What I Am Reading: "Six Stories" by Matt Wesolowski

               The horror genre is nothing if not cutting-edge, and willing to embrace experimentation in format. Many horror stories chase changes in technology and society, to ferret out their malign undertones. This horror novel is stylized as the transcript of a true crime podcast.

               This results in a multilayered story; the podcast seems like just a neat (and fortunately smooth) formatting gimmick at first, but is eventually foregrounded as an important dimension of the story. Like in the found footage genre, the medium provides part of the fright. The podcast is called “Six Stories,” and it is hosted by the anonymous Scott King. His mission is to “rake the graves” of old criminal cases, trying to uncover new details about them by interviewing six participants. In-universe, the podcast is well-known and popular, and King’s new venture is to investigate the death of Tom Jeffries, at sinister mountain/hiking area Scarclaw Fell (in the rural UK).

               Jeffries disappeared in 1997 while on a retreat with four friends, and his body was found a year later. His death is unsolved, but was a media sensation at the time. The story unfolds well: the first interview sets the scene from the perspective of the parent leading the retreat, emphasizing the wholesomeness of the outing and the unexpectedness of the tragedy. From there, we learn in the second interview that the teens involved were involved in some less wholesome activities, namely the exploitation of a local autistic man in the village on the other side of the Fell. From there, it is a dive into the complicated teenage social dynamics of the group, as relationships are revealed to be at least a little messed up, before eventually becoming extremely messed up, depending on who is providing the narration and interpretation. Lurking in the background is the plausibly-deniable hint of the supernatural.

               The genre that the book is trying to invoke is somewhat familiar to me through a friend who is heavily into the world of true crime podcasts. From my limited experience, the book is written believably as a podcast, with interjections and edits from the host. King also summarizes the extent of the information at the end of each chapter/episode, in calmly moderated tones that I could plausibly hear in my head. More importantly, I did find it appropriately chilling, as I read it alone on a windy night. Isn’t that most of what we can ask for from our horror novels?