Beneath the quirky trappings of Grady Hendrix's new novel lies a conventional but well-told horror/suspense story. Protagonist Amy works at the recently-opened local branch of Orsk, a trendy furniture store whose similarities to Ikea are entirely parodic. Despite Orsk's upbeat "happy employee, happy customer" rhetoric, something is seriously wrong: mysterious vandalism is occurring every night while the store is empty, and the higher-ups aren't happy. Amy's supervisor asks her to join a small group staying overnight to investigate the problem, and she agrees, little realizing what a nightmare she's set herself up for.

HORRORSTOR is formatted like an Orsk catalog, with an unusual trim size, illustrations, and product descriptions at the head of every chapter. The descriptions are very amusing, tilting the rhetoric (and the naming conventions) of Ikea-type stores just far enough to highlight their ridiculousness. The main text of the novel, which is in traditional third person limited prose, is likewise smart about making fun of retail absurdities without unnecessary exaggeration. The humor and a decent sense of pace keep the novel compelling until the horror starts.

When it does, readers hoping for something innovative may be disappointed: the setting is a bit out of the ordinary, but what happens and why is familiar enough from many recent novels and movies. (A seance goes horribly wrong, it turns out the store was built on a site with an ominous history, etc.) That doesn't make it bad, of course, and readers who like their horror built around tense, often viscerally unpleasant action sequences will enjoy Amy's desperate efforts to escape. I'm not the biggest fan of that particular brand of horror, but I was impressed enough with Hendrix's take on it to finish the book in a single sitting.

In addition to the scares and the humor, HORRORSTOR's 240-odd pages also feature a little character development, as Amy's troubles lead her to reconsider her attitude toward her job and her life. I don't think this quite works: it smacks a little too much of cheap importance-of-willpower moralizing, which works in a certain kind of horror movie but clashes with the novel's acknowledgment of the frequently miserable nature of low-paying retail employment. In any case, it isn't an intrusive enough element to be worth complaining much about. HORRORSTOR is a funny, creepy spin on classic horror tropes, well worth a read if you like quirky but sincere genre fiction.

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