A review by booklane
Reprieve by James Han Mattson

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 

Reprieve is the code word that will end the challenge at a Quigley House, a full contact haunted house that offers an experience so horrific that only one team has been able to win the 60,000-dollar prize. But a hastily put together team of four think they can handle it – after all, it is all fake. 

Nevertheless, ss the book opens with the proceedings of a trial, we understand that something must have gone very wrong. In this tense book, these proceedings will alternate with scenes from the escape room and with the back stories of the participants and characters, among which: a hotel manager desiring a devoted subservient wife torn between his girlfriend who wants a job to be independent and a Thai prostitute, a gay Thai student that chases his English teacher to America, an orphaned black girl whose father was not as good as she thought. We also meet John, the dark spin doctor that pulls the strings at Quigley House, an all-white establishment so far. It is 1997, and the United States are heading for Bill Clinton’s second round. Business is not exceptional: people are getting softer these days --  they feel they have rights not too be touched and they will even sabotage you --  and he has something in mind. 

Hanson chooses Nebraska as its setting, a Republican stronghold which he also terms a redneck state, where the only topics of conversation are sports and Quigley House. The book has the terrific feel of a Nineties’ college movie that holds up the mirror to the dark heart of America: it offers an insightful study of racist, self-obsessed, homophobic whiteness and masculinity as well as of luring American dreams that end up materialising in nightmares taunting and engulfing their dreamers (it reminded me of great American novels of that period that managed to paint a veritable moral picture and, more recently, of Joker). With an angry metal soundtrack and images from the Rodney King beatings on repeat in the background, the theme of otherness, racism and integration is exceptionally developed in biting social criticism (just look at the bios of the protagonists above). 

The escape room is meant to push humans to the limits. We see how the tensions that build up in the outside conflate in this room in gory splatter scenes, and how the fine line between fake and real dwindles to deliver a terrifying experience with the horrors of the real world lurking under the costumes. In the end we end up wanting a reprieve: both from the haunted house and from the horror outside its walls.