Book Review: "Under" by Bradd Quinn

Title: Under

Author: Bradd Quinn

Publisher: Frustrated Laboratory Publishing

ISBN, PUB Date: 978-1448679881, October 2, 2009

Reviewed by: Joan Hanna for Author Exposure

Horror stories are my favorite guilty pleasure. I read horror books to unwind and relax. These books take me into another realm where I can forget about everything for a few hours. And since I am such a fan of the genre, I am also very picky about how they are written. I don’t just want something creepy, I want something that will grip me and keep me there. Something that can take me from where I am and make me feel as though I am inside the story on the page. I am a hopeless addict of writers like Dean Koontz and F. Paul Wilson.

So, when I picked up Under by Bradd Quinn, I was in the mood for a book that I could not put down for any reason. I was in the mood for something gripping and a little off the beaten path. This is exactly what I got from Quinn. Under begins with news blurbs from an event in a town called Gaston involving wild animal attacks. The reader is teased with a short but chilling account of a woman trying to escape an attacker:

“Her knee slammed into the stairs. The buckets of adrenaline coursing through her body blocked most of the pain. It was the second time she had tripped while running full speed to her bedroom. The first trip had fractured her foot. It didn’t slow her. She had to get to the bedroom ... she had to get the gun because her husband was dead in the living room.” (2)

The book is set up in sections for the present and sections for the past (labeled in days), which take the reader through the events in Gaston in reverse order. The time lines running in this manner is a very interesting aspect to the layout of this book. It unfolds so that we begin with the end and end with the beginning, like an omen of a cycle doomed to repeat itself.

In the present, we meet Jacob, the main character, having a cup of coffee and wondering about his dog’s obsession with an area under his deck and the dead bird carcasses he is finding in his back yard. And although the reader knows these are immediate clues, Quinn unfolds the story nicely and doesn’t take the reader on a typical path to find the answers. The reader is introduced to the characters living on this street; Jacob’s neighbors are ordinary people, much like the people in your own neighborhood. Quinn has included everything from the best friends across the street, to the elderly couple, to the cat lady and religious fanatic that tells them they are all going to hell. And of course, he is right, but instead of them going to hell, a kind of hell comes to them.

Initially, Quinn develops the setting of the story slowly, placing it brick by brick for the reader until Jacob and his friend Rodney put what is happening in their neighborhood together with what happened at Gaston. You will be glued to this book from the moment when they discover the source of the odor coming from under Jacob’s deck. The roller coaster ride continues all the way to the final page. And although this may seem at first to be a typical horror story, it does have several twists and turns that will take the reader to unexpected and chilling places.

Under is a horror story in the finest tradition: an unknown threat, a reluctant hero, his unflinching faithful dog, and a little girl worth laying it all on the line to save. If you are a horror fan, Under will keep you glued to its pages. You will root for Jacob and his neighbors as they try to save themselves. The people that will not listen to him will frustrate you. You will cheer for Jacob’s labrador retriever, Sammy, as she does what faithful dogs in horror stories do so well. And you will want the enemy defeated, at any cost. But mostly, you will stand inside Jacob’s shoes as he becomes an unlikely hero in a final stand to save his family, his neighbors, and, ultimately, his five-year-old daughter.