If you have ever watched a slasher flick – think the Scream series or the Halloween franchise starring Jamie Lee Curtis to name just two of many – you will be well acquainted with the prevailing tropes and cliches of the genre.
Eminently disposable characters suddenly find themselves stalked and terrified in a place where the odds are stacked against them, wins against death and dying suddenly become bloody losses, and some evil manifestation of broken and often masked humanity is out to get them.
A sort of morality of our modern age, where fatally flawed people often get what’s coming to them, slashed flicks are almost escapist in a weird way, a way to see justice done in a world where that doesn’t always happen and neat and tidy, is dismembered endings, are often evasive.
To a certain extent, all of those elements are present in Josh Winning’s brilliantly good and surprisingly affecting novel, Heads Will Roll (ahem, quite literally) which takes a bunch of disparate characters, many, if not all of whom of whom, are in need of some fairly comprehensive redemption, plonks them into a remote setting rife with murderous possibility – though they, of course, are blissfully unaware of this, to begin with – and lets loose with a story that is page-turningly thrilling and harrowing as hell.
But here’s where Winning challenges the prevailing idea that these kinds of narratives are inherently disposable and incapable of leaving any kind of lasting emotional mark on us.
I look under the bed, and then I tear off all the bedsheets in case the photo slipped between them. With growing desperation, I move the nightstand to look underneath, then go over every inch of rhe closet and behind the curtains, but it’s no good.
The photo isn’t in the bedroom.
It’s gone.
Brandon is gone.
Instead of a fast-and-ready storyline that thrives on anonymous death and emotional-free consequences, what Heads Will Roll offers is some often deeply moving character arcs, searing commentaries on the unforgiving nature of the digital world and how belief of all kinds can turn toxically terrible and destroy the very thing they are meant to advance and uphold.
While there are deaths aplenty and brooding, slowly building tension by the metric ton, what Heads Will Roll also offers is some very thoughtful, emotionally resonant storytelling that leaves you deeply invested in the fate of each and every character in a way that slasher stories don’t always aim for.
Sure, you have main characters you are rooting for because what is a story such as this is without some sense of abiding emotional investment, but by and large they are singular entities and while they get a lot of character constructing attention, everyone else is a cardboard cutout right for a vengeful killer’s spectacularly bloodthirsty wrath.
It’s epic and it’s immersively scary but beyond the lone wolf hero, you are dazzled but not affected; Heads Will Roll, however, goes hard and deep on almost all the major characters and the result is a novel that delivers all the expected blood-soaked thrills and spills, but with an emotional impact that will surprise you with how much it lingers and affects you, well after the last page is turned.
(courtesy official author site)
The protagonist is a former sitcom star whose ill-thought and easily misinterpreted tweet (sorry, not call the platform X or the messages “posts”) has seen her attract a blizzard of vicious cancel culture wrath down upon her, led by shadowy troll, The Gossip Queen who, typical of many social media platforms, offers not chance of explanation, just swift and brutal condemnation.
Reeling from the destruction of her life and career, and bearing the scars of a childhood marked by great tragedy and loss, all Willow wants to do is escape from her online hell, and so, she chooses Camp Castaway, a promised place of healing and redemption where she can digitally detox, fade her demons and emerge a wiser, healthier, happier person.
That’s the idea, anyway, but as is the way with many things (but usually not to such a murderous degree) Heads Will Roll takes her loftily desperate hopes and dreams, which are shared by a diverse group of people, all of whom are harbouring some terrible secrets but none of them deserve to die for them or be denied some form of redemption, and uses them to craft a character whose sheer flawed relatability draws you in and keeps you close.
Willow is so robustly fully-formed, as are many of the characters and Winning so willing, amidst all the blood and brooding mayhem, that what might otherwise have been just a fun and diverting storyline – and yes, Heads Will Roll is as escapist as it comes in a way that only these sorts of stories can be – becomes something substantially more, to the point this high EQ book feels like therapy of hugely and richly rewardingly sort.
Dead.
They’re all dead.
My stomach foams. My body feels numb. Every part of me is cold, apart from my side, where the blade pulsates heat, causing me to sweat from every pore.
My mind is full of static.
Winning seamlessly blends some very real world concerns and cataclysmic scarring and sadness with what appears to be supernatural elements – as with all slasher narratives, what you see is not what you get and appearances, though magically, darkly real can be wholly deceiving though no less terrifying for that – and the result is a novel that diverts you, yes, but which makes you feel something seismic.
Not only do these people matter, but they MATTER because they are you and they are us, with all of having failed in some way or form and been subsequently denied the chance to explain ourselves, to find closure and some form of redemption and healing.
We’ve been there, all of in some way or another, and while we haven’t all necessarily been in a remote forested camp in the United States and had to face up to a legendary, spectral-like killer like Knock Knock Nancy who removes heads as she denies people any chance to make things better for themselves and those they hurt, we all know what it is like to be wounded and lost and without hope that things might fix themselves in defiance of every indication to the contrary.
It’s this universality of experience and a thoughtful understanding of shared humanity, all poured into affectingly realised, fully-formed characters and a brilliantly well-written storyline that keeps the tension up while not being afraid to stop for some moments of real intimacy and ruminative depth, that makes Heads Will Roll such a compellingly great read, and while yes, we get our scares and gore, and fantastically well delivered too, we get so much more in a story which is brutal and terrifying but also full of heart and thoughtfulness and the appealing idea that no matter how dark the situation, that there is hope and the possibility of redemption, often beyond all expectation.