S = The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

 

"'It wasn't rabies, if that's what you're worried about," Grace said. "She had some kind of blood poisoning...'"

This is the story of Patricia Cambell. Belittled and patronized by a distant husband, subject to the typical abuse that only moody teenagers can dish out, and sick of keeping house and caring for her mother-in-law whose rapidly declining mental health is making life difficult for everybody. She's become a bit of a bored housewife, tired of her regularly scheduled day to day. Looking for a change, she joins a book club that only reads trashy true crime novels and dreams of a mystery in her sleepy little neighborhood...Until she gets one. Believing that there is now a serial killer living in her own backyard, she becomes fixated, so much so that her friends and family write her off as suffering from some sort of hysteria, leaving her to fight the evil alone.

I thought that this would be straight up, non-stop horror. And while it opened with shock and awe, it also had an air of humor which I thoroughly enjoyed despite my preconceived notions. The idea of a bunch of bored housewives bonding over gruesome crimes is wildly entertaining, and the characters are quirky enough to be entertaining on their own. 

And yet the serial killer is only half the horror. The husbands of these characters are controlling, manipulative, creating situations that are psychologically abusive, and at least one husband is physically abusive. These women aren't just a little bored, they're downright oppressed. As a modern woman it's scary to think of a time and place where women are expected to just do as they are told. Shut up and clean the damn house.

I also think it's interesting that Grady Hendrix inserted some of today's social issues, the discrimination of financial class and color. The majority of the victims are low-income African Americans. And when kids start winding up dead or disappeared the police can't be bothered to expend much effort, claiming the victims were drug users, runaways and suicides. Black people can't be murdered, and rich white men aren't likely murderers, and distressed women don't make great witnesses to anything that suggests the opposite (especially if they're obsessed with true crime.)

And it all comes down to a gruesome discovery and graphic and creeptastic conclusion. This book gets its five stars.