Moon Over Babylon
Michael McDowell
Welcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy southern town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: fourteen-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach of the law. But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain of a kitchen sink, graves erupt from the local cemetery in an implacable march of terror . . . more.
My Rating:
Cold Moon Over Babylon is quintessential southern horror! Small town evil comes to life in a shocking opening in this classic from Michael McDowell.
It all starts with the seemingly unprovoked attack on young Margaret Larkin, an orphaned daughter being raised by her grandmother on their failing farm near the muddy waters of the local river. What proceeds is a story that grows darker still, very dark in fact, laced with old grudges, twisted minds and haunted souls. This novel goes there, it gets gruesome and all the while the dank, humid setting of the deep south builds the level of diabolical actions to a frenzy that makes the later part of this book run like an out of control locomotive.
It wasn’t hard to guess who the perpetrator was, but that wasn’t part of the mystery or the thrill here. In fact, knowing who it was brought the actions that followed up a notch to downright vicious and psychotic. It’s that part of the story that makes Cold Moon Over Babylon a thrill ride, because all along innocent lives are being ruined, and it makes you, as a reader, want to hop through the pages and club this villain over the head yourself. Any horror novel that can incite some murderous intent in the reader seems like a good horror novel.
Cold Moon Over Babylon is pulp horror: gruesome, malignant and foul.
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