After making a big splash with his crime-fiction novel “A Simple Plan” – and an even bigger one with his Oscar-nominated screenplay of that book – Scott Smith seemed to disappear off the literary radar. Reportedly, he was working on some film deals (the age-old Hollywood curse) and trying to finish a novel that topped out at 1,000 pages but never seemed to end.
Luckily for thriller and horror fans everywhere, Smith abandoned his endless novel and began writing “The Ruins.” While some early reviewers have compared the thrills found in “The Ruins” with television shows like “Lost” (with good reason), the atmosphere that Smith manages to work up in only the first 40 pages is reminiscent of Lovecraft, Blackwood or even the more recent master of horror, T.E.D. Klein. What’s more, Smith sustains that atmosphere of underlying dread even during some of the more gruesome, faster-paced and bizarre passages of his novel.
Like a lot of terrific thrillers, the plot of “The Ruins” is simple: Two American couples, Jeff and Amy, Eric and Stacy, are on vacation in Cancun when they meet a German fellow named Mathias. It seems that Mathias has been separated from his brother, Heinrich, who was lured by a young woman to an archaeological dig amid some Mayan ruins. After a bit more swimming, diving and partying – especially with a couple of Greeks who don’t speak English – Jeff, on a lark, talks the rest of the group into accompanying Mathias on a trip into the jungle to track down Heinrich. Catching up to these five is one of the partying Greeks (no one ever quite figures out their names), and they all venture into the unknown.
Once there, they discover a foreboding, cloying and claustrophobic landscape, not to mention some spooky-acting Mayans. At first, some of the Mayans seemed determined to stop the young tourists from wandering deeper into the jungle.
Then, when a corpse is discovered, bows and arrows appear and the Mayans definitely don’t want the spur-of-the-moment adventurers to leave. But the armed natives turn out to be the least of worries for these six. By page 65, the screaming begins and the horrors don’t let up till the last page.
Along with building an atmosphere of dread in the early going of “The Ruins,” Smith brilliantly describes the breakdown of relationships (between Jeff and Amy, and Eric and Stacy), and the disintegration of civility as the four friends and their two straggling cohorts start going for each other’s throats once the chips are down.
There is more than just a touch of Conrad, and a bit of homage to “The Day of the Triffids,” an old science fiction novel, being added to the mix. And as Smith’s jungle horrors begin to close in and the adventurous tourists find themselves at the heart of a dark horror that doesn’t let up, readers won’t be surprised to find themselves developing a bit of a phobia when it comes to far travel and tropical climes.
“The Ruins” is a shoe-in for best-selling oddity of 2006: a book that makes readers simultaneously shiver with fright and grin delightfully at the entertaining madness of Smith’s weird concoction.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
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The Ruins
By Scott Smith
Knopf, 319 pages, 24.95
