Book Review: Murder Road by Simone St James

Twenty-somethings April Delray and Eddie Carter have just gotten married in the hot summer of July 1995. They’ve taken about five days off from their real life in Ann Arbor and are heading to the shores of Lake Michigan, several hours away, for their honeymoon. While driving down a deserted stretch of nighttime road en route to their destination, they see a slight figure walking unsteadily along the verge. They slow down, worried about anyone traveling alone at that hour, and offer the somewhat disoriented young woman a ride in the back seat of their car.

As they keep going to the next town over, they discover that Rhonda Jean, as the hitchhiker introduces herself, has been hurt. While April narrates, military veteran Eddie calmly asks their passenger:

“Do you need a doctor, Rhonda Jean?”

 

“I don’t know.” Rhonda Jean’s eyes blinked open, and for a second they were unfocused. “I don’t think a doctor will help.”

 

I let the map slide from my hands, down to my feet. I kept my gaze on the girl in the back seat. Everything became clear and still in my head. I knew now that this was why she had looked at me at first like she recognized me. It was because she did. We’d never seen each other before, but we recognized each other. Women like us recognized each other all the time.

April and Eddie aren’t your usual all-American couple. Eddie doesn’t like to talk about his time in Iraq though it’s obvious that military service has marked him indelibly. April has a similarly traumatic past that she doesn’t like to discuss either. Despite the odds, or perhaps even because of this shared aloofness, April and Eddie fell in love only six months ago and quickly became a team. So they instinctively know to help Rhonda Jean by keeping her awake and talking as they rush her to the hospital in Coldlake Falls, even as a black truck bursts out of the darkness behind them and gives terrifying chase.

The young couple are thus devastated when their passenger doesn’t survive her ordeal. Worse, the cops almost immediately suspect April and Eddie of having something to do with Rhonda Jean’s deat. Turns out that she isn’t the first dead hitchhiker to turn up on that stretch of road known as the Atticus Line. April and Eddie, however, are the only people who’ve ever come close to saving one.

While there’s no concrete evidence indicating their culpability in Rhonda Jean’s murder, April and Eddie are forced by the authorities to stay in town. Unwilling to sit quietly while a case is being built against them, the newlyweds decide to investigate for themselves. With the help of several unlikely allies, they uncover a legacy of terror on the Atticus Line that stretches back decades. Will they be able to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, or will they become the next victims of a murderous rage that cannot be contained by the laws of time or reality?

Murder Road is a smart and deeply humane take on the paranormal thriller. It’s my favorite kind, too, where the supernatural aspects are only there to underscore the evil of all too mortal people. The monstrous force behind the killings is still an innocent compared to the depraved and very human will that created it in the first place, a will that April and Eddie must confront and bring to justice if they wish to free themselves from suspicion and the Atticus Line from its curse.

I very much loved April and Eddie, as well as the team of misfits who come to their aid. Simone St. James knows how to write characters who you want to root for, despite them being deeply flawed and sometimes not the most likable people. A newly married couple who’ve only known each other six months and keep important secrets from one another hardly seem like the kind of protagonists to expect heroism from, yet their devotion to one another is unfaltering, as they discuss the next step in their unsanctioned investigation:

“It’s a terrible idea.”

 

“We’ve had terrible ideas before. At least, I have.”

 

“Like marrying me?”

 

The question was a surprise. I’d never given him an inkling that I didn’t want to marry him. Had he wondered about this without telling me? “No,” I said. “Like the time I drank vodka before going to the fall fair and eating a funnel cake. I’ll never eat a funnel cake again.”

 

His shoulders relaxed. This was how it worked: I eased him down, and in return I got to watch some of the pain leave his body and his face. He’d never met a girl who was willing to put the work in. Well, he’d met her now.

I was genuinely surprised by how moving I found this mystery, not only because of April and Eddie’s tenacious but tender bond, but also because of Rose, their prickly temporary landlady who has secrets and grudges of her own. As sensitive as it is suspenseful, this is one of those horror novels that seems entirely plausible because of how grounded it is in human emotion. I loved it.