5 Stars for The Ruins by Scott Smith

This may have been one of the best suspense horror books I've ever read, and this is after reading folks like Laymon, Ketchum, Keene, Hill, and King. Horror. Good horror should be suspenseful! The suspense never stops in this book. It's on every page. The character development while not as enriching as say, Dolores Claiborne, was still a big thumbs up, because these characters fit this book like a glove. Yes, they are outlines of people we know, or may be, this is the point, so that some part of us is them, or at least knows them on a very personal level.

Smith even makes fun of this fact. At one point in the book the characters make fun of each other stating that soon they would be out of their predicament and onward to the red carpet of movie making, one of them being the boy-scout, one being the slut, one being the good girl, the jock, the outcast, and then the poor guy who always seems to die first.

Their reactions to their nightmare situation are more than believable, and each character reacts exactly as they have been drawn by Smith. This author knows what he's doing to pull you in, and keep you there, and while I love a good King book, I always have to wait a while for this kind of suspense. You don't have to wait with Scott Smith. I only wish he had more out there to read.