Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare
After my last blog post, in which I reviewed what may be the most devastating non-fiction book I’ve ever read, I decided to cleanse my palette with a very different type of book. No existential crises on Dystopic this month, thankyouverymuch.
Instead of delving into the ways a probable nuclear war will end the world, this blog post is all about murderous clowns. I know it’s still not a cheery topic, but at least murderous clowns aren’t capable of eradicating all semblance of life [insert joke about Trump here].
Clown in a Cornfield follows a teenage girl named Quinn and her father as they move to the small town of Kettle Springs after the death of Quinn’s mother from an overdose. Both she and her father are ready to embrace a change of pace after an arduous year of grief. Despite their new house falling apart and the town having more corn than people, the two genuinely want to make a go of things and start their lives over.
Before they even get the chance to settle in, Quinn comes across a group of local teenagers who seem quite taken with her as the new girl, and while they’re a bit boisterous and restless with small-town life, they’re good kids. The town’s adults don’t quite agree with her view on them being harmless, however, since the teens are known for filming pranks for their YouTube channel – and they tend to go a bit ‘too far’.
Quinn gets a proper introduction to life at Kettle Springs with Founder’s Day, a parade that celebrates the community with the town’s mascot, Frendo the clown. As the parade gets underway, disaster strikes as another prank organised by the teens goes wrong and the townsfolk are now MEGA pissed at them – but they shrug it off to celebrate their own version of Founder’s Day at a party in a barn on an unoccupied farm.
Every teenager in town gathers for the party in the middle of nowhere, but they’re not the only ones attending. As the evening starts to get going, Frendo decides to gate crash…and he’s not feeling very friendly.
If you love a late nineties, early noughties slasher movie as I do, you will love this book. There is gore aplenty, and unlike so many slasher movies Clown in a Cornfield has likable characters that you will actually want to root for (plenty of hateable characters too, of course, but too many movies have spiteful, annoying or dumb teenagers as the main characters who I just want them to be offed sooner rather than later). The dialogue is snappy and relevant, and there are all the clever twists, turns and red herrings you would want from a story like this. On top of that, Cesare somehow makes you fall in love with small-town life and want to protect it while simultaneously making you fear it, which is a feat in itself.
There are another two books in the Clown in a Cornfield series, and you better believe I’ll be reading them. If you’re thinking of a spooky read this Halloween, put Frendo on your TBR pile.
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