Headlights by C.J. Leede
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Headlights is an exciting blend of Horror and Crime Fiction that is both thrilling and horrifying. Set in Colorado, this story is sure to creep under your skin until its profound, and admittedly, head-scratching conclusion.
On what should be his last day as a Special Agent with the FBI, Danny Stansfield, gets an unexpected call that it’s happening again. This news forces Danny to return to Denver, a city he fled 4-years previously.
It’s difficult to describe the string of cases that this book features. They’re clearly all related, but he’s never gotten satisfactory answers as to the who and why. Basically, seemingly innocent people are found wandering wearing the skins of victims they have butchered.
These skin-wearers have no recollection how they ended up where they are, or how they could’ve done what they’ve done. It doesn’t make sense. The most disturbing detail, besides the skin suit of course, is that each is found with a strand of a stranger’s hair tied around their tongues.
These individuals have never even met the people that have been murdered, whose skins have been torn from their bodies. What are the connections, and if he couldn’t figure it out before, how can Danny solve these mysteries now?
In this latest case though, there seems to be a twist, a person left who may hold the answers he seeks. Danny is determined to find out.
The deeper he’s pulled back into the cycle of death and depravity, the more Danny is forced to face the demons of his past. Aspects of his traumatic childhood are popping up all around him in a truly haunting fashion.
Will Danny be able to piece it all together, before he, or someone he loves, ends up as the killer’s next victim?
Every time I pick up a C.J. Leede book, I feel like I’m getting a new peek into her breadth as an author. I think for me, as far as tone and set-up, Headlights has been my favorite.
I actually rated American Rapture slightly higher, with 4.5-stars, but reflecting on it now, I feel that had more to do with the emotions I was having after reading the Author’s Note at the end. That gutted me.
Overall though, this one is definitely the closest match to my reading tastes.
The audiobook, narrated by Andrew Eiden, fits the narrative so well. Eiden’s narration has a bit of an old Detective Noir feel to it, that I felt paired so well with Danny’s perspective. It brought the Crime aspect to the forefront, yet carried through nicely into the Horror as well.
I would recommend the audiobook format, should it be available to you. It helped pull me into the story from the very start, as I was so entranced by Eiden’s delivery.
In addition to Eiden’s delivery, Danny has such a compelling backstory as well. I loved piecing that all together over the course of the book. You could tell from the start that he is truly haunted by his childhood, and I liked how Leede chose to reveal all that entails to the Reader.
There was certainly plenty to unpack. There was a lot of sensory things that would trigger memories for him, which made me really empathize with him, as I think that’s something we can all sort of relate to in one way or another.
It was more than just places he had been, there was also a lot of music, or other media involved, and certain smells, just things that would immediately take him back to when he was a kid. It was all very interesting.
Additionally, there’s connections to one of my favorite novels of all time. I was quite surprised when those details started popping up, and I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into it, seeing connections that didn’t exist, but before long, it’s clear you’re supposed to be picking up on those.
I can imagine some Readers getting to those moments, or hearing about them, and feeling this is Copy Cat, but IMO it felt more true to life that that, if that makes sense.
To me, it was that this character had found an inspiration in, or an explanation in, this novel and I feel like that’s something a lot of us have experienced before. The cool part about this, was that the novel in question, is a real novel, and it’s a popular one, to say the least.
I will say that towards the end, the direction it went, it left me with some questions. Now that’s necessarily a bad thing, I don’t mind things left open-ended, or anything like that, I just feel like in this case, it actually got a little rushed and maybe slightly confusing.
I do plan to get a hard copy for my collection though, and would love to read it again, so perhaps on reread, I’ll be able to piece together more of the bigger picture concepts.
At the end of the day, I had a great time with this. I would recommend it to any Horror Reader, but also to Readers of Dark Crime Fiction, such as The Chestnut Man, The Echo Man, Come With Me, or Bone White.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I’ll pick up anything written by C.J. Leede.
Keep ’em coming!
