They first met in boarding school--Alex, shy and nervous, and Darren, constantly scribbling in his journal. They became best friends in college. Alex always knew Darren was a little odd. He didn’t know his friend was murderously insane until Darren asked Alex to join him in his blood-soaked fun. They could be a team, hunting and slaughtering human prey. Alex doesn’t want any part of it. He’s no monster. But Darren is twisted, deadly…and determined. And he won’t take no for an answer.

REVIEW

Murdering sociopaths make lousy friends but marvelously creepy reading, as shown in this wicked thriller from Strand (MANDIBLES). The horror in this tale of twisted friendship is relentless, and the choices Alex makes to rescue himself from Darren's web of depravity might be morbid, but Strand's wide-eyed narrator makes the implausible almost believable.

Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly

EXCERPT

For a while, the bullets were the only things keeping me alive.

It was a sack of one hundred and fourteen of them, each with a date scratched onto the casing. The first date was nearly four months ago, a Thursday. I'd spent that entire morning in the bathtub, tears streaming down my face, the barrel of a revolver in my mouth, garbage bags taped to the wall so the landlord wouldn't have to repaint. I wasn't sure that I really wanted to commit suicide, but yet I couldn't force myself to pry the gun barrel from between my teeth.

Finally I did pull the gun away and removed the bullet. Then I scratched 12/25 onto the casing with a pocketknife, as a reminder that I hadn't killed myself that day.

I was in the bathtub even longer on Friday, but I still didn't shoot myself. This time I wanted to. Desperately. I was biting down so hard on the barrel that when my front tooth cracked I thought for a second that the gun had fired. I'm not sure what ultimately kept me from pulling the trigger--probably cowardice--but in the end I had a second unused bullet and another date.

This became a daily ritual. Sometimes it got really, really bad. There were times, usually late at night, when the only thing keeping me from killing myself was the sight of the bag of bullets, the knowledge that I'd survived each of those days, so why couldn't I survive just one more?