It is safe to say in this point in his writing career, Craig DiLouie is one of Canada’s top horror writers*… he publishes about a novel per year, they do well within the genre – fans and critics alike. Fans who are familiar with his writing and of the horror genre are in for a treat because we get to Dilouie novels this year, a duology the first of which is Summer Camp Massacre.
SUMMER 1983. A blood-soaked summer camp counselor is found staggering down a country road. The sole survivor of a horrific massacre, Mary tells a nightmare of a masked maniac wielding an old skinning knife. Arriving too late to help, her boyfriend Tom Bailey is plagued by guilt.
SUMMER 1992. The camp reopens as Camp Summer Fun. Now a sheriff’s deputy, Tom doubts this is a good idea, but the camp has been refurbished, the counselors hired, and the little campers are on the way. Responding to reports of a blood-curdling howl near the camp, he again arrives too late to save anyone except a single brutalized teen. The killer nowhere to be found.
Hoping to catch the killer and finally right his mistakes, Tom reconnects with Mary. She’s convinced that the killer is not human but instead a rural legend known as the Hungry Hare.
The sheriff wants the case closed, but refuses to believe in folklore. Mary dreams of revenge for her friends. And Tom hunts for any traces of the real or fictional. But the murderer could be closer to home than anyone expects.
The Hare is coming and is so, so hungry…
In 1983, (the tail end of the golden age of horror/slasher movies) a lone young woman named Mary lived to tell the story of the killings at a summer camp in Ledger, Texas. She paints a picture of a knife wielding maniac called Hungry Hare, but over the years she builds up a great deal of resentment about the police chief who never solved the case. She drifted apart from her boyfriend Tom and has become a bit of a recluse. Fast forward just over a decade later and Camp Summer Fun (renamed with the idea of wiping away the past) and the Hungry Hare seemingly strikes again. This time, Tom is a deputy in town, but he is unable to save the counselors or children and finds the blood-soaked Laura as the only survivor.
Most of the novel is from Tom’s point of view and here’s the DiLouie twist – more often than not, slasher movies and novels focus more on the victims / survivors. With Summer Camp Massacre, we see the man whose identity is that of protector and he’s ultimately failed which gives the novel/story a bit of a police procedural feel…and it works incredibly well.
DiLouie does a wonderful job of putting us in Tom’s head as he struggles with his inability to save anybody aside from Laura and his obsession with seeking the truth not only about the 1992 slayings, but what really happened in 1983 with his former girlfriend, the victims form that earlier massacre, their connection to each other and maybe beyond.
Tom is not exactly favored by his peers, he’s continually told not to go digging into the past, not to look too much into what really happened. Especially Tom’s boss Sheriff Buddy Jackson who just happens to be up for re-election so Buddy wants the case solved cleanly so he can get reelected. Problem is our blood-soaked survivor speaks of something inhuman as the murderer and the deeper Tom digs, he’s finding that this “Hungry Hare” is something of a local/folk legend. However, at every turn, Tom’s efforts hit some kind of speed bump or roadblock. Seeing this frustration through Tom’s eyes added even more tension to an already tense story.
In Tom, DiLouie has crafted an extremely empathetic character. Why? Tom is the guy who wants to get to the root of the problem, the cause for these murders that have been repeated at least twice as far as the larger world knows. Maybe… just maybe if he is able to figure it all out, it won’t happen again and maybe Tom can find redemption for not saving Laura’s friends and peers. On top of that, he’s got emotional ties to Mary, which helps to propel the story even more
I enjoyed this novel for everything it was, for DiLouie’s fantastic characterization, his ability to drive a brisk plot, and the smart twisting of tropes. If there was one thing I would have liked to see just a bit more of it was the Hungry Hare or it’s nature. Then again, some of the most effective monsters have very little “screen” or page time. Freddy Kreuger for example has only 7 minutes of screen time in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (the film is 91 minutes and my favorite 1980s horror movie) and “Bruce” the shark in Jaws is on screen for 4 minutes of the 2 hours and 10 minutes of overall film time.
In other words, Craig DiLouie very much knows what he’s doing because Summer Camp Massacre was a fantastic thrill ride of a novel that brings something inventive, smart, and refreshing to the slasher genre.
Highly recommended.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
*I recently realized/learned that Mr. DiLouie was born in New Jersey, where I’ve lived my entire life so I feel an even stronger connection to his work!
Trade Paperback | Run for It (Orbit/Hachette’s Horror Imprint)
Slasher Season, Book 1
June 2026 | 304 Pages
Excerpt: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/orbit-books/excerpt-the-summer-fun-massacre-by-craig-dilouie/
https://craigdilouie.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
