The Summary
"Sienna Shaw is an apex predator. She kills without remorse when it suits her purposes, steals from those she judges undeserving of what they have, lives by her own set of rules. Just don’t call her a serial killer. She knows what she is and what she always will be—a survivor whose governing creed is simple: Trust No One.
Or so Sienna believes, until the day she encounters a shadowy group that calls itself the Book Club. A small, well-funded, highly secret society united by their shared taste for the macabre and a desire to instill fear among entrepreneurs, industrialists, politicians—any who imagine themselves in charge of civilization—to remind them who is really at the top of the food chain. Sienna soon finds herself a reluctant guest on a remote and supposedly haunted island where the Book Club plans to unleash hell upon its next target and usher in a new chapter of its horror-inspired mission.
But not even Sienna is prepared for the tangled web of betrayal and chaos that awaits, or the very real monsters that will be let loose—including ones that may have been present all along."
Introduction
Hank Schwaeble has been on my reading list since 2009, when I picked up a copy of Damnable. I liked the plot synopsis. Then I was introduced to Jake Hatcher, the anti-hero for a trio of supernatural novels. First there was Damnable (2009), then Diabolical (2011), and last in the trilogy, Angel of the Abyss (2016). And now here we are, 2026, and Schwaeble has a new novel out, Normal for the Spider, published by Weird Tales. I was eager as all hell when I heard there was a new book out by the genius behind Jake Hatcher. Well, when I read the synopsis, I didn't know what to expect. Where were the monsters? The mega-villains?
Well, let's talk about those answers.
The Review
A mystery-thriller with Horror overtones, Normal for the Spider tosses the reader into the story in media res, so get ready for that. Sienna Shaw is our anti-heroine. For those who forgot, an anti-heroine is a villain who we root for. And we do root for Sienna. She steals, she robs, she kills, and that's before the story begins. Then she's tossed into the basement of a book shop where she's hiding from some stalkers. And here begins our horror tale.
Hank Schwaeble weaves a tightly wound tale that leads you into dark corners and hidden crevices that surprise you at every turn. As you follow Sienna through her journey, you experience her harrowing initiation into the sinister Book Club, where we meet the usual suspects of fellow thieves and assassins, and then the storyline explodes, leaving you to figure out what is happening just as our anti-heroine must figure it out.
Schwaeble's prose style is a natural fit for this kind of terror. He can smoothly escort you down twists and turns with an inviting turn of phrase or a sardonic observation that the reader can only marvel at the calm upturn of the roller coaster just before it tilts down and plunges you back into fear. We don't get jump-scares; we get shocks, but that's what we came for.
By the third act of our story, all your questions will be answered. The monsters, the villains, and so on. It is nothing short than a grand guignol showdown. From thriller to mystery to horror: Three acts of the perfect novel that we've come to expect from Hank Schwaeble. And he delivers the horror once again with Normal for the Spider.
