The K: or the hum beneath the (reflecting) skin
By Dawn Merriman
Reviewed by Matt (cleric20) Adcock
Reading The K by Dawn Merriman feels less like consuming a thriller and more like being slowly enrolled into one. Do I fear for my sanity after reading it? Absolutely (but then if you know me, you’ll know that’s probably not a new sensation!?)…
Readers get to observe young Jeremiah, who's not exactly normal... and before I realised it, I was uncomfortably adjacent to him. By the final act, I was beginning to understand his internal logic. My lawyer says I have to put ‘not agreeing or endorsing’ in here, but I definitely recognised the terrifying smoothness of it.
Merriman (who must be fun to have a glass of wine or two with) doesn’t bludgeon you with depravity. She gives you a rationalisation. The small permissions. The interior voice sounds disturbingly calm. Evil here isn’t theatrical; it’s more administrative. It kinda explains itself.
There’s a tonal lineage running through the book, I picked up a flicker of Dexter without the winking charm, a touch of American Psycho without the satire, maybe even a trace of Blue (saw this on the big screen last week and it’s still ace), Velvet’s suburban rot but in a stripped form. Here is moral decay under flat Midwestern skies, speaking of film references, if you like The K, then you should check the lesser-known classic The Reflecting Skin (a lesser-seen 1995 cult classic).
But back to The K, this is a master-class in restraint, and that makes it hit harder.
One of the many things that lingered with me is how the book weaponises intimacy. You don’t fear Jeremiah because he’s monstrous. You fear him because he’s coherent. Because you can track the steps. Because the slope is so rational, it almost feels reasonable. *shudder*
Then comes the love story, and it’s here that The K gets crueller.
Victoria isn’t a redemption arc. She’s friction. She introduces hesitation into inevitability. And as a reader, you find yourself wanting, absurdly, for love to matter.
What Merriman explores through her quietly relentless prose (which put me in mind of the masterful Catriona Ward), is the idea that love doesn’t erase darkness. At best, it complicates it. At worst, it becomes a kind of ‘possession’.
This thematic tension is what gives the novel its aftertaste; it’s bitter because this isn’t a “can he be saved?” It’s more a “why do we need him to be?” tale.
The prose itself is cool, controlled, just my twisted cup of tea. This unpacking of a psychological descent made me feel like I was watching corrosion spread across metal in real time. Perhaps the corrosion is in my mind now after reading this?
Thanks Dawn…
As the Sisters of Mercy so eloquently sang, ‘hey now, hey now now – sing this corrosion to me..’.
When I finished the book, I closed it slowly. And sat with the hum in my head.
The K isn’t interested in shock value, although it is shocking. Dawn is more interested, I think, in complicity. You get a dip into the very mind of a monster and asked, “How comfortable are we watching?”
And that sure is unsettling, but I highly recommend you take this trip…
Dawn Merriman
Dawn Merriman writes creepy small-town murder mysteries from her small farm in northeast Indiana, where she lives with her husband and teenage children. You can often find her with muck boots on her feet and a story in her head. She enjoys animals, auctions, snorkeling and archaeology.
Dawn Merriman grew up a small-town farm girl on a small-time pig farm in Indiana. She spent her young adulthood sitting on her bedroom floor scribbling stories in notebooks. She won the "Northeast Indiana Young Writers" award as a sophomore in high school.
After battling severe depression, she wrote her debut novel, "How Murder Saved My Life" as therapy, mixing her love of murder mysteries and farming with climbing out of the darkness of illness.
Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:
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(5 - Step this way for some excellently dark, unsettling psychological suspense.)
Find out more about Dawn here
Buy The K here
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