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Cemetery Dance Publications, Amazon

Synopsis:

Serial killer Michael Leonard Robinson murdered thirteen college coeds in early 2018, impaling them on flagpoles and leaving them on highway construction jobsites for the purpose of “haunting the dawn rush hour.” Police called him “The Scarecrow Killer,” until he revealed in an otherwise cryptic note left for police on March 13th, 2018, that he thought of his “dolls” more as “sculptures.”

It was believed that The Sculptor killer perished in a massive explosion at the Mount Airy Forge in North Philadelphia at the stroke of midnight, July 18th, 2018. Authorities recovered a foot in a rubber slush boot and one arm in the blast area. They could not find the rest of the body.

Last night, widower Professor Brad Winslow read a disturbing paper turned in by one of his students who had so far attended the Zoom class with the camera off. Most of the “paper” was smut, yet it did not have a college freshman’s feel to it. There was a cruel joy here, as if the author was a damaged yet seasoned adult expecting the reader to find the dark writing poetic. Then, was the conclusion paragraph:

Professor Winslow, I have been watching your darling daughters: Sage, the artsy tenth grader, Jody the eighth-grade tomboy, and Esther the spoiled seven-year-old, bless her heart. Here is the deal. Go to the police and I will skin the girls to the bone one square inch at a time with an X-Acto blade and a pair of splinter forceps tweezers. It will be live-streamed. You will be duct-taped to a chair with your head in a vice and your eyelids sewn open. Or . . .The Winslow Sisters will be my pawns, while you, Professor, will be my Treasure Hunter, Snake Catcher, Lord of the Worms. My new accomplice.

Review:

In The Winslow Sisters, Michael Aronovitz adds a new chapter to the Michael Leonard Robinson story. Robinson is the serial killer in The Sculptor, and I have not read this novel. Even though it is a sequel, you do not have to have read the first to understand any of The Winslow Sisters. Robinson escapes his death in a true slasher movie fashion, by surviving a fire that has limited his life but not his desire to kill. He has found a way to use technology to continue his “art”, and his target is the three Winslow sisters, Jody, Sage, and Esther, and their widower father. When he infiltrates their lives, weird things start happening and in the end, the three daughters have to find and fight Robinson for their survival.

This is a “suspend all belief” horror novel. So many of the things that Robinson does to the Winslow family and to all of the people who help him are so unbelievable and the holes in the story are so large that the best way to enjoy the novel is to not question anything. Think of it as a slasher movie that has the protagonist doing the wildest things to survive and the antagonist not only having every bit of technology at his disposal but also having unlimited funds and resources to get it done. Like many of our favorite horror movies, they are fun to watch but if you scratch the surface, the story starts to fall apart. 

Some of The Winslow Sisters is really good, and some of it is just conveniently weird to move the story along. I really found myself liking the Winslow sisters as the final girls. They are written different enough to see them as individuals instead of just one girl split into three, which is very easy to do when writing siblings. Esther is only seven, and I have a seven year old as well, so many of the things that she does is unbelievable, but a great deal of the story is unbelievable so why not? Aronovitz does give us glimpses of the teenage ennui they feel toward Robinson that I wish he would have leaned into a little harder, but I like all three of the sisters. They are honestly final girls that we cheer for.