Don't Fear the Reaper (novel)

Don't Fear the Reaper is a 2023 horror novel by American writer Stephen Graham Jones. It is the second novel in the Indian Lake Trilogy, following the 2021 novel My Heart is a Chainsaw. The book received generally favorable reviews.

Plot
Nearly five years after the events of My Heart is a Chainsaw, Jade Daniels is released from prison and returns to her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho. Jade was arrested because she was captured on video killing her father, but was not convicted of his murder because his body was never found. Additionally, Sheriff Hardy's testimony pointed to her innocence. Jade first meets with Hardy at the dam. He shows her a white elk he has observed; the elk is walking on the frozen lake and later wanders around downtown Proofrock, seemingly lost. Junior deputy Banner Tompkins drives Hardy and Jade back to town. Tompkins is now married to Letha Mondragon; together, they have a 2-year-old daughter named Adrienne. Letha, who was severely injured when the ghost of Stacy Graves tried to rip off her jaw, has spent the intervening years becoming an expert in slasher movies like Jade, believing that she could have saved the massacre victims if she had been more aware of the supernatural threat.

Meanwhile, convicted serial killer Dark Mill South is being transported through the area under armed guard in order to lead authorities to the bodies of some of his victims. A previous confrontation with one of his victims left him with a missing hand, which he has replaced with a hook. A blizzard covers the Proofrock area, making travel and communication difficult for the rest of the novel. An avalanche strikes the prisoner convey, killing most of the police officers. Dark Mill South escapes.

A Proofrock high school student, Toby Manx, is lured out of a motel where he was having a tryst with classmate Gwen Stapleton. Once outside, he is eviscerated and dies in the motel parking lot. Cinnamon Baker, a survivor of the previous massacre and now a high school senior, calls 911 and speaks with Banner and Jade. She claims that Toby was killed after they had met for sex in a car. Cinnamon also claims to have found Gwen disemboweled and hanging from a tree. She claims that she saw someone matching Dark Mill South's description committing the murders. Jade notes that the deaths sound similar to the opening scenes of the slasher movie Scream. Cinnamon is taken to the police station for her safety, but is not locked in a cell.

The next day, Jade is picked up by Letha and taken to the police station. Banner has not heard from the other police officers, and no one in town is aware of the avalanche. The three discover that Cinnamon has escaped. Banner and Jade follow her footprints to a nearby retirement home. Cinnamon's twin sister Ginger is a patient at the retirement home. During the yacht massacre that took place during Chainsaw, Ginger was left behind alone on the yacht while a construction worker rescued Cinnamon and Galatea Pangborne. Ginger escaped the yacht and survived in the woods for several weeks. Ginger and Cinnamon are identical twins, but Ginger's head is kept shaved so she does not try to pull out her hair.

Banner leaves Jade at the retirement home and returns to the station. Jade sneaks into Ginger's room speak with her. Ginger claims that she and her sister once found a blob of organic tissue under the town pier. After Ginger was locked up at the retirement home, Cinnamon apparently saw the blob grow into a young girl and disappear. Jade is unsure whether to believe this story.

Jade stumbles onto the bodies of two high school volunteers, who have been stabbed to death after sneaking off to an empty room to have sex. Jade notices that these murders are similar to two deaths in Friday the 13th. Another employee is killed in a similar manner to a character from Black Christmas. She uses the victim's snowmobile to return to the police station.

Concurrently, three students (Abby, Wynona, and Jensen) sneak into the high school to play a game of strip basketball. Wynona is killed with a trophy, and Abby is attacked with the lid of a toilet tank. Jensen is impaled on the antlers of a mounted elk head (resembling a death in Silent Night, Deadly Night). Abby is able to call the police station, but later dies of her injuries.

Meanwhile, Letha, alone with her daughter at the station, sees a figure outside and shoots birdshot at him, believing it to be Dark Mill South. She actually shoots Rexall, the school janitor. Rexall, in pain but not injured, lashes out at Banner and Lonnie (the town mechanic) when they try to help him. Banner places Rexall in a holding cell.

Jade believes that the blob the twins found under the pier may have been a reanimated Stacy Graves, so Letha and Jade take a snowmobile across the frozen lake to investigate Terra Nova. While there, Jade and Letha bond over their situation and their shared love of slasher movies. Jade and Letha stumble across Dark Mill South, who has been hiding in one of the abandoned homes. South has been hiding at Terra Nova the entire time since his escape; therefore, he could not have committed the recent murders.

South injures Letha with a throwing knife. Jade attacks South with a hammer, causing him to fall through rotting floorboards into the basement. The two women lose the snowmobile key in the struggle and are forced to walk back across the lake. On the way they meet Claude Armitage, the high school history teacher. Armitage's internal monologue reveals that he had an illicit sexual relationship with Cinnamon Baker. He is also implied to be grooming Galatea, who is only 14. Upon returning to the shore of the town, Armitage, Jade and Letha discover the mutilated body of Lonnie, resembling the opening scene from It Follows. They also find the snowmobile, meaning Dark Mill South is already in Proofrock. The trio returns to the police station, where the meet Hardy and Cinnamon.

