Ronald Malfi’s December Park is more than a solid read, entering ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ territory it ticks all the boxes that keeps you entertained for 16h / 534pp.
I suspect the author was growing up in the 90s for he truly makes the time and setting come to life. Pretty soon I felt transported into that transformative era when computers were slowly accepted in households, cassette tapes became obsolete, and heavy metal became music for the masses. The young protagonist ‘s family life depicted in the quiet town of Harting Farm is beautiful, the grandparents filling a hole that is left my a missing mother and brother.The youthful characters of a band of brothers of five are well-rounded, well-thought out, if not always that believable. The main character, aged 15/16 is a teenager that has, at times, thoughts much too mature and grownup. But that is forgivable, quite understandable even when we write of what has long past in our own lives. Besides, that unnatural maturity adds to the the overall reflective complexity of the main character. The mystery as personified by the “Piper” , an elusive character allegedly responsible for a series of disappearances in a small Maryland community just of the coast, keeps you one your toes and guessing. Admittedly, until very late in the book I had no clue as to identity and motive of the “Piper”. The story told scores high on suspense, high on being able to just observe the everyday lives of the band of youths, their silly yet often hilarious banter and name-calling “... uglier than Gorbachev’s wife, ... fart-faced perfumed anus opening” (not sure I remember that one correctly ( )

Fans of Stephen King’s Stand by Me will love Ronald Malfi’s December Park.

Ronald Malfi’s December Park is a master class in character development. The story follows a group of friends who witness the body of a young girl being recovered from the woods near their home. The discovery of her remains marks a gruesome twist in a rash of recent child disappearances perpetrated by someone nicknamed “The Piper.”

Angie and his band of friends, burdened by scrawny newcomer Adrian, who has found evidence he hasn’t shared with the police, endeavor to discover “The Piper’s” identity and restore peace to their Harting Farms suburb. So begins a summer of comradery and exploration. How much does one risk for true friendship? Can there ever be a stronger bond than exists during adolescence?

Having just read Malfi’s Black Mouth, I expected December Park to fall into the horror category. While there were some gross-out moments, it is much more of a literary mystery than a horror novel. It is an exploration of a summer without social media and cell phones. Boys riding bikes and traipsing through the woods. Sneaking a cigarette and meeting friends at the local diner. It is about the things in these characters’ pasts that attempt to define them, and what it means to discover one’s self.

December Park offers a nostalgic look at the folly and bravery of youth in the nineties. It explores the depth of bonds forged in loyalty and the innocence of the past when children weren’t helicopter parented and tethered to tech. A dangerous time, for sure, but what a story! This heartbreaking-yet-hopeful novel is one of the best slow burns I’ve read in a long time. Angie and his band of brothers drew me in from page one. A big thank you to the author for such an entertaining escape and kudos for a job well done. Highly recommended!




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December Park was unexpectedly literary. I've read a few Malfi books now, and he's a fun writer. But, he generally doesn't color outside the horror genre standards. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his books immensely. However, this book was special. It was more journey than destination.

The destination was kind of subpar, but overall, it could be brushed off. The main characters were captivating from the first chapter. Their lives bright, and full of promise. Their families and the settings were just as well-rounded and gave the story an unexpected depth. It was a neat coming-of-age story set in the 1990s that felt real.

I wish we could have seen the rest of the story in detail. Years into the future. Perhaps an investigation into the abrupt ending. I'd love a follow-up book, but at this late date, I don't think we'll get one. ( )

After my positive encounters with Ronald Malfi’s Black Mouth, Come With Me and Ghostwritten I was eager to explore more of his works and settled on December Park, which promised to mix a coming of age story with a murder mystery focused on a serial killer. Unfortunately something must have been wrong with the blender, so to speak, because this novel did not totally work its magic on me this time.

