Gabino Iglesias’s latest thriller leans quite heavily into horror, just like its Shirley Jackson Award-winning predecessor The Devil Takes You Home in 2022. This time, however, the story is noticeably less bleak, Iglesias replacing the hired killer protagonist of his previous novel with a group of young Puerto Rican men out to right an awful wrong. Iglesias is a rising star in the field, a noted reviewer and anthologist as well as an author, but if you haven’t experienced his blend of folkloric horror and hard-boiled crime, then House of Bone and Rain is a better jumping-in point before swimming in the darker waters of The Devil Takes You Home.
In San Juan, five young men are just graduating from high school. Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul and Bimbo are a gang in the old fashioned sense – young men who have grown up together in the same neighbourhood, attended the same school, shared same experiences together, and formed a bond as strong as blood. Like all young people, they have plans and dreams, perhaps they’re realistic, perhaps not, but anything is possible and they believe they will live forever.
Those plans are shattered when Bimbo’s mom, Maria, is shot while working the door at the Lazer Club in town. Bimbo is out for revenge, and the group make a promise to kill the men who took Maria from him. The boys already knew Maria was selling drugs on the door for her brother Pedro, and that she may have had turned down a couple of strangers who wanted her to sell for them the night before she was murdered.
Summer continues and Bimbo disappears for a little while – he’d briefly been imprisoned for non-payment of child support. Life goes on in his absence and Iglesias takes the opportunity to introduce us better to his characters. Gabe lost his father in a hurricane a few years back, and is mindful that his girlfriend Natalia wants him to take more seriously her ambition to emigrate to the US. Paul is moody, more taciturn, and the outsider of the group. Tavo is a surfer, and confident in his homosexuality.
Bimbo’s time away hasn’t dulled his anger and when he returns it is with a plan. The boys will follow Maria’s replacement at the club home to find out what he knows. They brace him at the end of the night after the club shuts and what they learn isn’t good news. The man works for Papalote, Puerto Rico’s drug kingpin, who has a base in in La Perla, a district of San Juan near the port. The man gives up the names of two men who may know more about Maria’s murder, but the information is frustratingly vague, and Paul has a sense that they were spotted questioning the bouncer. Afraid of leaving a witness that can report back to Papalote, the boys take no chances and kill the doorman.
Bimbo and his friends work their way up the chain towards Maria’s murderers. Each encounter becomes increasingly violent as it becomes clear Bimbo has lost himself to grief and rage. Their actions don’t go unnoticed and one of the gang is killed, apparently in revenge or as a warning, and others find disturbing messages scribbled on the doors to their homes. It’s at this point that creepy elements begin to surface in the story, initially as a kind of indigenous folk horror, but then more it becomes more cosmic or Lovecraftian in nature.
Gabino Iglesias explores the limits of loyalty and how we must balance competing responsibilities as each of the gang decides how far they can follow Bimbo into madness. The author creates a dark, foreboding atmosphere on the narrow streets of the old town as a terrible hurricane approaches the island, flooding the streets and causing power outages. A subplot involving a wedding racket used by Dominicans to get citizenship in Puerto Rico reveals the politics of the immigrant experience from both sides on the island as Iglesias contrasts the boys low opinion of the Dominicans with their desire to move to the United States.
House of Bone and Rain is another excellent thriller combining horror and noir elements with a diverse perspective that adds to reader’s enjoyment. I had a lot of fun with this book and I think you will too.
For more horror blended with crime, also see Joyland and The Colorado Kid by Stephen King.
Titan Books
Print/Kindle
£7.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
