The Trickster [Hardcover]

Muriel Gray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1995

While strange murders spread throughout a remote ski resort town high in the Canadian Rockies, Sam Hunt, a Native American, begins suffering black-outs, waking up miles away from home with no memory of his actions. A first novel. 40,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In a remote town high in the Canadian Rockies, some mysterious and terrible killer is on the loose. Mutilated bodies appear in the snow, with no human footprints nearby. For Sam Hunt, this is especially terrifying -- Sam has been having blackouts, waking up miles from home, with blood on his face and no idea what he's been doing...

From Publishers Weekly

A seamless fusion of the supernatural and the psychological distinguishes this page-turning first novel, an impressive distillation of the Native Canadian experience. When a series of brutal murders rocks the snowbound Canadian town of Silver, suspicion falls on Sam Hunt (ne Hunting Wolf), a Kinchuinick Sioux who can't account for his actions or whereabouts during the blackouts that have recently afflicted him. Sam's renunciation of his tribal heritage years earlier in order to escape his abusive reservation upbringing has left him full of self-loathing and vulnerable to the mythical Trickster, a demonic "mirror that would kill its own reflection," who is channeling Sam's suppressed anger to wreak vengeance on the human race. Scottish writer Gray suspensefully intercuts scenes of the Trickster's gruesome mischief and Sam's painful self-examination with parallel events from the turn of the century, when Sam's shaman ancestor saved a town of disbelieving white folk from the Trickster's exploits and created a burden of family duty that Sam must now fulfill if he is to protect his family and friends. Although the narrative sprawls across nearly a century of history and the experiences of a vivid and varied cast of characters, Gray neatly frames its dramatic high points in terms of tensions between the white and Kinchuinick cultures. Her poignant rendering of Sam's identity crisis reflects those tensions and provides a compelling portrait of a man in the grip of forces beyond his control. Tersely plotted and richly laced with Sioux lore, this novel marks an auspicious fiction debut. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 488 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (July 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385477864
• ISBN-13: 978-0385477864
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,631,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, January 31, 1998

By 

Daniel P. Ray (Woodbridge, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trickster (Mass Market Paperback)

Definitely one of the best horror novels I've ever read! Muriel Gray does a fantastic job capturing pure evil as well as the beauty of nature, love and the fascinating spiritual beliefs of the Native Canadians. She takes over where Stephen King and Dean Koontz leave off. Absolutely brilliant! Not only was my "hunger" for a good horror story satisfied, I was also moved to tears when it was all over. Read it, you will definitely not regret it!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well constructed horror tale with a few flaws, September 16, 2001

By 

Lesley West (St James, Western Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trickster (Mass Market Paperback)

If you like horror stories, you'll like this book. It has enough hideous murders to make Stephen King cringe, and the story pays meticulous attention to the characters and their lives, in a picture perfect Canadian ski town. I particularly liked the story mechanism which took the reader back to earlier in the century, when railroad workers unwittingly unleash the being that is the trickster.

However, there are a few flaws in the story, and they are quite serious ones. First and foremost is the author's continuing message of childhood sexual abuse amongst native Canadian families. If this is an important part of the plot, then so be it, but I think it is seriously overdone and takes away from some of the suspense, not to mention adding to the general distaste the reader may feel. Sometimes a little subtlety goes a long way.

Secondly, our hero/prime suspect's son suspects that there is sonething wrong with his father, and this is manifested throughout the novel as fear, until almost the end when he completely turns his thoughts around. Somehow any value that this plot device has had up to that time is lost at this point.

The ending is jumbled, but this appears to be standard fare with horror books that deal with the supernatural. Perhaps authors have difficulties articulating the end of a horror they have worked so hard to create.

But criticisms aside, this is an interesting read, and it kept me appropriately engrossed for a few days. The author is a talented writer, and I look forward to anything else she may write.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Animals Talk THEN Attack!, September 10, 2002

By 

P. Craig "[e-mail]" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trickster (Mass Market Paperback)

So hunky that even men have fallen in love with him, Native Canadian Sam Hunting Wolf is in denial about his Indian heritage. Nevertheless, he is a powerful shaman whose spirit and energy is being used by a malevolent force known as "The Trickster" to slaughter his way through the small ski town of Silver. Sam's got to get in touch with his roots fast, before he's the only one left to ski those slopes.

Muriel Gray is a wonderful addition to the horror genre. I also enjoyed her "Furnace." But here she's written a fast paced, engaging story with characters you really care about. The origin and reason for the Trickster's resurfacing is a bit muddled, but otherwise this was a fun book.

As to the above title, the Trickster possesses animals in order to do his stalking, which makes for some really spooky scenes. When kitty starts using some very bad language it's time to leave the house!