The Lurking (AKA The Lurking: The Curse of the Jersey Devil) (1989)
Newspaper reporter Elaine Adams discovers a story in South Jersey’s Pine Barrens when a human skeleton is accidentally exhumed.
This and other acts of violence seem to be connected to a reappearance of the local nightmare—the Jersey Devil.
It is the latest spike in a repeating pattern, because people haven’t only been dying lately; they’ve been disappearing for years, even decades.
Author Gary Gentile is on pretty solid ground when delivering direct, pulpy horror.
The problem is that he keeps slamming on the brakes for dramatic interludes where every conversation runs two or three pages too long.
That bloat also puts his weaknesses under a spotlight, and the characterization is sometimes truly awful—especially with the women. I never call women "whores," but there is one character here who can only be thought of as “the whore,” because that’s plainly how the author thought of her: cartoonishly sexualized and described in death with a tone that suggests that she’s getting what she deserves. The female characters are catty and emotional. Even Elaine doesn’t escape this treatment: she begins as a plucky, intrepid investigator and ends up reduced to a shrinking damsel in distress, waiting to be rescued by her husband and a police lieutenant who joins their cause. However, the climax is genuinely strong and ends things on a proper note. So rather than a good novel that doesn’t stick the landing, what we have here is a book on the wrong side of mediocre that comes alive at the climax.
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