Eli Lamp is a broken man. An ex-detective, ex-addict, and long-grieving father whose daughter, Hannah, disappeared a decade before, Eli decimated his old life investigating her abduction and is now indebted to the Crooked Wheel, a local drug gang, as an enforcer. He lives in a rundown trailer at the edge of the woods, where he keeps Hannah’s room in pristine condition and tries to make it through one day at a time.
But when the son of the Crooked Wheel’s boss is found viciously murdered in a crime scene that doesn’t seem to add up, Eli receives a new order: Find out who the killer is and your debt to the Wheel is clear forever. You’re free. This pursuit brings him into the orbit of Avery Bryant, Hannah’s best friend and the last person to see her before she went missing. Soon, Eli and Avery are entwined in a hunt for answers that spans decades, stretches the realm of possibility, and brings churning to the surface a conspiracy linking not only these current tragedies, but the buried sorrows of Eli’s past.
And though none of them dare say the word "witch," at least not out loud, something lurks in the woods, bent-backed and black-eyed, clawed and vengeful, looming ever closer. . . .
One night, walking home from a party in the pouring rain, 15-year-old Hannah, who is legally blind, accepts a ride and is never seen again. Her best and only friend, Avery, watched her get into the van, and that is all she knows. She didn't see a license plate or who was driving.
I wanted to know more! I wanted this to be about Hannah and the Crone in the woods! Instead, it's more about her father Eli, and how his life spiraled out of control with an especially grotesque addiction to wire, a fictional drug that is shoved under the toenails. Eli is indebted to a drug dealer for some unknown reason that we don't find out about until the book is practically over, in much the way we don't find out what happened to Hannah or anything about the crone until we nearly reach the finale.
The middle of the book dragged for me. It was more crime thriller than horror and mainly about rival drug gangs and crooked cops.
I loved Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, so I was super excited to get a copy of Crone. I wanted to love this as much and I tried hard, but just couldn't swing it. I could not really connect with any of the characters. I didn't like Hannah's friend, and I tried to like her father, but he was already kind of a loser before her disappearance. I wanted more than violence and gore, but I stuck it out to the end and was at last rewarded with some answers. Sometimes I wish a book was longer because I don't want it to end. This was not one of those times. I did want it to end once the truth was finally revealed. Instead, it dragged on about Avery's friend, whose name already escapes me because I didn't care about her either. I would have titled this book Wire, since the majority of it focused on the drug instead of the Crone. You may enjoy it more than I did, but this book was not for me.
My thanks to Random House for the e-ARC
