By Parker McKenzie
If you’ve never pictured the Dandenong Ranges as the setting of a horror; author Michael Huberts might just have you see the Hills town in a different light in his new novel The Devil Next Door.
“It’s trashy and gory and sort of silly,” Mr Hubert said.
“A good holiday book is the feedback I’ve gotten.”
Published on 5 August, the novel wears its inspirations from famous works like Stephen King’s Salem Lot and IT, Agatha Cristie’s Murder on the Orient Express and the Murder of Roger Ackroyd as a badge of honour.
Mr Huberts said the murder mystery is based in the Dandenong Ranges in the 1990s and follows a group of friends who have to overcome a potentially supernatural evil.
“They are younger sort of teenagers that are into grunge rock music and all of a sudden suspect that their next door neighbour is a serial killer,” he said.
“That’s sort of the premise. Anything else will probably give the story away.”
Mr Hubert, who recently returned to Australia after two decades in Japan and the United Kingdom, wanted to write a horror story set in his hometown. But while parts of the novel draw on his own childhood growing up in Emerald, he said he didn’t have any potential serial killers for neighbours.
“A little bit of a couple of the characters have features of myself in them and my childhood friends as well,” he said.
“Then I think it was just more substantive archetypes, the somewhat scary scenes that were maybe a combination of various characters that you would see in a Stephen King or Agatha Christie novel.”
Mr Huberts will be hosting a book launch and signing at Belgrave Library on 1 September from 6.30pm to 7.30pm and said he already has ideas for where he could take the characters in future sequels.
“Broadly, I guess I know the situation that they’re going to have to go through next,” he said.
“I think a trilogy probably gives it a little bit more high-mindedness than it deserves.”
More information about The Devil Next Door can be found at shawlinepublishing.com.au/our-titles/display/249-the-devil-next-door, and the book launch details can be found at events.yourlibrary.com.au/event?id=33432
