It’s 1982, and small-town Viv has big-city ambitions. Mostly, she just wants to get out of the town where she has lived all her life; she has a vague ambition to move to New York and become an actress, so off she goes in spite of her mother’s protestations. One dodgy hitchhiker later and she ends up at the Sun Down Motel, a run down establishment in the town of Fell, New York. The hotel manager offers her free board in exchange for running the night shift. Viv accepts, but soon discovers not all is what it seems. Strange things are afoot at the Sun Down Motel. Twenty-five years later, Viv’s niece Carly finds herself in Fell, looking for her aunt who has gone missing all those years ago. Where has Vivian gone? And what, exactly, is happening at the Sundown Motel?
I like crime fiction, and I like horror. St James tends to combine the two in her novels, so on paper this seems like a book I would enjoy: a murder mystery and a haunted hotel make for good bedfellows – in theory, because the effect in reality is underwhelming. It’s less of a genre crossover and more of a frankenbook that doesn’t really seem to know what it is trying to be.
The hotel itself is the main character. It doesn’t take Viv long to find out, during the dreadfully dull and long nightshifts, that the deceased have never checked out of the place. Viv can smell cigarette smoke even when nobody’s around. The doors of the hotel fly open even when locked, and frequently she hears strange footsteps when the place is empty.
So of course, like any sane woman, Viv goes out to investigate.
Fell is a small town with a disproportionate number of dead women, and Viv seems to be the only one who is interested in how or why this is happening. People warn her off, close ranks. The same happens to Carly, to a lesser degree, twenty-five years on.
Viv and Carly are both kind of dull as characters; blank vessels to carry the story, vapid vessels to carry the plot. The same goes for most of the characters around them. It’s also kind of predictable; once Viv hones in on a suspect it’s not much of a mystery anymore, and the conclusion of the plot is underwhelming and uninspired.
The book isn’t without merit; I liked that almost all of the characters are women and, though they’re not particularly well-developed as characters, they show grit and determination where men don’t. It was an easy read; it didn’t really grab me, but that might just have been due to the fact that I had a busy week. All in all, though, it was pretty average. I had fun reading it, but I doubt it’ll really stick with me.