Asylum is a story of creeping horror that opens in Pennsylvania in 1984, where nine-year-old Kyle Hampton fields abusive staff and violent co-inmates at Rose Hill Asylum before he is finally adopted, leaving behind a younger brother.
Fast forward twenty-eight years to a scenario in which Kyle finds his revisit to the now-abandoned asylum awakens a vengeful figure from the past.
A stolen pair of odd boots, threats to himself and his friend Randy, and a growing certainty that whatever was left behind at the asylum is now on a deadly mission would seem to indicate the police should be involved; but Kyle has been breaking into the building, himself. His own crimes preclude him asking for help from the one place that might be equipped to handle this threat.
Kyle and Randy tries to find answers, involving Beth, Kat, and other innocents in an increasingly dangerous game with a series of confrontations and mysteries.
Tamera Lawrence is adept at crafting a chilling atmosphere that slowly builds from childhood to adulthood, rests on past mistakes and choices, and reaches out to touch everyone in Kyle's new life.
The characters are three-dimensional, the tension exquisite, and the story evolves towards seemingly-predictable scenarios that then take satisfying twists and turns.
Asylum holds important messages about managed ways of addressing mental illness that not only fail to do the job, but add to its impact and progression. Its coverage of the lingering impact of mental illness, abuse, and institutions that not only fail but create monsters offers a degree of social inspection that add nicely to the horror aspect to keep readers not just entertained, but thinking.
