CJ Leede has fast earned her stripes for her ability to make readers care before she makes them scared. Her knack for pairing pure, unadulterated terror with deeply empathetic character work is unmatched, and her brilliant new shocker Headlights doubles down on that signature formula.
Born from a deeply personal period of grief and disillusionment, the book uses the backdrop of Colorado folklore to map the sinister anatomy of highway murders. For anyone fond of the tightly wound, sinister procedural thrills of Seven, “True Detective”, or “Hannibal”/The Silence of the Lambs, this is bound to be your next absolute obsession – a relentlessly tight procedural where the book’s grisly roadside horrors are matched blow-for-blow by the brilliant psychological depth of a deeply scarred cast.
The novel centers on Special Agent Daniel Stansfield. On the brink of stepping away from the FBI, Stansfield is pulled back to Denver when seemingly innocent people are discovered on highways wearing the skin of total strangers, each with a single strand of hair tied around their tongue. To stop the cycle, he must confront both his own traumatic past and the entity behind these gruesome crimes before more lives – including his own – are claimed.
To celebrate the book’s release tomorrow, June 9th, via Tor Nightfire, CinemaChords caught up with Leede to reflect on the novel’s geographical grounding in Colorado, her dedication to scratching that “anchored-in-reality” itch so the supernatural elements carry real resonance, and how her prose consciously rejects the reductive, single-trauma shorthand often found in fiction, opting instead for nuanced character studies that ultimately lend the book’s visceral horrors a satisfyingly profound psychological anchor.
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