Here's a book that's getting plenty of love at Books of Horror that also happens to be brand new. I'm reviewing an ARC because it only came out in June and I have a slew of new books to work through. This one's notable not because it's another horror novel by a female author, something that's now thankfully becoming commonplace, but because it brings a highly memorable female lead to life in such a way that she ought to influence the next generation of horror novels.

She's the Maeve Fly of the title, a cool name indeed that I initially assumed to be an insect, and, in a neat and very careful touch, she works at the happiest place in the world. Given how much of L.A. history the author sneaks into this book, everyone will immediately translate that to Disneyland, a clear assumption backed up by the fact that Maeve works as a princess in the fake Scandinavian ice castle and her best friend Kate is her younger sister. I haven't seen Frozen, because I haven't been around the grandkids when they've felt the urge, but I'm up to speed enough on pop culture to see that as Elsa and Anna and I've heard that song.

Of course, while we get to see plenty of dark secrets behind the scenes at Disneyland, CJ Leede is a very careful author and she doesn't drop a single word here that could prompt a certain litigiously minded Mouse to sue her for everything she has. It's just enough for us, given where this character goes, to see the contrast between the happy, blonde and clean front and the petty, debauched and thoroughly dark reality hiding behind it and then extrapolate that to the city of Angels as a whole, the city of dreams for so many but a nightmare town for even more others.

That's a great setup but the primary reason this novel works is because Leede's voice is as utterly confident as its lead character who acts like God and thinks herself untouchable. Initially, Maeve is a character with a need to know, to see behind the curtain of everything to discover what matters, what's new and never been done before. She delights in stripping things down to the core essence that drives them. Much of this has to do with the city she lives in and she seems at once an integral part of it, the most honest tour guide imaginable, but also somehow apart from it, as if she's some sort of guardian angel or resident god.

And talking of gods, some of it has to do with petty anonymous victories. The one we witness early on is the denouement to a months-long campaign to destroy a woman that she doesn't even know. She's Trixie Krueger and she's an all-American mum, who loves Jesus and America and doesn't see a big difference between the two. She drives a pink Hummer she bought with family oil money. So Maeve has spent months gaining her confidence online under the fake persona of Susan Parker, a mother of five and patriotic member of the NRA. She finally springs the trap by cunningly inviting her to join the Klan and getting her to accept. She screenshots everything and dumps it on Reddit, not to expose a racist but to destroy a life.

It's a glorious scene, yet another look beneath an outwardly beautiful surface to show a festering darkness beneath it. "Nothing in this world is so deliciously satisfying as watching a pious person go down," Maeve tells us, while masturbating to gay porn and a YouTube video of a wolf hunting a rabbit. Everything's timed down to the second and her climax synchronises with all the others. It's masterful stuff. And it's just a beginning because we know that there's a lot more to Maeve Fly, an awakening that the back cover blurb tells us will begin when Kate's brother moves to town.

He's a big guy, a professional hockey player who's just joined the Los Angeles Kings and, while they hardly hit it off on their first meetings, there's a chemistry there that we know is going to escalate quickly. We just don't know precisely where it's going to take them and how dark it's going to get. That back cover blurb suggests that it's going to get bolder and bloodier than anything Maeve's done thus far and references 'American Psycho''s Patrick Bateman, so we can safely assume that it'll be pretty impactful. And, boy is it.

Leede has a heck of a lot of fun as she moves her unstoppable antiheroine around the city, flitting here and there like she's part of the foundations to the city. Her grandmother certainly was, as an old time Hollywood legend the actress Tallulah Fly who used to be a household name and is still a cultural force to be reckoned with, even though she's old and dying and in need of constant care by an in-house nurse. She took Maeve in as a troubled young lady and has guided her and shaped her in her own image. How far, we'll learn before the book ends.

It's appropriate that the novel is called Maeve Fly because the character is the book. There are an array of other characters but, however well-drawn, everyone here is a prop for Maeve to use as she sees fit. She struts through these pages as if she owns the world and everything in it. The only time she's shaken is when she encounters a doll's head, almost hidden in the vines on Sunset Strip; that happens to be attached to a plastic alligator with blood, a quote from the Marquis de Sade written on its belly. It unsettles Maeve because it tells her that she's not alone. There's someone else here in the city who threatens her dominance. It shakes her to the core.

And, as the dolls continue to appear, in places she knows intrinsically, we have to wonder how this is going to play into story we're about to read, the awakening of a girl who's into porno movies, has a weird fetish to do with eggs and adores obscure Halloween music. It's pretty clear that Leede will be shaping her to be the truth of the city, the epitome of the dark reality beneath the promise of fame and fortune. But there are so many questions and we ache to find the answers. This is a book that I'm not just happy to have read—and I relished it from start to finish—but a book that I dearly wish I could read again for the first time. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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