Recently i saw promotions for movie "Aranmanai 4" where the director was mentioned about the franchise. The fact that audience already knew what to expect from the movie - be it the horror element, that happens in an aranmanai, with revenge being the usual reason why the ghost is haunting the place, culminating in good forces take divine help and destroy evil, only makes every other installment in the franchise all the more difficult to deliver. He used a good catch phrase that the audience knew what to expect, he has to retain the scope for their expectation at the same time, ensure its novel enough across each installment. In other words - old wine in new bottle. Same goes for Peter swanson's books, especially those involving Lily as the prime character.
All of his novels have a POV perspective to the story where each chapter is delivered from the perspective of the narrator, where almost all the main characters in the novel, take turns to take the story forward. It is this simple style of story telling that makes all his books such a fast read and the twists so organic. In what is his possibly tenth book in the same genre, i guess he might've finally ran this setup aground. Almost all the surprise aspects were a given and if not forced. What used to be the "whoa" factor when it was introduced for the first time, does reach its shelf life, when repeated several times across ten different stories i guess. Lily character, who seems to be his franchise person, was such a shocking personality in the first book, was introduced more as a mass guest character in the second. In this book, even though she has almost as much running space as the main lead, all her antics hardly surprise and the novelty has worn off. The story is about a suspicious wife, who wonders her salesperson husband could potentially be a serial killer!!! Talking of taking things to the extreme, the clues basis which she comes to this conclusion and the backstory behind the clues is the only interesting aspect in this book. Her end, the villain's reveal or his end hardly have any interesting element about them and fall flat quite literally. The husband character, whom i was betting big for a grand reveal in the end, was a major disappointment as well.
Any new readers of Peter swanson may find this book kind of interesting. But for those who follow his works regularly, it is yet another ghost in yet another aranmanai.
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