Dead Eleven

This is a hard one to rate, since I thought about quitting the first half, but the last quarter was creepy and interesting. It was just so slow and the hooks to keep me interested were lacking.

Dead Eleven is Jimmy Juliano's debut novel. Constructed as a “book within a book” the manuscript's fictional author, Harper, recounts his investigation into his sister's disappearance on Door County's Clifford Island. Using a variety of different formats (audio transcripts, letters, third person narrative, direct address to the reader, etc.) and told from the prospective several different narrators, Dead Eleven is an oral history of the natural and supernatural horrors on Clifford. The best way I can think to describe this book is Stephen King's IT meets Thomas Olde Heuvelt's HEX with a weird 90s setting. Although it would be fair to say this book stands firmly on the shoulders of its antecedents, perhaps even to the point of being derivative of King, this was such a page turner! I absolutely loved this book and was fully invested in the plot and characters. The use of different formats to create the oral history style of the novel infused the book with variety and flexibility, and just made the book feel a little more original and pulled the reader from chapter to chapter to the climax. I would have never guessed this was a debut novel until the final few chapters (some of which seemed a bit over-written, laying out information that had previously been revealed to the reader, etc.) but nevertheless I found the beginning, middle, and end highly compelling (even if the end was slightly less so). To be fair, though this was Juliano's first published novel, he is an established writer in short fiction, that his literary skill was evident throughout. This was no “MFA thesis book” (I mean that as a compliment), and it's no surprise Dead Eleven is in development for adaptation with A&E. I highly recommend Dead Eleven to horror fans, and I know I'll want to check out the on-screen version if it ultimately gets made.