It is the summer of 1973. Raising money for his tuition fees, college student Devin Jones takes a job working at Joyland, a traditional amusement park in North Carolina, complete with a haunted house that may actually be haunted. An innocent girl has been killed there, the murdered getting away with it. It slowly dawns on Devin that his girlfriend is cooling off their long distance relationship whilst he's dealing with his own loss in this coming-of-age novel about carny life – and death…

 

The many carny characters and different roles are fondly portrayed but beneath the surface of ‘selling fun’ is a dark thread waiting to be picked at.

 

Devin makes friends in the form of Erin and Tom, and soon learns the ropes, finding a particular talent for dressing up in a baking hot costume as the park’s mascot. A role he uses to entertain a young boy who has a terminal illness. The boy and his beautiful mother provide an intriguing distraction for Devin who, along with his own troubles, joins his pals in becoming an ‘amateur sleuth’ following the vision of the dead girl in the horror house. With the killer still at large, Devin closes in on a truth that doesn’t want to be revealed.

 

Part mystery (it’s a whodunit), part horror, part retro-feel. In fact, this book is unavailable as an ebook because the author so wanted the old-fashioned atmosphere created, and its paperback look, to remain faithful to a time that’s gone but not forgotten.