A God in the Shed

April 24, 2017
Dubeau’s (The Life Engineered) second novel reads like a super-cut of every small-town horror trope of the last 40 years. Eldritch horror in a cave? Check. Town leaders are actually a cult? Check. Creepy circus? Check. The story follows several characters as an ancient, bloodthirsty being, previously contained for decades, is let loose on the sleepy village of Saint-Ferdinand. It finds itself trapped again in a shed—an actual, literal shed—in the backyard of Venus McKenzie, a teenage daughter of hippies. She must find a way to kill the monster as others in the town try to track it down and use it for their own purposes. Subplots accumulate like snowdrifts in a blizzard; new characters are introduced just long enough to die messily or impart some important information. Dubeau’s attempt at building suspense balloons the book into a chaotic clunker, with the word count of horror greats such as King or Straub but none of the heart.