The Hollow Boys is a book that lives under a perpetual cloud. From the get go, this compelling example of Southern gothic is a darkly depressing read – but one that I found increasingly hard to let out of my clenched fingers. Forget cosy crime fiction, this story is built on chaos and despair.
The tiny Appalachian town of Aurora is dying. It stands just 20 miles up the road from where another of Pennsylvania’s former mining towns was abandoned after six disastrous decades. Under the ground a coal-seam fire is raging, 300 feet deep, eight miles wide and at a frightening 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s already put paid to Centralia and then Byrnesville. Only time will tell when Aurora will also succumb.
With the weather providing an unrelenting heat, Chief of Police John Deacon is about to return to work following treatment for cancer. In his absence the local force has barely been ticking over – which is bad news, because just months ago two boys went missing, presumed drowned. Quietly a line was drawn beneath the stuttering investigation but now things are about to ramp up, because on the night of the town’s big college football match a solitary figure appears.
It is Danny Yates, one of the boys who vanished. He is bedraggled and malnourished and collapses, twitching, to the floor. And when he awakes, the child is adamant that he is not Danny but Will Keefe, the second boy who disappeared on that fateful night.
Danny won’t talk to his real mother, instead demanding that he speaks to Mrs Keefe because he insists he IS Will, and she is his MOM. Meanwhile, Emily Yates is in turmoil. She is a spiritual sort, and in thrall to Larkin, the local healer/snake oil salesman depending on who you might be talking to. As the book opens, Emily is preparing a bundle of assorted nonsense: think bird bones, a lock of hair, herbs, drops of blood, that kind of thing. She is also running a bath and is distraught when her sister arrives in time to stop Emily from drowning herself.
But she believes the magic has worked, in part. Yes, Will is home and safe, but he’s changed – and she blames herself, because she was stopped in her endeavours before she could put things right. Therefore, it’s all her fault, as is the sudden appearance of Aspergillus – a devastating fungi known as red rot – in a local farmer’s field, killing both his crops and his livestock. Oh, and some unknown predator is killing local dogs and Emily believes that’s her doing too.
Yes, there’s darkness in bucketloads in The Hollow Boys, with Chief Deacon offering the only pinhole of light. While rumours of witchcraft and devilish, shadowy creatures swirl, Deacon takes a common sense approach to the myriad misfortunes befalling the town he loves so much. There has to be a logical reason for everything and he will work his damnedest to find out what it is. He has to believe that Will is still alive – but are his hopes unfounded?
Communities under siege make for rich crime fiction fodder – think Iris Yamashita’s City Under One Roof, Jane Harper’s The Dry or Black Thorn by Sarah Hilary. Their stories play out against wildly different backdrops, but each of them has sense of place and claustrophobia in bucketloads.
The same can be said here and I lapped it up. Aurora is being hit from all sides, even from underground, and the sheer intensity of the setting makes this an unsettling and addictive read, while toying with themes like witchcraft, unquestioning belief, murder, death and sheer desperation.
From the start of his career, British author Tariq Ashkanani has made a mighty fine job of creating authentic and utterly believable US locations. His first foray into crime fiction, Welcome to Cooper, took the Bloody Scotland Debut award, while The Midnight King – one of the site’s Most Wanted Books of 2025 – won the McIlvanney prize for Scottish crime book of the year. They say three’s a charm – and I wouldn’t be surprised to see The Hollow Boys making the awards lists too. It’s haunting and very, very special.
A missing child is also from and centre in the psychological thriller In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings.
Viper Books
Print/Kindle/iBook
£13.77
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
