The Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert

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What comes first, the story, or the reality the story is based on?

It’s a question nearly every author has asked themselves as they create plots and subplots sprinkled with their life experiences and enhanced to reach the suspicious edges we imagine.

In this fast-paced, sometimes psychological thriller, sometimes traditional horror, the lines between an author’s imagination and the reality of crimes that mirror the storytelling… woven into the tapestry of the abuses of an asylum, and punctuated with a magic and folklore we might wish were real… readers are coaxed through a twisted tale that reveals the solution to a crime that has gone unresolved for years.  With the clarity of hindsight, we agree, it might have been better if that particular crime stayed asleep, dwelling only in our nightmares.  Told through the lens of the author who created the novel the real-life monsters now mimic, and the police detectives tasked with ending the spree of bizarre murders, this book invites us to contemplate the weight of words and how they can inspire others.

J.H. Markert is a skilled storyteller, drawing readers into the narrative’s multiple layers and adding tension and doubt in all the right places to compel us to read on.  The twists in character connections and the secrets each keeps make this an extremely tactile thriller, raising not only the hairs on the back of our necks, but the desire to learn more about our own dreams and how they connect to the details of the waking world.

If you enjoy the tantalizing idea of imagination bleeding off the page and into real life, this is a novel you’ll want to read.   With my experience of this book, J.H. Markert has now become another author I’ll read more often.