December Park is set in the early ’90s in the small town of Harting Farms, on the Eastern Coast of the USA: Angelo and his friends Peter, Michael and Scott are looking forward to the end of school and to a summer of freedom, but when children start disappearing and one girl is found dead in a local park, a shadow falls over the town. As the abductor/killer, soon nicknamed the Piper, keeps going on undisturbed and the police seems to flounder in the absence of clues as to his identity or the fate of the missing kids, Angelo and Co., together with Adrian, a boy who came to live in Harting Farms only recently, decide to hunt for clues on their own and to uncover the Piper’s identity. What begins almost as a lark becomes increasingly risky as the five boys’ search moves to dangerous grounds and turns from the initial adventure into a potentially deadly obsession.

Let’s start with what worked for me, and worked well: December Park is, first and foremost, a coming of age story, and as such it portrays very well the journey these five sixteen-years-old kids undertake on this fateful summer. Told from Angelo’s point of view (one that for several reasons makes me think there is something of the author in his characterization), it shows the mix of childish impulses and yearning for adulthood that’s typical of their age. These are basically good kids despite a few “sins” like covertly smoking or enjoying Halloween pranks: the bond of friendship between them, which later on includes newcomer Adrian who is a somewhat weird kid, is a solid one and one of the best elements of the story, made even more real by the delightful banter that peppers their exchanges. I enjoyed seeing how they, bit by bit, manage to bring Adrian out of his shell and how he responds to them: being the newcomer and a solitary soul, he might have been the perfect target for scorn or abuse, but they bring him into their orbit and after a while he even becomes the main drive behind their search for the Piper. The atmosphere of a small, quiet town that still harbors a few secrets, and a few unsavory characters - like the older boy who loves to bully younger kids - is also rendered very well.

It’s intriguing to observe how the dread that falls over Harting Farms manages to keep young people and their parents apart: there is a certain sense of resignation, for want of a better word, in the way the adult population reacts to the disappearances; even Angelo’s father, who is a detective and therefore active in the investigation, looks more dejected than anything else. For their part the young people, or at least the five the story focuses on, appear instead obsessed with uncovering the identity of the Piper, to the point that they put their lives on the line more than once to solve the mystery. This divide is, however, one of the elements that did not work for me, because if on one side it helped in establishing the pall of dread over the town, on the other it did not feel realistic, particularly considering the impending danger: what the five accomplish, the risks they take more than once, all happen while the adults are virtually absent and unknowing, and I find it highly improbable that a community would be so deaf and blind to the antics of a group of teenagers, given the underlying circumstances.

And since I have now opened the “book of grievances”, I have to admit that the book feels too long, too meandering: given the matter at hand I would have preferred a tighter narrative, while here there is much space given to the five’s musings (which for some time amount to nothing since they have no clues at all) and to their endless cycling through the town’s streets. Still, this is a minor problem, and I easily solved it by skipping ahead in search of more interesting sections; the major one stands in the revelation of the Piper’s identity, because it comes out of the blue and to me it makes little or no sense at all.

When reading mysteries we - not unlike Angelo & friends - tend to consider the various people the author introduces, evaluating the clues and forming an opinion that might or might not be the correct one; and when the revelation occurs we can either congratulate ourselves for the powers of our intuition, or acknowledge that we were barking up the wrong tree. But what happens when we discover that the monster is someone we never saw before? Someone who was never part of the story? I felt a little cheated, to say the truth, and even more so because there is no explanation whatsoever for the reasons behind the Piper’s actions, or at least none that I could consider valid.

I keep thinking that as a coming of age novel December Park was a beautifully written story carried by five well-crafted, realistic characters who embarked on an “adventure” that proved formative and enlightening. It’s a pity that the final resolution marred this story with such an undeserved inconsistency…. ( )

I loved this book. True, it took me ages to read it, but that wasn't due to its content, but due to other obligations which kept me from devouring this great book. It's high suspense, with very little depicted violence and no sex-- a good proof that a book needs neither to be good.

The book describes a year of 15 to 16 year old boys who get it into their heads that they can find the 'Piper', a man who abducts children.

The book is even funny in places; I laughed out loud at some of the antics of those teenagers. That lifted the tension a little, which was great, cause the suspense would have been unbearable otherwise.
I'll definitely check out other books by the author. ( )