Not exactly zombie apocalyptic novel but it gets the job done. The Cemetery Club by JG Faherty revolves around four high school friends, Cory, Todd, John and Marisol who after high school went their separate ways only to find themselves back in their home town of Rocky Point 25 years later. The town is as much a central character to the plot as are the primary characters. It has a rich history that dates back to the 1700s where it turns out that the four members of the club can trace their ancestors back to being involved in various events, good and bad. It was at this point in the storyline from John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ came to mind.
Rocky Point has a history of violence, death and strange goings on also reminiscent of Stephen King’s ‘It’ as well as Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’. Instead of a Pennywise the killer clown, or zombie leper pirates, Rocky Point has the Shades.
When one of the Cemetery Club returns to town after a long absence in a mental hospital, strange events begin happening leading the chief of police Travers to look at the most likely suspect. Much like the plot to the film ‘Darkness Falls’, one of the high school friends, Cory, became a lawyer and returns to represent and bail out Todd the troubled former mental patient now accused of the mysterious crime.
The Cemetery Club moves through several genres but primarily stays in the horror as it weaves a tale of strange happenings, death, betrayal and eventually zombies into the plot.
Over the course of the novel, the events that happened to the Cemetery Club 25 years prior are slowly drawn out prolonging the suspense. Nicely interwoven between the flashbacks are present day events as the Shades are slowly growing in number and gathering power.
True to the zombie genre, the only way to kill a person infected by the Shades is to shoot them in the head or club them with something like that handy baseball bat or crowbar. This releases the Shade that has taken up residence inside that body and allows the club members to hit the departing Shade with a stream of holy water thus killing it. While that may seem like a sequence borrowed from the film ‘The Lost Boys’, it actually plays out pretty well within the novel.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of similar stories and films as I read this novel. The films I mention above could have been used as a basis for The Cemetery Club. Overall, the Cemetery Club is an exciting read that’s more at home in the supernatural/horror genre than in the sub-genre of zombie/apocalyptic horror.
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