The book starts out with a group of kids hanging at the reservoir of Kettle Springs, doing what kids do -- drinking, smoking, high-diving off the rocks. And we're in the days of social media, so everything is being filmed and streamed live. Cole Hill is the star attraction, a local bad boy who had it all -- fame (local though it may be), good looks, and money. But attention is quickly drawn away from him when his younger sister climbs the stacks, a natural feature of the area that would put her relatively high up. And she proceeds to jump -- and hit her head on the way down. You know what comes next. Yeah, she's dead. And it's all been caught on camera. It was an accident, but Cole is seen as the one responsible for his sister's death.
Jump a year later, and we find Quinn Maybrook arriving in town with her father, who is replacing the town's previous doctor, who up and left rather suddenly. It's not long before Quinn falls in with the local pack of bad ones. You know the type, the pretty girl who's pretty and knows it -- and wants everybody else to know it; the clingy hanger-on, who clings to everybody -- the pretty girl, the jock, her boyfriend, who, while pretty herself, isn't the center of attention but wants to be; the jock, dumb, obnoxious, often acts without thinking; and in the center of it all is Cole, just returning from school after being investigated for suspicion of arson. The kids aren't really bad; they just do what kids do in a small town -- pranking anybody and everybody and filming it all for their followers on social media. Quinn soon learns that one teacher at the school has it in for this crowd; his boner for this crowd has him assigning them detention for the slightest offense, and Quinn soon finds herself thrown in with this crowd on her very first day of school because she giggled at the teacher's overreaction to a minor offense. So now, without even knowing these kids, she's gained a reputation.
It's not long before the kids are throwing a party out at an old, abandoned farm. And it's not long after the party starts that the blood starts to flow. And it's not just the "bad ones" who have fall prey to the killer; any kid in attendance is fair game. The killer? Frendo, the Clown. The town's mascot. But who is behind the mask?
If you're familiar with slashers, you're not going to find anything new here. You can quickly figure out who the killer is, who the final girl is going to be, and pretty much who will live and who will die. It's pretty formulaic. But that doesn't stop it from being fun. It's like going to see Friday the 13th, and the following year going to Friday the 13th Part II... And Part III, and Part IV, and Part V. You get the idea. You tune in not for the great story (because face it, slashers are pretty much all the same -- only the locations, names, and backstory change), but for the creative ways in which characters will die. Sadly, there's nothing creative here, with all the deaths again being relatively formulaic. And sadly, there's no point in the story where you stop rooting for the kids and start rooting for the killer, which I think is part of the fun of a slasher film. Cesare has created a cast of sympathetic characters, and you want to see them survive. Yes, even the annoying characters, as there's just enough backstory given on them for you to understand why they are the way they are. As I said earlier, they're not bad kids. Wait a minute. I take that back. There are two kids you really want to see bit the big one, but you don't realize that until you're almost at the end of the story. That was a twist I didn't see coming.
All in all, I enjoyed Clown in a Cornfield. Is it the great masterpiece folks are raving about? No. Not in my opinion, but it is a fun read, especially if you're a slasher fan. And don't be too surprised to see Clown in a Cornfield II in the not too distant future, as the author has set it up for a possible sequel.
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