As the ’80s progressed, supernatural horror felt exhausted, with the same old writers dishing out the same old books. Horror movies were all campy slaughter, aimed at teens in on the joke. But the serial-killer book walked the line between crime fiction and horror novel, bringing in new—and in some cases, better—writers, or at least writers whose tricks weren’t familiar to exhausted audiences. Informed by the splatterpunk movement, these writers felt like they had permission to upset readers. A lot. Thomas Tessier’s placid prose lured readers out on the ice, which then cracked, plunging them
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