The Angel of Indian Lake

Jones (Don’t Fear the Reaper) brings his Jade Daniels trilogy to a bloody end in this riotously entertaining tale. It’s 2023, eight years after 17-year-old slasher movie aficionado Jade was both unable to save her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, from the gruesome events now remembered as the Independence Day Massacre and unjustly imprisoned as the perpetrator of the bloodbath. Older and wiser, Jade’s working as a history teacher at her old high school in Proofrock when things start going to hell in a handbasket again: more local teenagers turn up slaughtered, a raging fire consumes the forest surrounding town, and a spectral figure dubbed “the Angel” haunts the shores of the lake that town fathers dammed up to submerge the original settlement on which Proofrock was founded. Jones weaves in plenty of clues and red herrings to keep the reader guessing just who is responsible for all the mayhem before igniting a climax that plays out like a horror film library exploding its holdings in a fiery spectacular. At the center of it all is Jade, a descendant of the Indigenous tribes displaced by Proofrock’s settlers who embraces her outsider status and plays the perfect guide through this tale’s weird terrain. This is a worthy finale to a series that has expanded the horizons of contemporary horror. Agent: BJ Robbins, BJ Robbins Literary. (Mar.)