The Siege of Trencher’s Farm (a.k.a. Straw Dogs). I suspect it’s impossible to talk about home invasion narratives without mentioning The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams. The book and movie adaptations vary considerably, but it was the book that influenced me as I was thinking about how to write my own take on this subcategory of thriller. In the novel, George and Louise Magruder are besieged in their rented home near Cornwall because they’re unwittingly harboring an escaped child killer (at the same time a young girl from the village has coincidentally gone missing). It’s an inversion of what one expects from a conventional story in this subgenre, because George and Louise are trying to protect themselves from a vigilante mob coming for the escape killer instead of the killer himself being the one to threaten them. While the 1969 novel is dated in many ways, it does have more than a little to say about toxic masculinity, the short road from civilized order to violence, and unreflective group-think.
In Cold Blood. The other 800-pound gorilla in the literary salon is Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel,” In Cold Blood. While a true crime work, this story is the model for so much of what I think a reader expects from a home invasion story. Hardened criminals take people hostage in their home, in this case, looking for an easy score—the safe full of money rumored to be in the house. When it turns out there is no safe, and there’s no going back, the invaders, Hickock and Smith realize to get away, they can’t leave any witnesses. Being a true event, there is no happy ending here, and one is never promised. In order for a story the reader already knowns the ending of to be compelling at all, the tension has to be in the who and why of it. The brilliance of the book is Capote’s use of character and setting to present the weight of an inexorable tragedy that contains no doubt how it’ll end. Though not the “immaculately factual” book Capote claimed, it is to me an example of how to present the compellingly inevitable.
Virgin Spring/Last House on the Left. I don’t think one can talk about contemporary literature without acknowledging the influence of cinema, in this case, the deep impact that Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 film, Virgin Spring, and its progeny, Wes Craven’s 1972, Last House on the Left (as well as its frankly superior 2009 remake), have had on me. The story is a reversal of what we think of the contemporary home invasion story. Briefly put, a young woman, Karin, tasked by her father to take candles to a church (did I mention it’s an adaptation of a 13th century Swedish ballad?), is sexually assaulted and murdered by a group of men along the way. The men then unknowingly seek shelter at Karin’s home. They expose themselves as Karin’s killers to her parents, and her father traps them in the house, killing them one by one. Craven’s remake (and its remake) less artfully follows the same trajectory, but with every bit as much impact. In all three versions, the home invaders do not break in, but seek safety in the victim’s home. It’s their prior evil that is the invasion, and they who are captive. The idea of the invasion being more figurative than literal (in that it occurred outside of the home) and the villains being trapped in the locus of the loss they inflicted on the family is so provocative and wonderfully compelling to me.
Off Season. Jack Ketchum’s Off Season was excoriated by the Village Voice as “violent pornography,” echoing Tom Wolfe’s criticism of In Cold Blood as “Pornoviolence.” That Village Voice review caused the publisher to pull back on its promotion and print runs of the book, a hit I don’t think Ketchum ever truly recovered from professionally, though he had considerable cult popularity and huge renown among his peers and fans as a writer. The story was inspired by the tale of Scottish cannibal, Sawney Bean, and his family (which had also influenced Wes Craven again, resulting in The Hills Have Eyes). In Ketchum’s novel, a group of friends and lovers have rented a house in Maine to get away for a vacation, when they’re beset by a group of socially-isolated cannibals who live and prey along the Maine coast. The story itself is uncomplicated—the cannibals attack the house, the occupants attempt to survive and escape, and some of them are, well, made a meal of. The value of the book lies is in Ketchum’s ability to create truly compelling characters and put them in unflinching jeopardy. Ketchum’s violence is never glib or celebratory and is always difficult to witness. His ability to craft truly living, breathing characters who the reader cares about, understands, and does not want to suffer violence (unlike every stereotypical cypher put under the knife in lesser slasher narratives) elevates the material above other cannibal family fare. It is explicit, and pointed, and always meant to make the reader uncomfortable with the savagery of harm instead of amused by its creativity.
The Cabin at the End of the World. Paul Tremblay’s novel shares a similarity with Ketchum’s in that it’s centered around a family on vacation in a remote cabin, beset upon by outsiders determined to do violence. What Tremblay and Ketchum both do masterfully is create characters with real life in their bodies and voice as human individuals, not types. Where they diverge is what makes Tremblay’s book far transcend the average home invasion thriller. He injects a kind of uncertainty into the larger world outside that makes the cabin in which the family is held captive even more confining. As if their irreconcilable situation within is deranging the rest of reality. What awaits them if/when they escape? It’s confused and surreal while also pinpointing the most identifiably relatable fears of the concept of a home invasion. The Cabin at the End of the World is an absolute masterpiece of work from indisputably my favorite writer working today.
Bracken MacLeod is the Splatterpunk, Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of the novels, Mountain Home, Come to Dust, Stranded, and most recently, Closing Costs. He’s also published two collections of short fiction, 13 Views of the Suicide Woods and White Knight and Other Pawns. Before devoting himself to full time writing, he worked as a civil and criminal litigator, a university philosophy instructor, and a martial arts teacher. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and son, where he keeps telling himself he is not at all worried about anyone breaking in to their home.
