I have such a deep love for John Darnielle, one of my generation's most truly gifted artists, that it's tough for me to be objective about his second novel. It has all the mystery, humanity, and open-heartedness of the best Mountain Goats songs, and its well-crafted suspense and realistic characters show that Darnielle is beginning to master long-form novel writing. Without revealing too much about the surprises in the plot, I'll just say that what starts out ostensibly as a horror tale or murder mystery beautifully reveals itself to be a story about the greatest horror of all: The way that the passage of time, in its ruthless indifference, erases all of us.