Jack Ketchum is one of the ballsiest writers out there. If you haven't had a chance to read him yet, there's no time like the present, and there's no better Ketchum novel to start with than The Girl Next Door. I've always called this one the novel that shouldn't have been written but had to be. Edgy isn't a strong enough adjective to describe the book, but it's as close as I'm going to get.

The Girl Next Door is set in the fifties. It's the story of a young girl and her younger sister held hostage and brutalized by a very fucked up aunt and her boys. Only one hope stands between the girls and their horrific ordeal—a neighbor boy who happens to be a friend of the sick, twisted family in question. It's up to this boy to stand against the family and make a decision between right and wrong.

I won't give away the plot, but I will tell you the characters are richly layered, the crimes committed against the young girls will make you sick, and you'll come away from this book emotionally drained. Throughout the story, Ketchum repeatedly draws lines and crosses them. He takes you places you shouldn't go, and he doesn't take you there without some measure of pupose. His goal here is not to shock for the sake of shock, but to touch a core of humanity inside his readers. It takes a strong, determined writer to put this sort of thing on the page.

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Nothing watered down. This is go-for-the-throat stuff that pushes limits and invests the reader. It's psychological terror the way it's supposed to be done. You've got to read The Girl Next Door, bottom line, end of sentence. It's a Leisure Horror publication available from Dorchester Publishing. You can visit Jack at his official web site, jackketchum.net.