Chasing the Boogeyman

Product Information

I read it one time on my bus ride home after my late shift and for the first time I was frightened to walk along the short walk to my house in the dark on the lonely streets. Chasing the Boogeyman is a fictional account of the brutal killings that took place in the author's hometown of Edgewood during the late 1980s. And then my path crossed this book, which is just a perfect true crime read, only without the guilt because it is just a bunch of brainwaves of a fantastic author!

the phrase one always hears when it comes to popular narrative nonfiction is that "it reads like a novel.

He has won two World Fantasy awards, four International Horror Guild awards, and the HWA’s Board of Trustee’s award. Still, I would be lying if I did not feel foolish because written on the cover are the tell-tale obvious words that this is not based on anything real.

In between writing horror stories and preparing the debut issue of his horror and suspense magazine, Cemetery Dance, Chizmar gets involved in the hunt for the killer. If you like an out-of-the-box compelling, tension fueled, suspenseful, and terrifying story that blends horror and true crime. Chizmar’s “dazzling work of fresh imagination and psychological insight” (Caroline Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of You) is on full display in this truly unique novel that will haunt you long after you turn the final page. Richard tries to puzzle out who among his neighbors and maybe even friends and acquaintance could be the boogeyman.

He takes up the gauntlet and of course becomes involved with the murders and its abhorrent mutilations while the town gossips and lives in fear. Richard Chizmar is the main character in the story, and the setting is his hometown in Edgewood, Maryland, in the 1980s. Richard Chizmar narrates the novel, with himself as the central male protagonist, using real people and places with a plot inspired by the Phantom Fondler.

Recent books include the New York Times bestsellers Becoming the Boogeyman and Chasing the Boogeyman, The Girl on the Porch, The Long Way Home, his fourth short story collection, and Widow’s Point, a chilling tale about a haunted lighthouse cowritten with his son Billy Chizmar, which was recently made into a feature film. RICHARD CHIZMAR is the co-author (with Stephen King) of the New York Times bestsellers Gwendy's Button Box and Gwendy's Final Task , and the author of the solo work Gwendy's Magic Feather . Black and white photographs of the crime scenes and key players are even interspersed throughout the pages. Matt Wesolowski's Six Stories series is similar in execution but done in a much better and sustained way. I mention this only to explain why I had—shall we say—an almost personal interest in how Richard Chizmar would approach writing about himself, and the potential traumas of his childhood or young adulthood.This novel might be described as a meditation on evil and on how that evil changes all who come into contact with it, however obliquely. And speaking of endings, as the killer takes more lives, we sense an awesome and hair-raising confrontation approaching. He sets the book in his hometown during the late 1980s, where a number of young girls are abducted and murdered. If the goal of fiction is to immerse the reader into a tale so bold and true as to feel authentic, then surely this must be the perfect tale.

To add that extra touch of realism, the pictures you’ll see used across many chapters in this book showing characters, places, and much more are all truly bone-chilling. Extremely disturbing, spin tingling, nerve bending, twisty, outrageously surprising and truly explosive! If you are not a fan of true crime, you might not find the “telling” of the story as exciting as we did.

and that is all well and good, but for me, the closing of a cold case, the serial killer mystery thread, the procedural/amateur sleuthery, that was all background for the more compelling part of the story, which was the tainted nostalgia of a man forced to re-examine his cherished childhood memories as an adult and come to terms with the whole das unheimliche of girls being found savagely murdered in the places that had previously been home to his fondest memories—the formative experiences and locations that made him who he was. It’s a unique and interesting premise, but it was missing the promised suspense, chills and thrills. He has adapted the works of many bestselling authors including Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Bentley Little. Perfect for fans of true crime, meticulously orchestrated, and clever beyond measure, Chasing the Boogeyman will leave you guessing long after you've read the last page.