LITERAL REMAINS

A mule skinner wandered into the mining town of Abandon on Christmas Day, 1893.  There wasn’t a soul to be found.  Every man, woman, and child had disappeared, even the gold secured in the town went missing.  The mystery of what happened remains to the present day.

June and Emmett are paranormal investigators.  They hire Lawrence, an expert on Abandon, to take them to the ghost town.  Lawrence hires two guides, Scott and Jerrod, and he invites his daughter, Abigail, a journalist, along on the chance they find the gold rumored to still be hidden there.

It all goes horribly awry.  Before it’s over and done, there will be betrayals, bullets flying, knives slashing, and a lot of blood spilled in the snow, and only one survivor.

See, here’s the thing, Lawrence, apparently, has made some shady deals with some shady people to get the gold.  He is pretty sure he knows where it is, but people have been looking for that darned precious gold for over a hundred years.  A group of researchers in the 1980s went looking for it and were never heard of again.  Abandon just may be cursed.  Tarnations.

Author Blake Crouch alternates the story of Abandon between the present day hunt, and the events that took place in 1893 that led to the disappearance of the entire town.  Half the book is good, the other half mediocre.

It’s the story of Abandon, 1893, that’s more interesting.  The present day tale is kind of crazy.  People seem to pop out of the woodwork.  I was surprised there was only one survivor, because new characters had a tendency to come out of nowhere.  I would have liked it if Crouch had just stuck to the 1893 side of things.  The original settlers of Abandon are more rounded, and grounded, than the present day players.  Those pioneers felt real.  Lawrence and his crew just bide their time until they are picked off.

Nice twists and turns, though, keep Abandon on the good side.  It’s nothing too earth shattering, but it did keep me glued to the pages.

3.5 out of 5
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