However, the story contains its share of scares, and the Paragon Hotel is a far more atmospheric haunted house than most that appear in traditional horror stories. The book contains no supernatural elements, and so really should officially be labeled a ‘thriller’. I could never quite predict where the book was going: numerous twists and turns keep the reader guessing, including at least one jaw-dropping event. Every character has his own secrets, all of which come out over the course of the evening, and events are connected more than they appear. Morrell does an amazing job of building and maintaining suspense throughout the novel. Unfortunately, the creepers are not the only people interested in exploring the hotel, and events quickly spiral out of control into a series of violent and deadly confrontations.

Furniture, and even belongings, remained within, a decaying time capsule ripe for the creepers to explore. The Paragon, built in 1901 by recluse and hemophiliac Morgan Carlisle, had closed in 1971 upon his death and never reopened. Journalist Frank Balenger decides to join a group of ‘creepers’, led by Professor Robert Conklin, on one of their most ambitious creeps: the exploration of the long abandoned and decaying Paragon Hotel in New Jersey. A ‘creeper’ is a person who undertakes risky – and illegal – forays into abandoned and condemned buildings, solely for the sake of adventure and curiosity, sort of an ‘urban caver’. Morrell also has written books that straddle the thin line between thriller and horror, and I recently read one of them, the 2005 novel Creepers.Ĭreepers is a fast-paced tale that takes place over the span of a single, bloody evening. His first novel, First Blood, spawned the character of John Rambo and gave Sylvester Stallone something to do on and off for twenty-five years.

David Morrell is a name which is almost synonymous with ‘thriller’.

The totem by david morrell