Dead in the Water

By Nancy Holder

Book Overview

From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nancy Holder comes a chilling novel of horror on the sea. This is how it will be when you drown. . . . At a sun-washed dock in Long Beach, California, the creaky... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440214815
• ISBN13: 9780440214816
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
• Length: 413 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Haunting...it definitely stays with you

I read this book over the course of two days - I couldn't put it down. Although, as another reader mentioned in an earlier review, there were some stock characters, they, and the story itself veered off in directions I never anticipated. It was a confusing, haunting book that still left me wondering days later. I wouldn't classify this book as true horror - it really wasn't that scary - I would consider it more of a horror "mystery".

Cliche-defying and truly frightening

Most of my fellow reviewers are exactly correct. This book starts with a crusher of an opening sequence and only gets better as the plot develops. Seemingly 'stock' characters are introduced, but fortunately Nancy veers away from all tired cliches, heading off into a horrible, surreal nightmare. Easily one of my favorite horror novels, even now, 5-6 years after first reading it. Holder covers the gruesome and, yes, touching aspects of her novel with equal skill and aplomb. Readers should be advised to seek out Holder's short fiction as well - she appears in countless horror anthologies and I've yet to find a clunker. Why we haven't seen a new, 'original' horror work from her (aside from her myriad 'Buffy' novelizations and collaborations) continues to escape me. She also wrote a good SF trilogy ("Gambler's Star") that is worth checking out as well.

A nightmare from which you will not awaken

From its famous opening line to its unsettling conclusion this surreal horror tale will hold you spellbound. It is the tale of shipwreck survivors being "rescued" by what turns out to be ghost ship of The Flying Dutchman type. Author Nancy Holder keeps the reader locked inside a fever dream that refuses to end at the novels finish. Highly original and deserving of its Bram Stoker award.

Horrifying and utterly original nightmare

The prologue remains one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. From that point on, the story only goes up in terms of pure horror and violence. The book continues to haunt me 2 years after I first read it. It's passages have a haunting poetry to them, and the overall effect is that of living through a particularly horrible nightmare. In the right hands, it could make one of the most horrifying and visually arresting films ever created.

A dark disturbing masterpiece ...

This is simply one of the best, most disturbing horror novels I have read for some time. I have a habit of judging novels by their opening pages and this book opens with a tour de force which draws the reader him/herself into the nightmare of drowning. I think it is fair to say that the rest of the book is even more disturbing and the ending still haunts me ... a must-read for horror fan