Black Mountain by Laird Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The second Isaiah Coleridge thriller builds admirably off the first. Freed from having telling an origin story, Barron gives us fully formed characters to follow as they face a compelling, impossible mystery. Two mobsters have been murdered by an unknown assailant, and every clue points to a legendary serial killer who died a long time ago. As Coleridge and his trusty but frequently self-destructive sidekick Lionel investigate, I was put in mind of Peter Straub’s magnum opus THE THROAT, which treads similar terrain, and beside which BLACK MOUNTAIN can proudly stand. I can think of no higher praise than that. With a nerve-shredding climax that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Barron’s horror short stories, BLACK MOUNTAIN delivers the goods.
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