Horror is about anxiety, but what happens when you’re always anxious and afraid? The three seasons of the podcast Alice Isn’t Dead hint at this idea, but only tangentially. Telling a story with a full cast and dialog only lets you get so far into each character’s head, keeping you at arm's length. Moving into a novel, we spend a lot of time with the lead character Keisha's inner monologue.

The novel starts the same way as the podcast, Keisha is on the road driving truck in search of her missing wife. She supposedly died months before, but then Keisha sees her in the background of a news program. That sets her on a quest to criss-cross the country, finding out there is a sinister world hiding just off the highways of America.

That mystery slowly unravels into a conspiracy. A conspiracy that combines all the creepiness of abandoned hotels and roadside attraction and those faceless warehouses and compounds just off the freeway all across America. There is a war, and people are being killed.

The plot of thistle men, shadowy trucking companies, and faceless oracles hiding in rest stops and closed attractions is a great read. The book drags you along for the ride and keeps you tied to the knowledge level of its main characters. You aren't given some magical scene where the whole plot is laid out in a monologue. It makes the narrative more human; something genre fiction doesn’t always do well.

The Thistle cripple their prey with fear, giving Keisha the advantage. Her anxiety makes her immune to their intimidation, and she wields it as a strength. Fink makes it clear in the afterward that it was important to note that Keisha’s anxiety is central to her character and that she is not “cured” by her adventure with the Thistlemen.

Alice and Keisha are a very human married couple, and their relationship is defined so well in the book, you feel her confusion and anger as to why her wife left. These are human people that feel alive, set in a weird world to contrast the flashbacks of their normality.

There have been plenty of great horror books written with the veneer of the real world. Alice Isn’t Dead deftly uses that template to craft a narrative that gives an astute commentary on our everyday monsters in the modern world.

If you missed out on the podcast run of Alice Isn’t Dead, grab this novel. If you did hear the podcast, this is different enough that it feels like a new work. It's built on the same skeleton, but the novel is more personal. Fink shows that he can think like a novelist, expanding beyond his audio drama writing in beautiful ways. I loved this book and tore through it in just a few days.