Wolf Flow

Rating:
Summary: I Palindrome I
Review: The editorial review above really ought to contain a spoiler warning, so completely does it reveal the plot of this novel. Many of Jeter's usual trademarks are here, such as the generally unsympathetic characters and dirt-under-the-nails setting, but this time things seem rather slight and under-explored. It's rare that any book could use another hundred pages so in that sense this is a rare book indeed, since there are plenty of areas the author needed to expand upon (although not necessarily explain, as the mysterious nature of this thin slice of horror is very effective). The denouement rushes in as rapidly as the car from which Mike is tossed into the desert, exacerbated by the breakneck speed of Jeter's prose, as crisp and sharp as any of the scalpels here used to gruesome effect. Stephen King would probably have taken 1200 pages to tell this tale, spelling everything out along the way; K.W. Jeter may have leaned too far the other way, shaving more from his story than was healthy for it. A nose above the usual horror fiction, but not Jeter at his nerve-jangling best.