Lost Man's Lane

Starred review from January 22, 2024
Carson (Where They Wait) evokes the best of Stephen King in this exceptional coming-of-age tale about a young man confronting the supernatural menace that’s taken root in his hometown. In 1999 Bloomington, Ind., 16-year-old Marshall Miller gets pulled over by a cop on the same day he gets his driver’s license. While he’s waiting for a ticket, he notices a frightened teenage girl in the backseat of the officer’s car. Weeks later, Marshall spots the girl’s face on a missing person poster: her name is Meredith Sullivan, and she disappeared on the same day that Marshall was pulled over. He reports his encounter to law enforcement and discovers that the man who ticketed him was only impersonating a police officer. Determined to help find her, Marshall seeks out Noah Storm, the PI attached to Meredith’s case, who’s so impressed with the boy’s attention to detail that he offers Marshall an informal internship as his assistant. During their search, Marshall experiences strange recurring dreams, frequent snake sightings, and other seemingly unexplainable phenomena. The episodes gradually lead him to believe something ghostly has come to Bloomington, and it may be his job to stop it. Carson masterfully weaves threads about Marshall’s home and school life into the tantalizing central mystery, and populates the narrative’s margins with fully realized characters who help bring the setting to vivid life. This unique and intelligent crowd-pleaser is not to be missed. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management.

March 1, 2024

Marshall Miller got his driver's license on an unseasonably warm February day in 1999 and got a speeding ticket less than an hour later. The stop alone would have been memorable, but it becomes more so when he discovers that the woman in the back of the cruiser that pulled him over has been declared missing and no one at the Bloomington, IN, police force has ever heard of Corporal Maddox, the cop who issued the ticket. When a private investigator looking for the woman hires him as a summer intern, Marshall is thrown into the center of the action. As time wears on, he finds more questions than answers, though. Where has the fake officer disappeared to? What do his recurring dreams of a doorless barn mean? And why do rattlesnakes seem to be everywhere he turns? VERDICT Carson (Where They Wait), pen name of Michael Koryta, delivers a captivating and eerie tale that weaves together family curses, the Y2K panic, and the very real horrors of adolescence. Xennial readers will especially enjoy revisiting cultural touchpoints of their own coming-of-age. Give this one to fans of Michael Koryta and Chuck Wendig's Black River Orchard.--Portia Kapraun

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