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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Abiding Evil
|author=Alison Buck
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Maybe
|pages=512
|publisher=Alnpete Press
|date=May 2007
|isbn=978-0955220630
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0955220637</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=0955220637|aznus=<amazonus>0955220637</amazonus>
}}
The nowheresville featured in this horror thriller is Losien - a place wherein there is plenty of loss - a tiny jumble of properties on the edge of one of the dense forests you only see these days in fiction. Here, it's also somewhere never specified in the USA. Said forest is home to someone - or something - taking the local children, even using a previously snatched girl as bait. They invariably end up dead, with some small piece of their clothing used to dress a primitive wooden doll.
Again, thankfully, the writing places us there - the sense of being in snowy dark woods is only part paralleled by The Shining's steadicam shots in the snowy hedge maze. I will insist we could have come to care for our characters in a much more economic way, but care we do (apart from the obvious rum-un, who will evidently get his comeuppance), right through all their individual perils up to the by-numbers ending.
I found nothing detrimental to the book apart from that, and the build-up of the dramatis personae from pages a hundred to two hundred and fifty - the grist of the story is compelling, and there is a lot to welcome here. But consideration should have been made as to length (it's 500pp, if a quick five hundred) and a less charitable reader will possibly find the amalgamations of danger and variety of locations different combinations of people put themselves in a bit much too.
I , however, really enjoyed the filmic style, and found a distinct creepiness in turning the pages late at night. ''Abiding Evil'' is a flawed book, but certainly worth considering. My rating of three and a half stars should get a whole extra one for when you're snowbound in a secluded rural hotel. If (when?) you're in that situation you could read no better to give yourself a spook. You might like to have a look at [[Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris]].
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[[Category:Thrillers]]
