Four Found Dead by Natalie D. Richards
At the movie theater where Jo works, the last show has ended. But the nightmare is just beginning.
Tonight, Tempest Theaters is closing forever, the last remaining business in a defunct shopping mall. The moviegoers have left, and Jo and her six coworkers have the final shift, cleaning up popcorn and mopping floors for the last time.
But after an unexpected altercation puts everyone on edge, the power goes out. Their manager disappears, along with the keys to the lobby doors and the theater safe, where the crew’s phones are locked each shift. Then, the crew’s tension turns to terror when Jo discovers the dead body of one of her co-workers.
Now their only chance to escape the murderer in their midst is through the dark, shuttered mall. With its boarded-up exits and disabled fire alarms, the complex is filled with hiding places for both pursuer and pursued. In order to survive this night, Jo and her friends must trust one another, navigate the sprawling ruins of the mall, and outwit a killer before he kills again.
Review:
This book was a lot of fun, though – again – not what I thought I was getting into. After reading the synopsis I thought for sure I was going to get a group of teens being stalked by a homicidal maniac in an abandoned mall in a slasher, crazy killer sort of way. That’s not what I got. In fact, we know who the killer is from the get-go. If you’ve not read this yet – don’t get discouraged if you were hoping for a slasher book. It’s still a lot of fun.
As the synopsis tells us it’s the last night of Tempest Theatres. The mall that the movie theater is attached to is long out of business and is being repurposed. Jo, Lexi, Summer, Naomi, Hannah, Quincy and Hudson work to shut down the theatre with their hot-head asshole of a boss, Clayton. After the last customer leaves, they lock the doors and the crew begins to clean up one last time before heading off to IHOP to celebrate.
Clayton seems especially on edge and when his wife shows up accusing him of something, a heated argument ensues. All the teens want is to get Clayton to unlock the safe that holds their cell phones and car keys so that they can get the hell out of there, but then Clayton storms off, the power cuts out and a scream is heard. One of the teens is dead, and another who saw it all happen is completely traumatized. Could Clayton be responsible, or did someone sneak in somehow? Whatever the case, the teens are desperate to escape, but without Clayton they can’t get their stuff, nor can they get out of the locked theater, so off they go into the big, dark, abandoned mall hoping to find an exit before being caught by the killer.
Again – I went into this one hoping for a sort of crazy, slasher in an abandoned mall, and while that sounds like a tired trope – it’s one that I love and one that I think would have worked VERY well in this setting. Knowing who the killer was so early in the novel sort of changed the game for me. We didn’t have that added element of shock (or confirmation) when the killer was finally revealed. I love that stuff.
There was plenty of speculation and at times it appeared that maybe one of the characters might have been in cahoots with the killer and might have been leading the others toward an untimely death instead of safety, which was fun. The book is filled with a lot of action and even some tense moments. The author did a great job of making you care about and root for the characters, though I wish I had gotten to know the first two victims a bit better so that their deaths were a little more impactful. On the flip side of that, this may have slowed the story down a bit and wasn’t exactly necessary to the plot, so it’s probably best that we didn’t get that.
I also liked how the book was structured. Now and then we would get a newspaper clipping, or some other sort of communication that was sent after the events of that night which gave us a glimpse into not only the victim’s lives but also at some of the aftermath which heightened the suspense.
While this one didn’t blow me away, it was an enjoyable and quick read.
