The list goes on and on, but what matters is that Chasing the Boogeyman is written in a personal, engaging tone that pulls readers in and keeps them glued to the pages because everything feels equally real, and that’s something all great fiction should attempt. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazineand The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. A clever, terrifying, and heartrending work of metafiction, Chasing the Boogeyman is the ultimate marriage between horror fiction and true crime. Artist and academic Lisa Perrin’s first book is a gorgeously illustrated and designed collection of biographies of that most romantic and maligned of villainesses: the poisoner. Like any kind of writing, literary criticism must strive to find the most precise words to communicate what it wants readers to see as it deconstructs a narrative.

The Boogeyman (2023 film) - Wikipedia The Boogeyman (2023 film) - Wikipedia

Despite my early love of reading, not to mention obsessively watching scary movies and westerns on TV, I was an outdoors boy.And for me and my friends, that was perfectly okay; a source of blue-collar pride, and the way it was supposed to be. The first of the killings, of a young girl abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night, occurs not far from Chizmar’s parents’ house. The long walk gave us more time to screw around before and after school, and delayed the inevitable drudgery of homework. I also set up a card table on the sidewalk at the corner of Hanson and Tupelo and hawked waxed paper cups of ice-cold lemonade to passing drivers. The speed limit sign posted directly across the street read 25 mph, but few drivers obeyed that particular law.

The Boogeyman Series by Richard Chizmar - Goodreads

The first involved crossing Edgewood Road at the main traffic light and traveling several blocks along Hanson Road. Every house, as far as I could see, on both sides of the street, was lit up by multicolored Christmas lights, many of them blinking cheerily. Above that flat, smooth, tanned tummy of hers, I could just make out a deep-red sliver of lacey bra cupping a pale mound of bare breast—the first brassiere and boob this nine-year-old had ever laid eyes on in real life. Amid preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into a real-life horror story. This is a fresh take on serial killers that doubles as a memoir and makes both things work in ways that will satisfy readers across genres.The only real drama in the town’s history up until that point arrived in the summer of 1903, when a group of armed outlaws attempted to rob a payroll train docked at the Edgewood Station. A cluster of carolers sang “Silent Night” in the front yard of one of the houses, and a big plastic Santa surrounded by flying reindeer swayed in a gentle breeze atop the roof of another nearby house. General George Armstrong Custer was a favorite early subject, as was almost anything about the Old West, the Civil War, and unexplained phenomena.

Chasing the Boogeyman: A Novel - Richard Chizmar - Google Books Chasing the Boogeyman: A Novel - Richard Chizmar - Google Books

Law enforcement struggled to make sense of the case, and Chizmar and a friend started their own investigation. Instead, I stood there in my side yard, eyes wide, staring down at the deliciously tan flesh of Melody’s bare torso, which had been generously exposed when the orange tank top she was wearing had been pushed up and torn away after contacting the sidewalk.I’ve never actually asked my parents if that was the case, but I’ve heard it enough times from my siblings to mostly believe it to be true. Chizmar’s Becoming the Boogeyman, a uniquely blended tale of fact and fiction, has you asking yourself, did this really happen? Chizmar’s “dazzling work of fresh imagination and psychological insight” (Caroline Kepnes, New York Times bestselling author of You) is on full display in this truly unique novel that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

Still Chasing the Boogeyman Decades Later Richard Chizmar is Still Chasing the Boogeyman Decades Later

Christmas lights glowed in the windows and along the rooftops of a handful of houses lining Hanson Road. A metafictional retelling of events that took place in 1988, Chasing the Boogeyman is tinged with Stephen King-style horror, and indeed Richard Chizmar has worked closely with King on a number of projects. For us Hanson Road boys, those were treasured moments of sheer, unbridled joy and adrenaline, and we longed to relive them over and over again. I know it sounds disgusting and far-fetched in equal measure, but I was there to witness it—and what an astounding sight it was to behold. Coincidentally, the second special memory I’ve tucked safely away also occurred on a snowy winter evening.

Hanging above it, covering every available inch of mounted pegboard, were dozens of tools and gadgets, mysteriously labeled and organized in ways I still don’t understand to this day. The Boogeyman was released on digital formats on August 29, 2023, followed by the release of the DVD and Blu-ray on October 10, 2023. The wooden railroad bridge crossing the nearby Gunpowder River was burned in April 1861 during the Baltimore riots, and Confederate soldiers burned it a second time in July 1864. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. I often found myself imagining what might have happened if the man had escalated from touching and fleeing to acts of physical violence and even murder.