#BlogTour-‘Those Who Came Before’-JH Moncrieff

About the book…

People are dying at Strong Lake, and the worst is yet to come.

An idyllic weekend camping trip is cut short when Reese Wallace’s friends are brutally murdered. As the group’s only survivor, Reese is the prime suspect, and his story doesn’t make much sense. A disembodied voice warning him to leave the campground the night before? A strange, blackened tree that gave him an electric shock when he cut it down for firewood?

Detective Greyeyes isn’t having any of it―until she hears the voice herself and finds an arrowhead at the crime scene―an arrowhead she can’t get rid of. Troubling visions of a doomed Native American tribe who once called the campground home, and rumors of cursed land and a mythical beast plague the strangest murder case she’s ever been a part of.

Huge thanks to Flametree Press and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the blogtour invite and my gifted review copy of ‘Those Who Came Before’ which is out now.

This is the first book which I have read by this author, and it absolutely will not be the last-I loved everything about it from the dialogue which had such a ring of authenticity, to the Native American grounding of the story. Based on the myth of the wendigo or windigo, 2 couples go on a camping trip to an abandoned camp site but only one comes back…

Detective Greyeyes is charged with finding out the truth of what occured that fateful weekend, but in order to fully do so, she needs to marry her investigative professional role to that of her ancestry and these do not always make easy bedfellows.

Neatly mixing the present day and and past whose tendrils can be felt not so distantly ago as many of us would like, this book does a great job of acknowledging the ill treatment of the Native Americans, the whitewashing of their myths, cultural appropriation and harm done to the indigenous tribes.

It does so with aplomb, creatign a rich and vivid backstory, supported by the author’s afterword which makes this reader want to learn much more about the importance of representation, at the same time, JH Moncrieff builds such well developed characters without ever dropping a ball in balancing story and those who drive it forward.

The driving sense of horror and unease is hammered home before you even realise it, you cannot stop reading-this is no run of the mill creature , it has deep cultural significance as well as a decent police procedural element underpinning the supernatural horror.

Anyone who does not acknowledge the failings of their ancestors is doomed to repeat the same mistakes or lay themselves open to reparation, and the more you read about the still shocking abuses perpetrated on the Native Americans, the deeper the horror resonates.

A well rounded, beautifully paced story which draws you in  and refuses to let go, this is a supernatural tale, elveated. Great for fans of Adam Nevill, Mark Morris and Alison Littlewood!

About the author…

J.H. Moncrieff’s City of Ghosts won the 2018 Kindle Book Review Award for best Horror/Suspense.

Her work has been described by reviewers as early Gillian Flynn with a little Ray Bradbury and Stephen King thrown in for good measure.

She won Harlequin’s search for “the next Gillian Flynn” in 2016. Her first published novella, The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave, was featured in Samhain’s Childhood Fears collection and stayed on its horror bestsellers list for over a year.

When not writing, she loves exploring the world’s most haunted places, advocating for animal rights, and summoning her inner ninja in muay thai class.

Links-http://www.jhmoncrieff.com/

https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/the-mythology-and-misrepresentation-of-the-windigo/

Twitter @JH_Moncrieff

@annecater

@flametreepress