The Shore Leisure Fiction Horror Book Review

Probably the worst crime of writing is not to be bad, but to be boring.  My first Robert Dunbar novel, The Pines, was written reasonably well, but I never found it very interesting.  His follow-up book, The Shore, is also written reasonably well and though it takes a while to get going, eventually it is a more entertaining book than its predecessor.


A sequel of sorts to The Pines, The Shore takes place in the coastal New Jersey town of Edgeharbor.  Just as in The Pines, The Shore opens with a woman being savagely murdered by a mysterious monster.  The story then shifts to the principal characters:  a fourteen-year-old kid named Perry who is keeping a girl locked up for unknown reasons; a stranger in town who is stalking Perry and Edgeharbor’s seemingly sole cop, Kit, who is beginning to suspect that the stranger is behind the murders.


The truth is more complicated and involves a long-time Edgeharbor family with its share of dark secrets, including a son who killed his mother, was locked in an insane asylum and has just escaped.  There are also links to the Pine Barrens and the Jersey Devil that were the focus of The Pines.


The Shore starts slowly, which is not often a good thing in a horror novel and definitely hurts this story.  It does pick up, however, redeeming its early flaws.  And though it is not a perfect book, Dunbar is a good writer, in particular in his descriptive abilities of the frigid atmosphere of Edgeharbor.  Though not top-of-the-line horror, The Shore will probably please most fans of the genre.