We’ve all been waiting to see what happens next to those valiant warriors, but Book 2 opens at the speed of a zombie crawl. Now, finally, comes the long-awaited second volume, and as much as it pains me to say it, “ The Twelve” bites.įans will remember that Book 1 ended with a heart-pounding confrontation and chase scene. Here were the necrotic limbs of classic horror and biomedical thrillers zapped back to life by a writer of engaging characters, transporting scenes and elegantly creepy language.
Somehow, the author of such quiet, tender stories as “ Mary and O’Neil” had a facility with suspense and terror that could make you check the locks (twice), mix up a garlic smoothie and rush through pages till long past midnight. The story described a government experiment that accidentally unleashes a dozen rapacious vampires who kill or enlist almost everyone in the United States, toppling the government, destroying the economy and leaving the country with just a few isolated pockets of terrified survivors struggling to keep the lights on. “ The Passage,” Book 1 of Cronin’s vampire apocalypse, was the scariest, most entertaining novel I’d read in a long time. He’d received nice reviews and won a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting Award - prizes that can drive dozens of people to buy your books.īut then his 9-year-old daughter suggested he write about a girl who saves humanity from destruction, and the undead swooped in with a multimillion-dollar book-and-movie deal.
He’d graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2010, just when we’d all had enough of Bowflex vampires, the Count got a desperately needed transfusion from an unlikely donor: An English professor at Rice University named Justin Cronin had been patiently digging in the graveyard of literary fiction for 20 years.
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