Thursday, October 16, 2014

"The Boy Who Killed Demons"

Dave Zeltserman's many novels include Monster: A novel of Frankenstein. His short mystery fiction has won the Shamus, Derringer and Ellery Queen's Readers Choice awards. His crime thrillers, Small Crimes and Pariah, both made the Washington Post's best books of the year list in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and Small Crimes was selected by NPR as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008.

His horror novel, The Caretaker of Lorne Field, was shortlisted by the American Library Association for best horror novel of 2010 and was also a Black Quill nominee for best dark genre book of the year.

Zeltserman applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, The Boy Who Killed Demons, and reported the following:
The Boy Who Killed Demons is written as a journal by a fifteen year-old boy who sees demons living among him—creatures who are able to disguise themselves so that everyone else sees them as humans--and takes it upon himself to discover what the demons are up to, and ultimately to save the world from them. Since page 69 is the start of a new journal entry, and is about his parents messing up his plans for the day to look further into demon activity, it’s reasonably representative of the book, especially the flip tone that is used.

While The Boy Who Killed Demons is ostensibly a horror novel, it also deals with heroism from a very unlikely source, teen angst, and has a good amount of humor, and all of that is evident on this page (although you might have to squint a little to see it). The fifteen year-old hero of the novel, Henry Dudlow, not only has to battle demons, but he has to do this without anyone else knowing about it, especially his parents, who have their doubts about their son.
Learn more about the book and author at Dave Zeltserman's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Small Crimes.

The Page 69 Test: Pariah.

The Page 69 Test: Outsourced.

My Book, The Movie: Outsourced.

The Page 69 Test: A Killer's Essence.

My Book, The Movie: A Killer's Essence.

Writers Read: Dave Zeltserman.

--Marshal Zeringue