The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

Paperback Warrior reviewed Philip Fracassi's 2023 horror novel Boys in the Valley and praised the author's skillful use of an isolated orphanage to build unease in his violent narrative. Fracassi has authored seven total novels and an additional eight novellas/shorts. His literary work has earned numerous awards including a Bram Stoker for his collection Beneath a Pale Sky (2021). Despite the wordy title, I was looking forward to reading his slasher novel The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre, published by Tor in a hardcover in 2025.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home is an upstate New York dwelling focused on seniors living their best life. The complex contains an apartment building, a dining hall, gym, sports area, a pond, medical center and a creepy abandoned mental asylum. Intersecting the home and surrounding grounds are colored paths leading to certain areas. Surrounding the complex is dense forest, a fire tower, and a railroad. There's no doubt Fracassi knew how to isolate these characters and reader. Atmosphere is everything in horror.

The book's protagonist is Rose, a former high school teacher now retired and comfortably living her late 70s at Autumn Springs. She has a semi-boyfriend named Miller, a retired professor that adores her. She spends her time watching mystery and crime dramas with Miller while engaging with a handful of close friends. But her peaceful tranquility is about to become shattered.

Readers are periodically removed from Rose's life and thrust into various rooms with a masked killer. This masked killer commits acts of ruthless violence on the home's residents, but stages each murder to appear self-inflicted or an accident. A man is thrown from a fire tower after a lifetime of searching for alien life in the skies (accident?), a man cuts his wrist in the bathtub after his lover is killed (suicide?), another man drowns in the local pond (accident?). As the body count rises, Rose is forced into action as the obligatory amateur detective. While the real detective, a nice but useless character named Hastings, spins his wheels searching for answers, Rose is on the offensive tracking down clues to learn the identity of the killer and his/her motive.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre could have easily been authored by an early 20th century mystery writer like Mary Collins, Elizabeth Fenwick, or Charlotte Armstrong. Sure, the novel works just as good as a Scream slasher, but I found the narrative brimming over with a thick mystery, a claustrophobic tightening of suspects, and an admirable amateur detective Hellbent on destroying her opponent. But, like a formulaic 80s slasher, plausibility is thrown away. How the killer can move effortlessly around so many people – security guards, doctors, nurses, residents - while creating this much chaos is unresolved. While the killer's identity makes it seem possible, one must still suspend disbelief. I nabbed the killer in the opening act. 

Aside from the horror and mystery aspect, I felt like Fracassi's telling of these seniors and their lifestyles was very touching. Rose is an endearing character, one of the best I've come across in ages. Her intimacy struggles with Miller, her familial relationship with her daughter, and her history with an ex-husband are all very real and very meaningful. Rose's life story, revealed in the book's final act, proves she's a viable fighter worthy of being deemed “the final girl”. 

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is an exhilarating whodunit that possesses a uniqueness – the murder of an aging population already braced for death. This peek into the world of our elders was a surreal glimpse at mortality. No one is getting out of this life alive. 

Get the book HERE.