The Haunted Forest Tour (2007) by James A. Moore & Jeff Strand

“He rubbed at the back of his neck and felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the weather”

Readers unfamiliar with The Haunted Forest Tour may prefer to read these notes only after reading the novel.

I started and did not finish The Haunted Forest Tour (2007) by James A. Moore & Jeff Strand last October. Yesterday, I listened to the entire novel on audio book, ably performed by Joe Hempel.

Moore and Strand do an excellent job depicting parallel action. All their characters are put through the ringer, though at varying speeds. From owners and higher echelons on H. F. Enterprises, down to tour guide and tour tram driver, characterizations are sharply and economically rendered. Ditto the tourists themselves, each with their own sorrows, but so eager at the tour’s start.

The forest haunters are monstrous or spectral: both types seem to work together, whether lumbering ogres or wispy ghosts. The tour has not had any accidents in its first year of operation. Nor when H. F. Enterprises installed its facility infrastructure through the forest. 

That a pine forest could emerge fully formed within an hour in rural New Mexico could not be other than supernatural. So, while The Haunted Forest Tour uses a Michael Crichton plot template, the location is a devil's bargain battlefield.

Not that there is a shortage of rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and helicopters. There are even jumper cables on hand, though what they jump-start is not a dead battery.

[....] The recon pilot also made a point of calling for more backup, because from what he could see they were flying into a massive clusterfuck.

         Four personnel transports landed at Dover's Point after hearing from the recon helicopter that there was simply no room to actually land at the H.F. Enterprises headquarters. The entire area surrounding the building was engulfed in trees or would be within the next few minutes.

          Dover's Point was under siege, there was no other way to put it. The trees were rising from people's yards, from the street, and through most of the structures in the small town, including the Baptist church and what had been the town hall....

*   *   *

The novel's supernatural events are not related to Halloween, though that is the day the story’s action takes place. The villain pays no lip service to the human calendar. In a story packed with tumultuous melodrama and cliff-hangers, it's a wise authorial choice.

The Haunted Forest Tour will be a pleasure for any reader who enjoys depictions of desperate fleeing through the woods at night.

Jay

5 September 2024