Claw Heart Mountain

January 2, 2023
Menaces both natural and supernatural turn a planned pleasure trip into a nightmare for the five college students at the center of this macabre thriller from Oppegaard (The Town Built on Sorrow). Nova and her friends Mackenna, Landon, Isaac, and Wyatt are en route to a weekend retreat at a vacation home in Wyoming’s Claw Heart Mountain when they stumble on an overturned transport truck on the highway, abandoned by its driver and containing millions of dollars in cash. Their impulsive decision to take the money puts them in the crosshairs of Bannock, a killer hired by the vaguely defined “Organization” to retrieve the loot. The quintet’s troubles are complicated further by the emergence of “the Wraith,” a legendary mountain monster with an insatiable appetite for human flesh who threatens both the hunted and the hunter. Though the dovetailing of the two pursuits is overkill in spots, Oppegaard milks the caroming confrontations with both monster and assassin for maximum suspense. A few loose threads at the end don’t diminish his tale’s visceral power. Anyone looking for gripping natural horror should check this out. Agent: Dawn Frederick, Red Sofa Literary.

January 13, 2023

The latest from Oppegaard (after The Town Built on Sorrow) begins with a moral dilemma and ends in a thriller/slasher mash-up. The story follows a group of college friends who are spending the summer at a remote cabin on Claw Heart Mountain in Wyoming. On the drive there, they come across a crashed van full of money. After a brief argument, where moral center Nova is outvoted by the others, they all take some of the money, launching a chain of events that finds them pursued by the police, a hit man hired by a nefarious organization that wants its money back, and a mountain legend which is both awake and hungry. Rather than worry about how they will spend their money, these five friends soon wonder if they'll survive. VERDICT Oppegaard wisely keeps the action moving at the speed of an action thriller or a slasher movie, giving the novel a frenetic pace that makes it a fun read, even though his characterizations don't go beyond their archetypes (spunky final girl Nova, rich and beautiful Mackenna, stone-cold hit man Bannock, etc.).--James Gardner

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