Thrillers for young adults

(Review by Laura Dambolena)

“Zombies. Encounters with the hungry dead” is John Skipp’s recollection of dread tales, which includes “Dead men working in the cane field”, a short story written by W. B. Seabrook, the zombies-of-the-old-school-tales author. This particular text belongs to a series by Seabrook himself in which he goes to Haiti to understand the country’s folklore. One night, his host, a peasant called Polynice tells Seabrook a well-known Haitian history about some men brought, from afar, by a man who send them to work for low salaries in a cane field. Polynice suspects them to be zombies, as he saw something strange in them he cannot define. The protagonist does not believe in supernatural events so he looks for a very reputed scientific who says that the story may be truth.

The book, with its dreadful bloody cover design, promises, from the very beginning, all the adventure teenagers are seeking for. “Dead men...” in particular deals with several issues: the fact–fiction dichotomy, the “romantic” concept of death, cultural differences, folklore, reincarnation, and mystery, among others. It is highly recommended for young adults from thirteen to seventeen years old. They will find this tale very interesting as the story develops a scary thriller, leaving teenagers with a dilemma in an unexpected and surprising open-ending.