December Park (2014) by Ronald Malfi
Over the last few decades there have been some excellent examples of the effectiveness of combining horror or mystery plots with a coming of age/ bildungsroman tale. Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life is a great example, as is Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night. Stephen King has done it a couple of times with great success, both in his novella, The Body (made into the movie Stand by M e) and perhaps his most famous example, IT . December Park takes place over the course of a single year starting in the fall of 1993. Harting Farms is a small, quiet Maryland town in the grips of an increasing realization that they have become the hunting grounds for a predator who abducts and murders teens, labeled by the local media as The Piper. Our main character and narrator is 15-year old Angelo (Angie) Mazzone, the son of a local police officer investigating the abductions. At the beginning of the book, Angie and his tight-knit group of frien...