Book Review:The Girl on the Porch by Richard Chizmar - More2Read
 

The Girl on the Porch by Richard Chizmar

“Chizmar’s great gift is that he knows the people on your block—and he knows their darkest secrets. This guy is gold.”

—Stephen King

“For some, the impulse lives closer to the surface and instead of fighting it, they embrace it. The worst of them, the truly evil, listenfor it…that tantalizing, deceitful voice from somewhere underneath it all.”

From New York Times bestseller Richard Chizmar, author of Gwendy’s Button Box (with Stephen King) and The Long Way Home, comes a thriller that will forever change the way you look at your neighbors and best friends…

When the Tuckers’ next door neighbor mentions someone rang their doorbell late the previous night, Sarah and Kenny Tucker check their home’s security camera and discover something shocking: the doorbell ringer also visited their house and it wasn’t a teenager playing a prank, but instead a terrified young woman with a shackle hanging from her right wrist. She anxiously pressed the doorbell again and again, glancing over her shoulder as if someone was coming for her, before giving up and taking off into the dark.

Almost overnight, she becomes known as The Girl on the Porch—and she’s everywhere. There are updates on all the local networks, national coverage on CNN and Fox News, and the video goes viral on social media. Before long, everyone has seen the harrowing security camera footage.

Kenny and Sarah figure it’s only a matter of time before someone recognizes the woman, but as the days pass and no one comes forward, odd things begin to transpire around the Tucker family: a man intensely watches them at a restaurant and then vanishes, fresh footprints appear in the garden next to their house where no one should have been, a neighbor’s pet is viciously killed and mutilated, and a mysterious man has started following their daughter Natalie…

A rollercoaster ride of compelling twists and turns, The Girl on the Porch demonstrates why Stephen King says Richard Chizmar’s writing is “powerful” and Robert McCammon calls his work “hard-hitting, spooky, suspenseful, harrowing, and heartbreaking.”

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Praise for The Girl on the Porch:

“The Girl on the Porch had me hooked on page one—I devoured it. Chizmar peels the band-aid so slowly that it hurts…taut, deftly paced …we are all potentially guilty and anyone might die at any moment.”
-Caroline Kepnes, bestselling author of You.

“Creepy as hell! A tense and twisty read that poses this unsettling question: How well do we know our friends and neighbors? In Richard Chizmar’s world, the answer is more complicated—and frightening—than you think.”
-Riley Sager, bestselling author of Final Girls.

“If Chizmar’s goal here is to make you suspicious—and fearful—of everyone you know, including those closest to you, mission accomplished.”
-Linwood Barclay

“With a pinch of Blue Velvet and a dash of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Chizmar’s short sharp story of a terrified suburban neighborhood insightfully illuminates the fears and anxieties lying just beneath the surface of modern American life. The Girl on the Porch is a pitch perfect illustration of Hannah Arendt’s maxim about the banality of evil.”
-Bentley Little

Review:

Father Kenny Tucker
Mother Sarah Lynn Tucker
Daughter Natalie Tucker
Three-year-old Corgi Bandit
Broadview Homes subdivision in Hanover.
In the middle of a Thursday night, a mysterious visitor.
Who?
What?
Why?
Where?

The author has constructed a tale with a run of the mill family of three up against this dilemma of the girl on the porch.
I can gladly disclose nothing happens to the corgi and there is not dead corgi or pets risen in form of a girl on the porch.
A tale of mystery and trepidation nicely crafted with the captivating need to know of who is the visitor, and what is she after, with the whole unsettling presence of her appearance in this small tightly knitted community.

 

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 08 August 2019