Heart-Shaped Box
by Joe Hill
Harper Collins, 2007
384 pages

In 1991, Nirvana kicked down the doors of the music scene with their second release, “Nevermind.” For several years, the world had been wrapped in a cocoon of musical mediocrity, things coming and going without much notice, unless you happened to be caught in the tractor beams of New Kids on the Block. But with the first few strains of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana breathed new life into our stereos, our brains and our lives, making us dust off MTV and giving our parents another reason to hate us.

For many years now, horror writing has been like that. Writers who once sent us dashing under the covers the second the lights went out are serving up soft novels we may as well gum instead of read. Too many books and too much practice have taken the bite out of such writers as Stephen King, John Saul and Dean Koontz, leaving us the bare bones of the genre to pick at. Like all those teen spirits who didn’t yet know how much they liked flannel, we’ve patiently waited for someone to bring horror writing into the 21st century.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Joe Hill.

In 1993, Nirvana released “Heart-Shaped Box,” the first single off their third album. With its descriptions of an “umbilical cord noose” and “meat-eating orchids,” accompanied by a video shot through with red hues and imagery, it was the band’s most gruesome contribution. So it’s only fitting that Joe Hill chose the same title for his debut novel, a bloody steak of a book.

Joe Hill is young, clever and darkly handsome. He sounds harmless enough when he speaks, talking in an innocuous Ken Burn’s voice. You wouldn’t guess he’s going to scare you out of your wits. He’s the perfect candidate to give horror writing fresh (ahem) blood.

The premise of the book is entirely original. Jude Coyne, semi-retired rock god and macabre memorabilia collector, purchases a ghost over the Internet. He can’t resist clicking the “buy now” option the second he sees it on the auction site, excited for a new piece to add to his collection. If anything, it will be great publicity. Made immediately apparent is the fact that Coyne is callous, selfish and rude. He’s the stereotypical horror antihero: traumatized in childhood, lashing out as a grown up, treating everyone around him poorly. Even if you like him, really, how bad can you feel for him? He’s the stupid sonofabitch who bought a ghost. You don’ t have to like him, though, to enjoy reading as he tries to save his own ass.

So, sure enough, a few days later, an empty suit arrives, complete with spooky old man specter, who immediately takes up residence in a chair in the hall, dangling a razor blade on a chain from his hands and scaring the hell out of everyone.
The story loses a tiny bit of edge when it turns out Coyne has been tricked, that the ghost belongs to the stepfather of a dead girlfriend he allegedly wronged. The idea of buying an anonymous ghost online would have worked better, giving the story more elements of mystery. Still, for the next 300 pages, the literal ghost terrorizes Coyne, his new girlfriend and everyone around him, eventually sending him running back to his childhood home in Louisiana to face some ghosts of his own.

From the first chapter, the violence and creepiness hardly abate and Coyne, like most in horror stories, takes multiple wounds and suffers massive blood loss without signs of slowing down. Hill manages to fill the book with all the things that comprise a good scary novel: cars crashing, dogs attacking, people wounded and bleeding everywhere and doing unimaginable things to themselves.

And all to the beat of this century. With its mentions of My Chemical Romance, MySpace and oxycontin, Hill has jump-started the genre by applying liberal amounts of gore and culture. (Jude Coyne has his own MySpace page. Really.) We may not identify with a man who has his finger blown off with a .44, but we do sympathize when he can’t remember how to open his e-mail. “Heart-Shaped Box” is refreshing, frightening fun and easily consumed in one sitting, leaving horror reader’s wet, red maws open for more. (Ha! I made it through the whole thing without mentioning Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son!)