Scott Smith--The Ruins
The Ruins --Scott Smith
Scott Smith's last novel was written over ten years ago. A Simple Plan was lauded as the best suspense novel of the 1990s, won lots of awards, was made into a movie--but then Smith seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. Well, he's back, and in a big way.
This book is unique in that there are no chapters. There are page breaks where it shifts points of view from one character to another (lets you catch your breath, really), but other than that there are no stops. This is the story of Amy and Jeff, Stacy and Eric, two couples from the United States who decide to take a vacation trip to Cancun before going to medical school in the fall. They run into Mathias, a German man about the same age as they are, and also befriend a group of twenty-something Greek guys who call themselves names like "Don Juan" and "Pablo", but don't speak any English. They spend their time getting drunk, lounging on the beach, and having a good time.
Mathias' brother Heinrich goes missing. Mathias, who has no evil or cruel intentions whatsoever, asks the rest of the group to accompany him to Heinrich's last destination--some ruins in a distant part of the jungle where an archaeological dig is taking place. The American couples agree, thinking it will be a great place to take pictures and have a good time. The Greek who calls himself Pablo comes along too.
What follows is a thrill-ride of complete horror and events so bizarre that the young people begin a descent into madness and chaos that rivals the best works of Stephen King and James Rollins. They are imprisoned on a hillside by a strange group of Mayans, keeping them there to feed a strange creature, which may or may not be a plant. It mimics their movements and their voices, steals their food, and finally, begins to kill them. One by one it picks them off, until the claustrophobic horror comes to an abrupt, but altogether satisfying climax.
I could literally see the movie in my mind. They will definitely make one. If the plot sounds outrageous, I think it's meant to be. The writing is sparse, third-person, not giving away anything more than the smallest detail of what we need to know. If you're looking for a good scare, with decent character development (even though at times the characters were a little too honest about each other and this made it a little bit harder to care about them), then this book is for you.
I think Stephen King is right when he says, "It does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches."
4 Stars out of 5.