Afternoon of the Gosling Horror Book Review

A classic Zebra horror novel or is that thriller?!  Marlys Huffman has created one of the better novels released by Zebra books in the 80s and 90s.  It’s a powerful story about a minister (or is that evangelist?) who marry’s a younger woman with a young daughter from a previous relationship.  The young child Cerise is beautiful with long blond hair, soft white skin and haunting cat like eyes.  She’s also a deeply disturbed child as the reader soon finds out!

Huffman’s novel unfolds at a rapid pace but does not leave any of the detail out.  While most novels from Zebra have a tendancy to jump without any real explanation in why, Huffman’s story examines different points in Cerises life with her new family until a very satisfying conclusion.  The writing has depth and detail about the characters but also does not get bogged down in unnecessary descriptive language.  This is not to say Huffman doesn’t describe the scene and the action in the novel, far from it.  Huffman does a very good job of keeping the action going but letting the reader know what is going on in enough detail to keep the reader interested.  It’s a kinda classic pulp novel but with enough detail to rise above pulp status.

Apparently this is the only novel published by Huffman.  I couldn’t find out any more info about the author and I do not know if this is a pen name for anyone else.  Its a shame there aren’t more books out there by this author.  If the author reads this review please contact me if you have more work available.  We need more solid horror novels out there from other than the current mainstream few.  Great stuff and highly recommended!