Book Review: A Nice Place to Live

Book Review: 'A Nice Place to Live'

4 / 5 Stars

This novel is one of the more obscure Paperbacks from Hell. It first was published in 1981 as a trade paperback by Crown, and then a year later, issued in mass-market format by Bantam.

The trade version features some groovy gold-colored highlights on the front cover, certainly in keeping with the Paperbacks from Hell aesthetic !

A sequel, titled ‘The Vengeance’, was issued in 1983 by Random House.

I couldn't find much information about author Robert C. Sloane, so I don't know if he is 'real', or a pseudonym.

'A Nice Place to Live' is set in the early 1980s. The protagonists are Nick and Christine Marino, the kind of young and photogenic couple who like to look deeply into each other’s eyes, and whisper sexy remarks. 

[ Yeah……… we’re already rooting for the monster(s) ! ]

Nick and Christine recently have moved into the village of Mill Harbor on the north shore of Long Island. It’s an idyllic place to live, although the neighbors are a little eccentric, even threatening. Karl Anderson, a brutish and unpleasant man, is fixated on Christine, while Bowen Stirner, an anthropologist, also signals he wants to be more than just friends with her. And Karl Anderson's daughter Karla, a stunning blonde, has clear intentions towards Nick.

These domestic melodramas are complicated by the discovery that the Marino's dog has been killed in a violent manner. It turns out the neighborhood has a history of animal mutilations. Who, or what, is responsible ? Nick, Christine, and her aunt Henrietta are about to find out…….

I won’t divulge any spoilers (although the fact that there is a sequel has its implications). Sufficient to say that ‘A Nice Place to Live’ is akin to many Paperbacks from Hell that deploy the well-worn trope of a couple moving into a seemingly wonderful place, only to find it steeped in EVIL !!!!!!!!!! (such as, for example, ‘Harvest Home’ by Thomas Tryon, or ‘New Blood’ by Richard Salem). More than a few of such titles are duds, mainly because the slowly unfurling malevolence turns out, in the end, to be underwhelming.

In 'Nice Place', however, author Sloane keeps the reader off-balance with some plot twists and turns. And in place of the traditional tropes of ghosts, or vague occult phenomena, he introduces some genuinely disturbing adversaries, whose depredations benefit from Splatterpunk shadings.

Where the novel slips from Five-Star to Four-Star territory is in the climax, which goes on too long, and features stereotypical 'bwah ha ha !' speeches from the villains. The sort of speeches that are designed to give our heroes, trapped in a lethal predicament, those precious additional seconds to try and come up with a winning strategy............ 

Summing up, if you want a better-than average Paperback from Hell, that is a short and engaging read, then ‘A Nice Place to Live’ will satisfy.