Book Review: 'Summer Solstice' by Michael T. Hinkmeyer
'Summer Stolstice' (213 pp.) was published by Futura (UK) in 1980. The artist who provided the striking cover illustration is uncredited.
And, as it turns out, the cover illustration actually is the best thing about 'Summer Solstice'.....
As the novel opens, our heroine, Katie Ellenwood, returns to her childhood home in St. Alazara, a dwindling village in the northern part of Minnesota. Her mother, Katrin, has had a stroke and been rendered an invalid. Distressed by the seemingly negligent treatment - heavily reliant on sedatives - her mother is receiving from the unctuous town doctor, Katie resolves to stay in St. Alazara to assist with her care.
The local Wise Woman, Aggie Jensen, drops hints that all is not as it seems when it comes to Katrin's illness. Katie's father, Ben, is evasive when questioned about the circumstances of her mother's stroke. He's also installed locks on the door into the basement, from where suspicious noises originate. When Katie begins having strange hallucinations about places she never has been to, she starts to wonder if something very wrong is going on in St. Alazara...........something that has ties to the worship of the deities of the Earth, a worship that goes back to the pagan beliefs her Scandinavian ancestors brought with them from the Old Country...........
The cover of 'Summer Solstice' includes a blurb referencing Thomas Tyron's 1973 novel 'Harvest Home', and in its initial chapters, 'Solstice' adheres to the same themes of Tyron's novel..... and adopts his leisurely approach to plotting.
Author Hinkemeyer is reasonably adept at creating the menacing atmosphere of a rural village sunk into decay and peopled by eccentrics. However, by the midpoint of 'Solstice' the insinuations that Evil Doings are afoot in the environs of St. Alazara had become so repetitive, but the narrative so diffident in revealing any specifics of said Evil Doings, that I came close to tossing the book aside.
Without disclosing spoilers, I'll say that persevering to the final page brings a denouement to 'Solstice' that is too glib and unconvincing to be effective.
The verdict ? Even devotees of the most obscure entries in the 'Fertility Cult from Hell' sub-genre of Paperbacks from Hell are going to find 'Summer Solstice' unrewarding.
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