Prior to arriving at the police station, Cinnamon has driven to Main Street using Banner's truck. She warns eight of her high school classmates to lock themselves in the video store for their own safety. At the station, Cinnamon explains that she lied to Ginger about feeding the blob. Ginger wanted the blob to kill Proofrock residents and for the murders to be blamed on Jade. Since most of Terra Nova died and very few Proofrock residents died, Ginger feels the need to "even the score". After this however, "Cinnamon's" wig falls off, and she is revealed to be a disguised Ginger, who runs away.

Jade and Armitage leave the station. Jade plans to get the town doctor to help Letha. Armitage goes to the retirement home to see if the real Cinnamon is still there. Jade passes through Main Street and sees Banner's truck. She finds one of the twins murdered beside the truck. Jade believes the dead twin is Cinnamon and that she has been killed by Ginger. Jade sees a body in the video store window and investigates, finding most of the teens dead. They were given poisoned cupcakes by one of the twins, a reference to the film Happy Death Day. After they died, South entered the store and began mutilating their bodies. Since she has not seen Happy Death Day, which came out when she was in jail, she believes South killed all the teens. Two of the eight teens survive the encounter because they did not eat the cupcakes. Jade and the surviving teens try to fight South. Jade escapes onto the street. South follows, and the living twin (who Jade believes is Cinnamon) arrives and confronts South, claiming that he killed her sister.

South is slowed by Cinnamon, but he turns to attack Jade. Kimmy Daniels, Jade's absentee mother who was working at the dollar store nearby, attacks South with her purse, distracting him momentarily. Suddenly, Kimmy is killed by the white elk, which is still wandering Main Street. The white elk, which is implied to be the blob that Ginger and Cinnamon found under the pier, is a manifestation of the vengeful spirit of Melanie Hardy, sheriff Hardy's daughter who drowned nearly 30 years prior while swimming with her friends. The elk only attacks the people who were with Melanie when she died. It was therefore the elk that killed Lonnie; the elk leaves after killing Kimmy.

Cinnamon tries to attack South again, but he throws her into the truck's bumper. Cinnamon is badly injured, but lives. It is revealed that both twins had shaved their heads and were wearing wigs. It is implied that Cinnamon was the one committing the murders, in retaliation for her classmates spreading rumours about her relationship with Armitage. Jade believes that Cinnamon planned the murders to resemble slasher movies in order to frame Jade, but later decided that Dark Mill South was a more believable scapegoat.

Banner hits South with a snowplow and drives it into the lake. The town's historic pier is destroyed when it cannot hold the weight of the plow. Jade stabs South in the heart, finally killing him. After South's death, Jade and Hardy sit outside. Rexall is sent to bring them inside. The white elk arrives; it tries and fails to gore Rexall. Rexall shoots the elk, which dissolves. Inside it is a version of Melanie Hardy, who is also slowly dissolving. Jade and Hardy walk across the lake in order to return her spirit to the lake. It is implied that Hardy decides to drown so he can reunite with his daughter's spirit.

When the authorities arrive, Jade takes responsibility for driving the snowplow into the lake so Banner does not lose his job. Jade is arrested, since destroying public property violates her parole. Before being taken away by police helicopter, Jade holds Dark Mill South's hook up in triumph. Galatea blackmails Armitage into leaving town, leaving him a picture of Jade's arrest as a memento.

Development
For the novel's setting Stephen Graham Jones chose to set the story in Proofrock, Idaho, as he wanted to show that "there's not a single American Indian story" and that it does not have to be limited to areas they had lived or on reservations or to one specific idea of what it was like to be Native American. He also wanted the setting to feel like an authentic, genuine small town and drew upon his own experiences living in small towns while writing. In an interview with Barnes & Noble's Poured Over podcast Graham Jones stated that the trilogy as a whole will cover the process of Jade "coming of age" as he views the term as being "really kind of like a ritual that you go through to go to your next stage of maturation or just your next place. It doesn't even have to be higher just to the next place."

Release
Don't Fear the Reaper was first released in hardback and e-book in the United States on February 7, 2023, through Gallery/Saga Press. A paperback edition will be released on September 26 of the same year, also through Gallery/Saga Press.

The audiobook has received a full cast recording and features Isabella Star LaBlanc as Jade Daniels; the character was previously voiced by Cara Gee for My Heart is a Chainsaw. The rest of the cast is made up of Jane Levy, Alexis Floyd, Pete Simonelli, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning, Dan Bittner, Corey Brill, Matt Pittenger, Jesse Vilinsky, Migizi Pensoneau, Lee Osorio, Gail Shalan, and Alejandro Antonio Ruiz.

Reception
Critical reception for Don't Fear the Reaper has been favorable, as the work has received praise from outlets such as Cemetery Dance and Tor.com. The Los Angeles Review of Books also reviewed the work, writing that "You don't need to have read Jones's previous works to enjoy Don't Fear the Reaper, but it helps. Reading Jones's works sheds light on the deep, palimpsestuous connections running throughout his career: popular culture and lowbrow slashers teaching strong, complex young women the skills and the How to Survive Male Predators mindset better than any traditional self-defense course." Audiofile praised the cast adaptation of the novel, highlighting LaBlanc's performance and stating "For what is essentially a slasher story about a hook-handed killer, the performances are filled with surprising heart."