The setting for Kelley Armstrong’s Dive Bar at the End of the Road is a ripe one for horror: It takes place on a stormy night on a barely traveled road cutting through an ominous forest. There’s no cell reception (though not for the reason you might think). There are no buildings around, except for a dilapidated bar that our protagonists stumble upon after… well, we’ll get to that.
This mise-en-scène—a fishbowl of elements meant to make you afraid—hits you from the first page and doesn’t let up until the last. The book begins with Ellie, a 35-year-old woman trying to safely navigate the two-lane road through sheets of rain and flashes of lightning. She can’t see too well in front of her, but don’t worry, she’s almost home. Wait, shouldn’t she have been home already? It’s hard to figure out, because her GPS is on the fritz and time seems to be acting weirdly. Just keep on driving, she tells herself. And she does, until she sees a woman in her headlights, tries to steer the car away from her, crashes into a tree blocking the road, and blacks out.
Before we can catch our breath, we meet Henry, a 41-year-old paramedic who finds himself on the same road and in the same conditions, except the woman he sees in the road is Ellie. The expected happens, and the two (one in better shape than the other) hobble toward the neon sign they see just off a hidden driveway.
It’s an old bar, worse for wear on the outside but not too bad looking on the inside, which houses just one other patron and a chatty young bartender. There, Henry and Ellie agree, they’ll wait until the storm abates and hopefully get cell phone service once again. Never mind that those clouds in the dark red sky seem kinda weird. Never mind that there seemed to be amorphous shapes tracking them in the forest as they walked on the shoulder of the road to the building, and never mind that they’re not the only ones who crash their cars that night. An old man, a young couple almost out of college, and a jerk of a businessman also total their rides and end up inside what turns out to be the most messed up juke joint in all the world.
I don’t want to give away much more of the plot, as the joy of this book is getting terrified and surprised in equal measure. But I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that things are very much not quite right in this part of the woods, that the doomed people who end up crashing their cars in the darkness are connected in an unexpected way, and that the story is full of terrifying, bloody scenes that will likely touch on at least one of your own deepest fears.
The book is a page turner and, unsurprisingly, an extremely appropriate read for spooky season. Its non-stop pace and short chapters made it all too easy to stay up way past my bedtime, frantically reading while every creak or cricket I heard put me more on edge.
That intensity, however, is only part of what makes Dive Bar at the End of the Road a solid story. Armstrong has also created fully realized characters dealing with supernatural ramifications from all-too-real themes.
Close to the end of the book, for example, someone says, “Don’t most people feel as if they haven’t lived up to their potential? As if their life is less than they dreamed of when they were little?” The question reveals that sometimes the terror in Dive Bar at the End of the Road comes from literal monsters in the woods, and sometimes it comes from feelings you’ve been trying to unravel for years in a therapist’s office. Which one is more terrifying is debatable.
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Dive Bar at the End of the Road
Kelley Armstrong
You’re faced with these themes and get to know the people destined to die in these woods thanks to chapters told from a close point-of-view. Ellie is the primary protagonist, and her sections are in the first person while Henry and others have their chapters told in the third person. (Armstrong says in her acknowledgements that she originally planned to have the whole book told from Ellie’s perspective, but realized the story needed to hear from Henry and others as well.) No matter which character we stay with, however, all of them have their own hopes, fears, flaws, and dreams, which makes the (extremely violent and gruesome) threats to their lives all the more intense.
When you read the last page, those overarching themes and complex character arcs may cause you to consider the fickleness of fate, or question why society deems one life worth more than another. Or you might find yourself grappling with the fact that each and every one of us knows that we will die one day, as much as we try not to think about it. Or maybe you’ll just enjoy getting scared by a thrilling tale on a dark night in October. No matter where you end up, Dive Bar at the End of the Road delivers.
Dive Bar at the End of the Road is published by St. Martin’s Press.
