What's scarier - something lurking in the dark, or someone with a badge who knows exactly where you live?
I was closing up the library on a Tuesday - one of those Oregon evenings where the rain just settles in like it owns the place - and I had about three hours left on this thing. Shirley (after Jackson, obviously) was waiting at home. I was not in a hurry. Because DeMille had me stuck in Spencerville, Ohio, and I couldn't leave until I knew how it ended.
When the Real Monster Has a Badge
Here's what DeMille understands that a lot of thriller writers don't: the most terrifying antagonist isn't the one with the most firepower. It's the one with institutional power and zero accountability. Police Chief Baxter is a specific kind of nightmare - the small-town authority figure who everyone knows is rotten but nobody can touch. He drinks, he abuses his wife Annie, he weaponizes his position with the casual confidence of a man who has never once faced a consequence. And Annie - trapped in the most mundane and therefore most realistic kind of horror story there is - can't just leave. Because that's not how small towns work. That's not how power works.
Keith Landry comes back from a career in Cold War intelligence, and the collision between these two men is what drives everything. DeMille isn't writing a spy thriller or a domestic abuse story or a small-town drama - he's writing all three simultaneously, and for long stretches, it works. The tension isn't manufactured. It's organic, built from the fact that everyone in Spencerville knows what Baxter is, and nobody does a damn thing about it.
This understands that horror isn't about gore - it's about dread. Even if DeMille probably wouldn't call it horror. Mystic River lives in the same shadow — Lehane would probably bristle at the horror label too, but the dread is bone-deep and every character in that town carries the weight of what nobody's willing to say out loud.
Twenty-Two and a Half Hours in Small-Town Ohio
But I have to level with you. This book is 22 hours and 30 minutes long. And you feel it.
DeMille is a detail guy - always has been - and Spencerville gets the full treatment. Every diner, every back road, every knowing glance between townspeople who've been keeping the same secrets for decades. When it clicks, it creates this suffocating atmosphere that makes you understand exactly why Annie can't simply walk away. When it doesn't click, you're checking the progress bar wondering when the next thing is going to happen.
The middle stretches drag. There's no polite way to say it. DeMille spends enormous energy establishing the rhythms of small-town life, and while some of that groundwork pays off in the final act, some of it just... doesn't. If you're coming in expecting the tight pacing of his John Corey books, recalibrate. This is a slow burn that occasionally forgets it's supposed to be burning. I'd honestly recommend bumping to 1.25x speed - it tightens the slack without losing the atmosphere.
Scott Brick Does Brick Things
Scott Brick is one of those narrators people either ride or die for or actively avoid. For Keith Landry - stoic, competent, haunted by a career's worth of ugly operations - Brick is a natural fit. That measured, authoritative delivery works here. You believe Keith is dangerous because Brick sounds like a man who's done the math on violence and come out the other side tired but capable.
Where it gets uneven is everyone else. Annie needs a warmth and vulnerability that Brick can gesture toward but never quite lands. Baxter should feel volatile, unpredictable - instead he registers as generically menacing. The narrator commits. That's rare. But he commits to one register, and a 22-hour book with this many characters needs more range. It's not a dealbreaker, but it keeps a good performance from becoming a great one.
Borrow It From Your Local Library (We Exist, I Promise)
If you scare easily - not from monsters, but from the very real horror of unchecked power and women with nowhere to go - brace yourself. The domestic abuse elements aren't gratuitous, but they're unflinching. Sexual content and violence are present throughout.
If you've got the patience for DeMille's slow-pour style, there's a genuinely affecting story here about first love, institutional rot, and what happens when a trained killer decides to play the good guy. My podcast listeners who love the "real monsters are human" conversation are going to eat this up.
But I'd be lying if I said every one of those 22 hours earns its place. Wait for a sale. Or better yet - borrow it from your local library. We have audiobooks. I will personally put it on hold for you.
