The Sanatorium is scary, thrilling, edge of your seat suspense. Told mostly from the point of view of Elin Warner, a detective on leave from work after a case gone very bad, you're filled with her anxiety almost immediately.
She's not just anxious, she has frequent panic attacks. Put her in a hotel about to be snowed in with her brother she thinks may be a murderer, and it's a perfect setting.
To be fair, everyone seems affected by the place. The hotel was once a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Some of the artifacts from the former sanatorium hang or sit in glass display cases "to honor the narrative of the past". There was a disappearance before the hotel opened, a lead architect just vanished.
As the story opens, a staffer is on the way to her car when someone grabs her ankle. Instead of running back to the hotel for help once she regains her feet, she runs into the woods to lose the person, because she knows the woods so well.
Classic horror story mistake, of course. Her story has a bit more truly unpleasant bits to play out.
There are lots of tension builders here!
A person in a mask with a breathing tube.
Elin's paranoid take on everything that happens. The mirror through which she sees everything is so hard to follow at times.
Another disappearance. Is that person the killer, now lurking in the shadows? Someone who knows the hotel well is playing a deadly game.
Blood on the carpet in a spray pattern?
An avalanche seals in a few guests and staff. No help is coming.
Twists and turns followed by more twists. I had three different people pegged as the killer. All were wrong.
Not to be read before bedtime.
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