Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chimzar

When the line between fiction and truth become blurred....whose to say if there ever was a line to begin with? Richard Chizmar's fantastic book Chasing the Boogeyman kicks a big fat hole straight through that theoretical line on its way to chasing the reader around the house as we check to make sure all of our windows and doors are locked tight. This is the first book in a really long time that's actually got me looking behind my shoulder in my everyday life. 

This is a fictionalized story about a hunt for a serial killer in the author's Suburban Maryland hometown. The weaving of his real life childhood and early adulthood into the fictionalized parts of the story are so seamless and mesh so well that I'd find myself on several occasions trying to figure out which parts and characters are real or not. The only other occasion I've had the same feeling of reality confusion in a book is with Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (republished as The 13th Warrior after the release of the Antonio Banderas movie of the same name) where the initial section of that work is based off of a travelogue of an Middle Eastern emissary on a mission to Europe. 

But the setting of Chasing the Boogeyman absolutely popped out of the book and into my head. Having grown up in a similar small town with old houses and woods and trails running this way and that known to the children of the neighborhood, the lived in reality gave the killings and horrible ordinariness of the townsfolks a relatability and believability that left a strong impression on me. Many congratulations to Mr. Chizmar for striking a perfect balance of this could happen anywhere and this could happen to you. If the author didn't include prefatory remarks and author's notes detailing the fictive and real elements, I could have believed the entire work happened as written. Also....I must admit I enjoy the few small elements that are left unresolved at the end keeping an air of mystery about the tale...but I can't go further than that without telling tales out of school. 

PS, I wasn't kidding about this book making me check my windows. Favorite and best book I've read so far this year. 

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