There's an interesting premise, a potentially fascinating set of characters, and a grisly set of deaths all based in an atmospheric town. It should have been a good read. And, it almost was. But...The atmosphere and foreshadowing overwhelm the characters and the story. The tension and the mood is laid in so heavy-handed a manner that it's distracting. It became a chore to plow through this novel to make it to the end (though I did, for whatever reason...). The few 'mysteries' were incredibly predictable. The descriptions were so dense that it was tough to remember what happening in the story, and the caricaturization was so distracting that it was impossible to care at all for the characters.