Here's how this column works. I pick a book to review, usually something off the beaten track that I think at least some of you will find as interesting as I did. I write what I think about the book, in a tone that fluctuates somewhere between the "maudlin" and "snarky" wavelengths on the spectrum, with some personal observations thrown in to make me sound hip and current and wiser than I actually am. I use the occasional swear word, just because I can (fuck—I just got paid for that). In exchange, I do my part to contribute to the "arts" content of this paper and thereby help disguise its true purpose as a propaganda arm for the left-wing conspiracy to turn us all into godless, gay, tax-hiking vegetarians on bicycles. Me, Jyl and Tofu Baby, holding the line.

When choosing books to review I stay away from the bestseller list, because I'd rather direct my energies toward good books that don't get as much exposure. I'm happy for those bestselling authors' continued successes, because they pay the freight for publishers to put out good, less profitable books, but it doesn't mean I have to read them.

I'm not sure what to do, however, about the relatives of bestselling authors. I want to talk about Horns (HarperCollins, 2010), the second novel from horror writer Joe Hill, about whom it is a very poorly kept secret that he's the son of Stephen King, but is the one degree of separation enough distance to keep the column pure? Meh. If Hill can pretend he's not Joe King, then so can I. I've done so much lying for this newspaper already, one more won't matter.

Hill's novel hits the ground running from the first page, as his protagonist, small-town boy Ig Perrish, wakes up one hungover morning to find a pair of horns growing from his temples for no explainable reason. In the course of that morning, he is horrified to discover that the horns carry with them some special mojo, as everyone who comes into close proximity to them begins to spontaneously utter their most wicked and shameful inner thoughts and bad impulses—to gorge themselves or hurt people, to steal or rape or murder. Moreover, the slightest physical contact with them opens their mental floodgates to reveal to Ig every secret sin they've ever committed. Suddenly Ig finds himself surrounded by a world of dark ooze beneath the placid veneer of his friends and neighbors.

The worst of it is just how much of the town's harbored hatred is directed at him. A year ago, Ig was the lone suspect in the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend, a crime that failed to yield enough evidence to indict him but also not enough to clear his name. Now Ig is finding out just how far his infamy stretches throughout the town, not only among strangers but within the minds of the people closest to him. Nobody believes in his innocence, not even his own family. And in one contact, Ig discovers the identity of the real killer, someone so close to him and yet so far beyond reproach that the murderer might as well be a million miles away. Even without the horns, who would believe him? With the horns, however, come an array of other spooky powers, and Ig begins to realize that a devil can take a devil's revenge.

It's hard not to compare Hill's novel to that other horror novelist we won't mention here. Both work the same stomping grounds, the alternately picturesque and gone-to-seed small towns of New England, and the similar themes of subterranean lurking evil and the bloody wars for humanity's soul that happen just under the radar. But Hill comes out favorably in the comparison, his writing lyrical or blunt and brutal when it needs to be. As he moves back and forth between the present and past events that lead up to the current predicament, and from Ig to the mind of his adversary, Hill proves himself deft at characterization for the most part. As Ig learns the deep and icky secrets of the people around him, Hill sometimes goes too readily for the easy get—Pervy Priest and Sadist Cop are becoming as cliched as Drunken Irishman and Hooker with a Heart of Gold—but he has a real feel for the inner lives of small-town kids and their beleaguered parents. And that's the secret of good horror and of good fiction in general: it's always less about the tragic things that happen than it is about those things happening to people we know.

Beyond the vengeance and the eeriness and the blood (and there is plenty of that), Horns is imbued with a deep, underlying sadness. Hill may give Ig Perrish his demonic aspect and his opportunity for revenge, but nothing can undo the damage that has been done to his life. Ig starts out alone and despised, and while he may get his due, doing so will cost him the few remaining shreds of his humanity. It's the classic devil's bargain, something about which Joe Hill seems to know a thing or two.

John G. Nettles