Daddy’s Little Girl by Daniel Ransom

Have you ever been tricked by a book cover? How about the story description on the back? Have the two ever worked together to completely fool you? The 1985 Zebra Books edition of Daddy’s Little Girl by Daniel Ransom (ask Edward Gorman) does both. First, let’s start with the cover. A skeleton in a bathrobe holding a young schoolgirl on its lap, one who looks less than pleased to be in such a situation. Now move up to the blurb above the title: She was young, innocent -- and deadly . . . The deadly statement doesn’t seem to go with the picture very well, not with the look of terror on the girl, or the outfit she is wearing, but then anyone who is a fan of horror will know that such tricky is common when it comes to evil children. Plus it does say young and innocent and what can be more innocent that a girl wearing a white blouse and skirt that reaches passed the knees? Hmm, you know what, never mind on that question. I’ve been in far too many clubs where such outfits and the word innocent could never be used in the same sentence. Moving on, let’s take a look at the back cover. No illustration, just words, ones that describe a sweat and innocent girl named Deirdre who has disappeared. Nothing odd about that until the next line which informs potential readers that the town doesn’t want to find her. Why? Well, it seems she is to be used as a sacrifice, one that the town had waited a long time to perform. Makes sense, this is a horror novel after all, and small towns have been know to carry interesting secrets, some of which involved sacrifices. So, what kind of sacrifice will it be? The second descriptive statement gives a bit of a clue, especially the part about the evil that is invading Deirdre, evil that will corrupt her soul and make it so that she can ‘never again be Daddy’s Little Girl.’ This brings it back around to the front. Maybe she was a young and innocent schoolgirl, one who is slowly becoming deadly as the evil brought forth to invade her body after the town sacrifices her. Sounds interesting, right? If you think so, like I did, be warned because that isn’t the story that is told.

Adam Carnes and his seventeen year old daughter Deirdre are on a trip from Chicago to the Badlands when they decide to pull off the interstate for the night and crash at a hotel. Oops, bad timing. The hotels off the interstate are full due to a regional conference involving a convenience store chain, thus they have to travel many miles into a small town called Burton that is home to a very rundown middle of nowhere motel (believe it or not this same thing happened to me earlier this summer while driving through West Virginia -- natural gas conference -- so apparently it does happen outside of horror novels and movies). As expected the motel and town hide a dark secret and while Adam is inside booking a room Deirdre disappears from the car. Startled, but thinking maybe she just had to pee, Adam heads over to a nearby diner and starts asking about her. No one saw her. The clerk at the motel gives the same answer, as do all the guest that are awakened; no one has seen her. Soon Burton’s head lawman, Sheriff Wayman, is brought in and a search of the surrounding area is undertaken. As with the questioning, this doesn’t bring any results, and eventually Adam returns to the motel with the sheriff. Night turns to day and Adam meets the town’s newspaper lady while staring at an untouched breakfast plate in a local diner. Her name is Beth Daye, and though weary of her at first, Adam soon realizes the two would make a great team, especially since she harbors some suspicions about the town, ones that have been growing ever since finding an odd note up in the attic from her late husband. Together they begin an investigation, one that won’t just uncover the truth about Adam’s daughter Deirdre, but the truth about the town itself, a truth that has been kept secret since 1953 when something terrible occurred. Not everyone wants the secret revealed, however. Some will even kill to protect it.

Though one might get the impression that I did not like this novel based on my opening paragraph, such is not the case. I actually really enjoyed Daddy’s Little Girl. It just wasn’t what I was expecting based on the cover and description. I’m sure the author had nothing to do with this, however, and instead will point a finger of blame upon Zebra Books and their marketing strategy during the time when this book was released. Almost everything I’ve gotten from them that was published during the 1980s has a cover that seems mismatched with the story within. This isn’t to say the covers aren’t spectacular (I’d frame the artwork of most and hang them on my wall); they just don’t match the story that is told within. With Daddy’s Little Girl it went one step further thanks to the description which was equally misleading. Evil invading her soul? Seriously, the only thing invading daddy’s little girl is going to be the demented penis of her kidnapper, and maybe a knife blade once he tires of her hanging body. That’s it. No big sacrifice here, no strange supernatural evil lurking beneath the surface, just a sick twisted bastard that likes to hang up girls in a cavern and have his way with them -- while wearing a goofy mask. Oh, and a town that will do whatever it can to keep it a secret. With that said, this was a pretty good read, one that I would recommend to horror fans. It’s a fast one too. Only took me two days to gobble it up, and I must say, spending those two days on the couch and in bed with Daddy’s Little Girl was great.