It isn’t much of a leap, then, to see the appeal of setting a horror novel in a retirement community, or upping the stakes and making it into a slasher story, which is exactly what Philip Fracassi does in “The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre.” (Weirdly, last month’s “Jenny Cooper Has a Secret” also is about a care home menaced by a maniac.)
You gotta love a title that lays it all out for you, and the book follows the expected trajectory: A mysterious assailant picks off residents one by one by at Autumn Springs. By virtue of having “a sixth sense when things aren’t right,” 78-year-old Rose DuBois, along with 76-year-old friend Beauregard Mason Miller, is drawn into finding out whodunit.
You see, the authorities don’t necessarily believe the deaths are murders. People dying isn’t unexpected in a retirement community — death is “hunkered in every shadow of every room,” just waiting — and the first few fatalities don’t attract much attention within that environment. So when Angela Forrest’s fall proves deadly, nobody questions anything. Except for Rose.
The reader knows how, because we are privy to the details of the slayings, which are sometimes elaborated from the victim’s point of view and sometimes the killer’s. Fracassi spends a fair amount of time (sometimes too much) setting up the murders, so you are at least acquainted with the soon-to-be-deceased. That’s nice, I guess, but do we need to know much of anything about characters who aren’t integral to the plot? Not really.
And there are too many of them. Sure, Autumn Springs has a big campus, and Fracassi wants to capture the breadth of a killer on the loose in such a place, but it’s obvious most of the characters are deployed as red herrings.
Also unnecessary? The killer-driven chapters, which start appearing a little over halfway through. That the killer delights in taunts and boasts (don’t they all?) is made clear by the increasingly elaborate murders. Adding the killer’s voice just pads an already too-long book.
I do appreciate Fracassi’s fondness for short chapters (one is a single sentence: “Honestly? I couldn’t have done it better myself.”). They keep things moving. Too bad he didn’t take a leaner approach overall. He would have had a killer book on his hands.