Review: The Nightmare Man

The Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided a print and audio arc of this book via Netgalley.  Thank you to Crooked Lane Books and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to review this book early.  All opinions expressed in my review are my own.

This was a nice balance of horror and thriller.  I don't want to give too much away as it would spoil the story.  I didn't find the horror elements overly gory, but this does have a nice creepy factor to go along with the police investigation that takes place as the story comes together.  There are some additional horror elements to the plotline but to describe them would spoil the fun.  

This follows Detectives Winchester Mills and Samantha Blue, Mills' daughter as they investigate a grisly murder scene in their small town.  The murder appears to be directly copied from a recently released novel from local bestselling author Ben Bookman.  The Bookman family is no stranger to tragedy or the strange, but when more murders occur mirroring things Ben has written in his books the detectives are determined to figure out if Ben is the killer or figure out what he's hiding and how he is linked.   Ben is missing time from when he wrote the book that is being copied, and he knows it has something to do with his grandfather's strange atrium where the books with no works are kept.  Slowly as Ben and the detectives unravel the clues and piece together the puzzle the strange tale of the Scarecrow, the Screamer, and the books all comes together in a terrifying nightmare.

I loved this!  I mainly stuck with the audiobook for this one as the narrator, David Bendena, did a great job with this.  I had a hard time pressing pause on this one.  I was on the edge of my seat as the story unfolded.  This is my first book from the author, but it will not be my last!  I look forward to reading more from Markert in the future!

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