A Mask of Flies
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In Matthew Lyons' pulse-pounding crime horror, A Mask of Flies, a criminal on the run after a failed heist must confront dark family secrets and demons from her past made flesh.
One of Lit Hub's Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Books of 2024! | Longlisted for Reading the West Book Awards!
THE PAST HAS TEETH
In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin – a secluded shack in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death.
Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics from her mother’s past and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin.
Then Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. Anne and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, he comes back and knocks at the cabin door.
Not a dream, not a hallucination, but not exactly Jessup, either. Something else. Something wearing her friend’s face. Something hungry...
“An addictive thrill ride.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyons (A Black and Endless Sky) wows in this atmospheric horror novel. Burglar Anne Heller's latest job—the armed robbery of a Colorado bank—goes south, leaving a security guard and a member of her crew dead. After taking a cop on the scene hostage, Anne and her wounded accomplice Jessup manage to reach the remote cabin Anne lived in with her mother over 20 years earlier. But it proves no refuge; Anne finds an old note from an aunt she doesn't remember warning her that the cabin isn't safe, and that "The Passage is everywhere." Soon after, the misshapen creature with "glowing white eyes" that killed Anne's mother returns, causing more bloodshed and forcing Anne to learn the truth about her past in order to stay alive. Evocative prose (the cabin is described as "a pile of crumbling logs and planks hanging unevenly around the doorframe like hunched shoulders astride a boxer's battered face") enhances a riveting noir plot populated by expertly shaded characters. Add in some Lovecraftian overtones, and this proves an addictive thrill ride.
Customer Reviews
Exhaustion Soaked Dread at Every Turn
In terms of action, horror, suspense, and dread this book spoon feeds you nothing but the best bites page after page. That said I think explanation of the motivations of the protagonist and why they are the person they are, in any instance, was sometimes excessive in its repetition/redundancy. The jail cell scene made my skin crawl and gag reflex go in the best way, I very much enjoyed this read.