Winner of American Library Association/RUSA 2010 Award for Outstanding Horror Novel of the Yearįinalist for 2009 Shirley Jackson Award, Novel Category On Time Out New York's Best Books of 2009 List And the results? The creepiest book I have ever read.Fangoria's Book of the Month for April 2009

And I must close with the strongest possible warning: this is not for the faint of heart. This is not a particularly easy book to find these days I had to haunt used booksellers on the internet to find it. And it leads people to do all sorts of outrageous things. It becomes outrageously cartoonish unless of course you have the misfortune to read the newspaper. To be sure the book is about religious fanaticism and the lengths to which it can lead one. It is impossible to read Evenson's book without thinking about his Mormon background and its unhappy end. Does that count as three? And then of course there is the battle between the strict interpreters that say only eyes and hands count, while others say all body parts are in play. But what if, over a period of time, another person cuts off three fingers. But then it becomes a question of how to keep score. Who has the greatest religious authority? Well, it seems it ought to be the person who has cut off the most since they show the greatest commitment. There are a variety of questions that must be answered in such a cult. We have a religious group into self-mutilation. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee…” Can you see where this is going?Īnd so we have our fearless detective who gets involved with a religious cult that takes the above passage literally. 5:29-30, which he quotes in the King James Version on the first page: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. The book is built around a passage of Scripture, Matt. And this from a person who has spent much of his life trying to find the perfectly creepy story. I don't mind telling you that of all the books I've ever read this one might be the creepiest. Last Days has the form of a detective story, but really it’s a horror story. And of course that was the beginning of the end of their relationship. There followed a long period of tension with the church and bureaucratic maneuvering, and eventually the church asked him to show his good faith by ceasing to write. For a time he taught at BYU, but a student complained about one of his stories. But then the church decided that his writing, which was given to violence and depravity, was unacceptable. He was faithful to his church and extremely engaged. Brian Evanson was a Mormon (emphasis is on the “was”). This is one of those books for which you have to introduce the author before you can do justice to the book.

Last days evenson