![\"orange](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6SKS7WDVGRAJBEPVBJPR2PN3C4.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nIt isn\u2019t much of a leap, then, to see the appeal of setting a horror novel in a retirement community, or upping the stakes and making it into a slasher story, which is exactly what Philip Fracassi does in \u201cThe Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre.\u201d (Weirdly, last month\u2019s \u201cJenny Cooper Has a Secret\u201d also is about a care home menaced by a maniac.)<\/p>\n
You gotta love a title that lays it all out for you, and the book follows the expected trajectory: A mysterious assailant picks off residents one by one by at Autumn Springs. By virtue of having \u201ca sixth sense when things aren\u2019t right,\u201d 78-year-old Rose DuBois, along with 76-year-old friend Beauregard Mason Miller, is drawn into finding out whodunit. <\/p>\n
You see, the authorities don\u2019t necessarily believe the deaths are murders. People dying isn\u2019t unexpected in a retirement community \u2014 death is \u201chunkered in every shadow of every room,\u201d just waiting \u2014 and the first few fatalities don\u2019t attract much attention within that environment. So when Angela Forrest\u2019s fall proves deadly, nobody questions anything. Except for Rose. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow the hell could a slip and fall do so much damage to a person?\u201d she wonders aloud to Miller. <\/p>\n
The reader knows how, because we are privy to the details of the slayings, which are sometimes elaborated from the victim\u2019s point of view and sometimes the killer\u2019s. Fracassi spends a fair amount of time (sometimes too much) setting up the murders, so you are at least acquainted with the soon-to-be-deceased. That\u2019s nice, I guess, but do we need to know much of anything about characters who aren\u2019t integral to the plot? Not really.<\/p>\n
And there are too many of them. Sure, Autumn Springs has a big campus, and Fracassi wants to capture the breadth of a killer on the loose in such a place, but it\u2019s obvious most of the characters are deployed as red herrings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre (Tor Massacre)<\/p>\n
Also unnecessary? The killer-driven chapters, which start appearing a little over halfway through. That the killer delights in taunts and boasts (don\u2019t they all?) is made clear by the increasingly elaborate murders. Adding the killer\u2019s voice just pads an already too-long book. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It isn\u2019t much of a leap, then, to see the appeal of setting a horror novel in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[412,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-37379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}