Roll on my favourite week of the year – halloween. I was going to revisit my annual ‘scariest films to indulge in for Halloween’ post, but then I decided to swap the word ‘films’ for ‘books’.

Chances are that said books will soon be turned to film anyway (if they haven’t been already) and then you can say that you read it here first.

Even here I met with a problem. It’s impossible to create a list of best books. So many classics, so many contemporary authors, so many books that I’ve yet to read. And so, this year I focus on one particular author, Joe Hill. The man happens to be Stephen King’s son, so the pedigree is as sound as anything and, indeed, you can spot many of King’s influences in his works.

First entry has to be Heart-Shaped Box, Hill’s debut novel, which he is currently debating translating to the big screen with Russell Crowe as the lead.

Heart-Shaped Box, besides being immediately intriguing by virtue of its title – nicked from Nirvana’s eponymous track – is a true chiller with all the elements of a good ghost story. And for those of you who think that ghost stories are too cliche to scare, think again.

There are precious few cheesy moments in this book, so if it is the lighter kind of ghost story that you’re after maybe you’d be better off watching Beetlejuice (and I say this with no disrespect to the film, which I love).

In the meantime, another of Hill’s works has already hit the big screens – Horns, with no less a leading man than Daniel Radcliffe. As books go, Horns started out extremely promising. Its whimsical fusion of fantasy, horror and a touch of goth totally seduced me. The ending, however, left me cold.

I decided to swap films for books. Chances are that they will soon be turned to film, anyway

Without giving away too much, the story revolves around a man who wakes up to find that he has sprouted horns overnight. And with the horns come superpowers, of course. The story races to an end that is way too surreal for my liking and that jars with the rest of the plotline.

I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m curious to see how they tackled some of the plot devices. Still, with a 53 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m not expecting anything fantastic.

Incidentally, if you happen to enjoy graphic novels, Hill also does a good line in that respect, specifically with Locke & Key.

Roughly speaking, the members of a particular family have access to a number of magic keys, each of which give different powers. Murder and mayhem ensues as is its wont – the illustrations are pretty deft, the plotline is tight and everything is pretty freaky. In short, another Halloween winner.

However, the one Hill novel that I’d love to see made into film is N0S4A2 – no prizes for guess-ing that this is pronounced ‘Nosferatu’.

The story is pretty epic. In true King tradition it spans generations and is pretty much a tome. It is also an incredibly bleak, psychological tale, replete with genuinely disturbing horror. Not your gratuitous gory stuff, but the insiduous, psychological stuff. Suffice it to say that I had trouble sleeping whenever I read this before going to sleep.

That, sadly, is Hill’s whole repertoire, unless you also count a book of short stories. Now if only he had released a juicy full-length novel for me just in time for Haloween...

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