The Neighborhood

In books like Nightmare and Borderland, Epperson has shown a talent for non-supernatural horror that is involving and often psychologically insightful. Here, she turns that talent toward painting a macabre picture of an all-American neighborhood seen mostly from the perspective of Abra Ahrens, a nurse assigned to home-care for Thomas Conlan. Abra is told that Conlan has AIDS, but he really has smallpox-deadly, highly communicable and supposedly eradicated. And that's just the beginning. Abra's new neighbors include Zane Campbell, who has retired from police work after being shot in the face and now handcrafts prosthetic eyes; the family of missing schoolgirl Cindy Melo; and Craig Peterwell, who collects parrots and cockatoos and expresses his dissatisfaction with life by breaking his wife's limbs with a two-by-four. Although the smallpox plot line is underutilized, the multiple threads concerning Conlan's neighbors-and Abra's mother, psychologist Lee Ahrens-are much better developed and fit together tightly. The characters are original and convincing: Zane is compelling, and Craig is a terrifying grotesque whose chilling insanity causes progressive damage. New horrors unfold, and the mystery of Cindy Melo's disappearance is solved, largely thanks to Abra and Zane. Epperson mixes horror and thriller elements-with dashes of realistic romance and truly sick comedy-into a gripping, eclectic read. (Nov.)