Synopsis:
Inside Marburg State Park lies the remains of Camp Southwoods, where four counselors were slain twenty-six years ago. Their murderer, Douglas Lee Carver, has become a local boogieman with a chilling nursery rhyme attributed to his name. Locals believe the now-abandoned camp is haunted.
Ranger Colt Mitcham, leader of the Ranger Rescue Unit for Marburg State Park, ignores the ghost stories of Camp Southwoods. He has real-world problems to worry about, like apprehending the person who's been vandalizing the grounds, finding a missing local man who's disappeared inside the park, and making sure that his team secures the park before the rapidly approaching blizzard – the worst storm in years – unleashes hell across the land.
But when a member of Colt’s team is found murdered, Colt begins to wonder if the tales about Camp Southwoods are true. Has Douglas Lee Carver returned? Or is there someone else out there? Someone with a personal axe to grind against Colt and his team, hoping to use the urban legends as a cover for their crimes and keep what happened at Camp Southwoods three decades ago from being exposed?
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☑ Creepy cover
☑ Pennsylvania state park bracing for a wicked winter storm
☑ Abandoned kids’ camp with a horrific history
I’ll
admit it: I definitely judge a book by its cover, and after being drawn to the
creepy cover of Who’s Out There by Westley Smith, my interest was piqued.
Then, I read the synopsis: a Pennsylvania state park that houses the remains of
a sinister summer camp; an impending epic snowstorm; a ghostly and ghastly murderer
on the loose. MORE interested! These checkboxes filled, I jumped in and by page
three, I was hooked. My advice for
anyone who’s interested in reading Who’s Out There is to clear the
calendar because it’s a page-turning thrill ride…but one where you don’t really
trust the ride operator to get you out unscathed.
In
the years I lived in Pennsylvania, I visited lots of glorious state parks, so my
memories along with the excellent descriptions written by author Westley Smith,
carried me back. (Bonus: one of my favorite
PA parks, Ohiopyle, even got a mention.) Smith adds a looming wicked winter
storm and a missing person to the mix, and readers are immediately immersed in
the setting.
Where
Smith’s writing shines in Who’s Out There is detailing the winter storm,
which is totally believable in its power and intensity (especially since that
part of the US just suffered a similar snowfall). He uses just the right dose
of figurative language to create some evocative scenes, and that plus the
ever-intensifying storm really ratchet up the suspense and anxiety. Like near-frozen
flies on the wall, readers watch the horrors unfold because no matter how
loudly we yell DON’T DO THAT, the characters just don’t listen.
Careful
readers will notice subtle clues the author provides that help point to the guilty,
but he’s also clever at misleading readers, tugging us this way and that,
creating distrust of nearly every single character. Who’s Out There has
a good-sized cast (well, it does at the beginning. HA!), so I jotted down names
to keep everyone straight. This was convenient for my sleuthing because as the
body count quickly stacks up, I crossed names off the list and could narrow the
suspects. (Warning: the murders are particularly violent and gruesome, but they’re
not overly graphic in depictions.) By the end, I wasn’t shocked by the whodunit
(well, I was half-shocked: well-done, Mr. Smith), but I was shocked by the
depth of the whydunit. Holy guacamole. It’s complicated.
From
an editing perspective, Who’s Out There would have benefited from additional
work. There are more errors and typos than I’m comfortable with in a final
copy, and fine-tuning would have helped because some character and killer actions
don’t make sense, with some scenes bordering on providing deus ex machina
solutions. There’s also considerable need for readers to suspend their disbelief
and just roll with the story without getting caught in the details, but roll we
do! I was flipping pages at a furious pace to find out how things would turn
out.
I am certain that readers will enjoy the fast-paced madness of Who’s Out There. Sure, it provides readers with a bit of a Scooby-Doo-like, big-picture explanation, but who doesn’t love Scooby Doo (rhetorical)? Besides, the unconventional and satisfying conclusion of Who’s Out There is refreshingly different from the expected or what we’ve all read in other thrillers. Again, well done, Mr. Smith. Well done.
Author Bio:
Westley Smith is the author of the crime thrillers Some Kind of Truth (Wicked House Publishing) and In the Pale Light (Watertower Hill Publishing). In the Pale Light landed on IngramSpark’s #1 pre-order charts in the mystery, thriller, and hard-boiled detective category. He is also the author of the psychological thriller, They Came at Night (Watertower Hill Publishing). He has two self-published horror novels, Along Came the Tricksters and All Hallows Eve.
Writing since he was ten, his first short story, "Off to War," was published nationally at sixteen. His short stories have recently appeared in On the Premise and Unveiling Nightmares. He was the runner-up contestant in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s Mysterious Photograph Contest, and his short story "Winter Reflections" was chosen as a finalist for Crystal Lake Publishing's Shallow Waters short story contest. He also had a short story, "The Security Guard," in the horror anthology "Hospital of Haunts," (Watertower Hill Publishing) which hit #1 on Amazon, and his true encounter with the urban legend of York, PAs, Toad Road and The Seven Gates of Hell, was featured in George Watertower and Other Childhood Terrors (Watertower Hill Publishing).
He lives in southern Pennsylvania with his wife and two dogs. Catch Up With Westley Smith:
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