The book is set in a lakeside town of Proofrock, Idaho. It's a small town on Indian Lake. Jade Daniels is about to graduate, but her childhood has been hard. In her final semester she attempts suicide. Coming back to Proofrock she becomes convinced that the town is about to experience a slasher killing, as portrayed in a myriad of films that Jade is obsessed by. Jade's internal monologue, and increasingly frequently, her conversations with others, is peppered with references to events, plot devices and tropes of the slasher movie genre. She even identifies a "final girl" in Letha Mondragon a beautiful new girl in the school. Letha is popular, bright and the daughter of the fabulously wealthy Theo who is developing the far side of Indian Lake into a exclusive and expensive new housing area. The lake will be the playground of the rich and Proofrock will be the source of their labour and services.
As the victims begin to pile up there's alot of ambiguity about who is doing the killing. Jade is convinced it is a slasher and for a time people think the killer might be her. The reality is both more sinister and in keeping with the tropes of the genre.
The book carefully ties up the horror with the wider social problems of poverty, boredom and abuse inherent to a poor, forgotten rural community. The rich, with their yachts and wealth, form a nice counter-point to the reality of Proofrock. Indeed their chosen name for their development Terra Nova, might echo the way that settlers viewed indigenous people and their lands when Europeans arrived.
One of the most important themes of slasher movies for Jade is revenge. For her, the slashers are fighting injustice - literarily. The murders they commit are supposed to rectify some ancient evil or balance out some horror. But Jade divorces the events from her personal history. She doesn't get that she is the centre point of the story, believing that Letha in all her "final girl" glory of beauty and innocence, isn't the protagonist Jade thinks she is. As a result the finale takes everyone by surprise and allows Jones to keep misdirecting the reader while Jade stumbles through the chaos. A great read, but one that's really too gory for me.
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