I know Chizmar through Chasing the Boogeyman, a riveting serial killer novel, and the Gwendy’s Button Box trilogy, a wonderful set of novels that leapfrog through various genres. Two of the Gwendy books were written with Stephen King, and speaking of King, he says, on the cover of Memorials, that Chizmar’s stores are, “creepy, eerie, and propulsive. Noboby does suburban horror better.”

When it comes to Memorials, King, who knows a thing or two about horror, couldn’t be more right. This is a creepy, compulsively readable novel. The setup is fiendishly simple: three college students set off on a week-long journey into the Pennsylvania backroads to film a documentary on roadside memorials. The three students, two men and a woman, are thrown together by happenstance, but soon form an inseparable bond. Chizmar does a brilliant job of letting us get to know them, and like them, through their interactions with each other and the people they meet along the way.

As an aside, do you get nervous when a horror author makes you care about characters at the beginning, because you just know they’re going to do terrible things to them eventually. Just me?

Anyway, things soon take a sinister, unsettling turn, as their trip into the Appalachian countryside becomes filled with strange symbols, unexplained events, and locals who may not be what they seem. Chizmar takes his time, but sets the hooks in deep. Memorials is a dark, twisty thriller not to be missed.