DARK PASSAGE by Griffin Hayes_Review

Review of Dark Passage by Griffin Hayes

5 stars

A one-sitting horror thriller, “Dark Passage” is nevertheless a complex study of psychological underpinnings, horrific child abuse, and yes, metaphysics (witness the writings of Brenda Barrett, which gave me chills like I have seldom encountered). Not at all for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, still this novel is coherent, complicated, and delectably horrifying.

Tyson Barrett has a problem:  he can’t/won’t sleep due to terrifying nightmares, and sleep deprivation is affecting his career and his marriage and his parenting skills. In fact, his wife Ruma has put him out of the home they shared with five-year-old son Kavi. He thinks she’s adulterous; she thinks he can’t come to terms with the incredibly abusive childhood he suffered at the hands of his insane mother. When Tyson is loaned his business partner’s lake cottage, and begins participating in a clinical trial for an insomnia-preventing prescription medication, he immediately discovers that not only does the medication work—his dreams are manifesting in reality.

Before the conclusion of the novel, Tyson must confront the truths about his childhood, even those truths he never knew; his psychopathic mother; and the thinness of the veil between consensus reality and terrors we don’t want to believe in.

Deeply-layered characters, graphic and gory horror, nightmares, dreams, visions, psychosis, spirit possession: it’s all here and it’s done wonderfully well. Horror aficionados, do not miss out on “Dark Passage.”