Hill makes him a larger than life star, a jerk who takes advantage of his wealth and privilege, and a regular dude who just happens to have had an interesting career. With his hardcore reputation, his big, bearded physicality and his affinity for the macabre, Jude is also just another 54-year-old man who loves his dogs and probably needs a colonoscopy. The book is very well written, filled with both menace and a dry sort of humor that really establishes Jude’s character. With plenty of supernatural horror (which I love, of course) and Hill puts together both a good cast of characters and a solid story to go with them. So what’s the verdict? Is Joe Hill just a pale imitation of his father? The answer is no, he most certainly is not, he is the real deal. That suit is going to bite him in the ass and make him stand up and take stock of his comfortable, easy existence. Sadly for Jude, what he believes doesn’t matter one bit. Jude doesn’t believe it any of that, but it sounds like a great item to keep the cement strong on his badass death metal reputation.
You buy the suit, so says the ad, the nasty ghost comes with it. That actually might make it even better – Jude hates the bastard for the years of abuse he suffered at the old man’s hands.Īs we enter the story, sycophantic assistant Danny has just gotten word of a ghost for sale on the internet – exactly the kind of thing Jude would love to have in his collection. It’s a good life, even if his very much hated father is dying. Main character Judas Coyne (aka Jude, nee Justin Cowzynski) is an aging, hugely successful death metal rocker with a series of young girlfriends he calls by the name of their home state, a ghoulish collection of death souvenirs, often sent by fans, a farm in the country and a sycophantic assistant who takes care of the business end of being an aging rocker. I knew it when I picked up the book – so let’s do what comes naturally and compare father and son, shall we?įirst, though, some basics. Now years after the 2007 publication of Heart Shaped Box, everyone knows that. Honestly, how hard would it be to get honest critical feedback on your ghost story if the entire world knew your dad was Stephen King?īut Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, and chose to write in his father’s very famous wheelhouse. Author Joe Hill didn’t try and fight his author genes and only mitigated his unusual circumstances by not using the last name of his famous father when publishing his first novel, Heart Shaped Box.
Even harder to imagine making the decision to follow in their career footsteps and face the inevitable comparisons. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to grow up in the shadow of an internationally famous parent.
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