REVIEW: The Auctioneer (book) by Joan Samson

The Auctioneer is a blend of suspense and, I guess, horror. I checked my copy out from the library.

Review:

I can't remember how this book made it onto my radar. Maybe some sort of "small-town horror" list? Anyway, this is focused on the Moore family, made up of John, his wife Mim, their four-year-old daughter Hildie, and John's elderly mother. The Moores get by okay, doing work for others in the town of Harlowe and occasionally selling some butter and crops, but they're not wealthy by any means. Even so, when the police chief stops by to tell them that an auctioneer has moved into town, and would they like to donate something to an auction he's planning in order to pay for more deputies for Harlowe, they find a few things to donate.

The problem is that it doesn't just stop with that one request, and as Harlowe gets more deputies, the requests feel more and more like demands. Perly, the auctioneer, is all smiles and charm, but it seems like an awful lot of "accidents" have been happening to those who don't donate. 

A large chunk of this book is John and Mim worrying about the next week's request to donate and fighting about how far they're willing and able to let this go. Initially, they have enough junk that's broken or that they don't regularly use that it's easy for them to find stuff to give. And there's an element of peer pressure in it as well - it's to help Harlowe, so sure, why not donate a few old wheels or whatever?

As things progress, however, the Moores are faced with donating things they actually still treasure, and then things they still use. Peer pressure was part of the issue, but I got the impression that Mim was also kind of dazzled and flattered by Perly's attention, at the start. (Unless I misinterpreted things, it sure seemed like John was ragingly jealous.) When the flattery stopped working, word about the "accidents" started getting around.

I could sort of see why people kept caving to the requests, especially since Perly, through the deputies, was careful to target Harlowe's less wealthy and powerful residents and to ensure that the more powerful residents benefited enough from the auctions to be willing to look the other way when things began to get more tense. A few people ended up leaving Harlowe, but that required them to have enough money to go somewhere else, and people like Moore saw their primary wealth as being the land they lived on.

Still, this ended up going much further than I could accept. I think the first "donation" that broke my sense of disbelief was when John was asked to put his gun up for auction. He was angry about it, but he did end up caving...and then grumbled about it later because he no longer had a way to protect his land, family, and stuff. 

I don't know where Samson stood politically, but the way things worked out in this book reminded me an awful lot of the people who cry about "liberals/government/whatever coming to take their guns," with Perly swooping in and literally taking guns, promising that good things would come from the auction money (greater safety with more deputies! an ambulance!) when the opposite was actually the case. It just didn't play out in a way that was at all believable, especially considering how far Samson took it.

My other issue with this book is that I approached it as horror because I'd heard that it was horror, but it didn't read as creepy or scary at all.