Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

Adam Cesare's brilliant FRENDO LIVES!

I don’t remember how I first came across horror writer Adam Cesare, but I am very glad I did. The cover of Clown in a Cornfield was a classic, in that 1980’s horror style that I love, and how can anyone go wrong with a killer clown, a cornfield, and mass slaughter?

You can’t, that’s how.

The rise of the slasher film in the 1970’s with the one-two punch of Halloween and Friday the 13th—along with all the copycats that followed their success—wasn’t interesting to me; I’ve never liked lots of blood and stabbing and viscera. (I didn’t even watch the Halloween movies until Paul got me to; I didn’t see a Friday movie until the shutdown five years ago.) I may have come to these films late, but I do enjoy them, and have always kind of wanted to write a slasher book myself, just to see if I can actually do it, you know? I did do more of a supernatural mass killer thing with Sara, but I think I can do better than I did with that story.

Clown in a Cornfield was a runaway success, and won the Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel. When I found out there was a sequel, I immediately got a copy…and I listened to the audio book on my drives last week/weekend, and I think it’s even better than the first.

David Rush was an Eagle Scout.

Was.

In addition to his scout training, he had secured an ROTC scholarship for his first two years at Missouri State and frequently spent weekends camping with his uncle, Lt. John Rush, a retired medical officer in the United States Marine Corps.

If there was anyone in Paul Tillerson’s B-field that fateful night who possessed the know-how to survive the carnage—possibly even lead the other victims out of danger—it was David.

David Rush had the skills to survive.

And his attackers knew that.

Which is why he was one of the first targets of the ambush.

What follows in this documentary is not conjecture. These are facts, confirmed and verified by a panel of independent researchers and forensic specialists.

Frendo Lives opens with a group of college kids watching a documentary about the Kettle Springs massacre from the year before. In the wake of the murders, conspiracy theories have arisen—shades of Sandy Hook—that it was either a “psyop” by the government, or that the survivors—Quinn Maybrook, Cole Hill, and Rust Vance—were the actual killers and had framed the innocents blamed for the slaughter. Quinn is off at college now in Philadelphia, her father has been elected mayor of Kettle Springs—and has been responsible for the town’s rebirth. Rust and Cole, who are also a couple (Cole rich, Rust more working class), are coming to Philadelphia for a visit. They’ve all tried to deal with their new notoriety by attempting to keep moving forward, but it’s not easy when so many people are actively denying your story and blaming you as a mass murderer. The kids in the dorm watching the ‘documentary’ all live on Quinn’s floor at college and include her roommate—so she’s not really escaping anything. They often get recognized in public, and it’s not always good attention. While the boys are visiting her, someone wearing a Frendo mask crashed a floor party, while at the same time someone else dressed as Frendo back in Kettle Springs has attacked Quinn’s father, putting him in the hospital—which draws the three back to Kettle Springs, just as their nightmare comes back to life, and the horror starts all over again.

This sequel is about twice as long, give or take, as the original, and Cesare uses the extra space to not make his story bigger, but to dig deeper into who his characters are, their relationships, and their response to what happened and what is now happening. The main three are very real, and you can’t help rooting for them—as well as some of the new additions to the cast; Jerri Shaw, the quiet shy girl who works at the movie theater, is terrific—and the new Frendo acolytes are even more terrifying than the the ones from the previous book. This book reads like a rollercoaster you just can’t ever get off, and listening to it in the car made the drive fly past.

I also like the Cesare doesn’t back down from the impact and PTSD the young characters are dealing with from the first round of Frendo murders—one of the things I greatly enjoyed about the Scream films (and some of the later Halloween movies) is realistically dealing with that kind of horrific trauma. Who do you become once you’re a survivor? How do you move on with your life? How do you NOT jump in terror at every unexpected noise?

I also greatly appreciated the same-sex relationship between Rust and Cole—and the new wrinkle of someone who also is interested in Cole, and how the two of them deal with their traumas and stay together. Excellent queer representation here, and kudos to Mr. Cesare for this inclusion.

I am really looking forward to the third part of the trilogy, The Church of Frendo.

Highly recommended.