The Final Girl Support Group

men in white hazmat suits walking between the trees, yellow police tape blocking the road. They cut to recorded footage of the night before, blue lights flashing in the dark, and the slugline hits me in the gut: Real Life Red Lake Tragedy Repeats.



I turn on the sound and the story is exactly what I feared. Someone murdered six Camp Red Lake counselors who were shutting the place down for the season. They used a variety of weapons-hand scythe, power drill, bow and arrows, machete-and would have had a seventh victim except the last one, a sixteen-year-old girl the CNN chyron tells me is named Stephanie Fugate, shoved them out the hayloft.



The killer hasn't been identified yet, but there's Stephanie onscreen in a class photo with her round face and clear skin, smiling through her braces with a grin that breaks my heart. After last night, she'll never be that happy again. She's a final girl now.



You're watching a horror movie and the silent killer knocks off the stoner, the slut, the geek, the jock, and the deputy, and now he's chasing the virgin babysitter through the woods. She's the one who said they shouldn't party at this deserted summer camp, break into this abandoned lunatic asylum, skinny-dip in this isolated lake-especially since it's Halloween, or Thanksgiving, or Arbor Day, or whatever the anniversary is of those unsolved murders from way back. The killer's got a chainsaw/boat hook/butcher's knife and this girl's got zip: no upper body strength, no mass, no shotgun. All she's got is good cardio and an all-American face. Yet somehow she kills the killer, then stares numbly off into the middle distance, or collapses into the arms of the arriving police, or runs crying to her boyfriend, makes one last quip, lights one last cigarette, asks a final haunting question, gets taken off in an ambulance screaming and screaming like she's never going to stop.



Ever wonder what happens to those final girls? After the cops eliminate them as suspects, after the p

maniacally clever and compulsively readable The Final Girl Support Group." Paul Tremblay, national bestselling author of Survivor Song

Dissects slasher obsession with cutting humor and heart. Bloody Disgusting

A wildly entertaining romp through the conventions of horror s slasher film subgenre Hendrix masterfully evokes the paranoid existences of his diverse cast in the aftermath of their traumatic ordeals, and he so explicitly details the massacres and fictional film sagas that grew out of them that readers may believe them to be real. The result is a wonderfully suspenseful and darkly comic novel that cleverly subverts popular culture. Horror fans will be wowed. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"If you grew up on a diet of '80s slasher movies, The Final Girl Support Group is the book you've been waiting for...Clever, fast-paced horror comedy."  Oprah Daily

"The Final Girl Support Group is a deft examination of how our culture's obsession with misogynistic violence destroys the lives of women and how those women are able to keep fighting and living after unthinkable trauma. The beating heart of this book is empathy and it's set into a lightning-paced, vicious thriller. Reading it was a catharsis. Absolutely unmissable. Horror fans... you've never read a slasher like this." Mallory O'Meara, national bestselling author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon

With The Final Girl Support Group Grady Hendrix transforms a horror trope into something bloody original. An incisive examination of society's obsession with violence against women that simultaneously honors and roasts the slasher genre with equal prowess. Wildly entertaining and clever as hell. Rachel Harrison, author of The Return

Grady Hendrix s canny new novel, The Final Girl Support Group, gathers all the tropes and iconography of a decade s worth of slasher movies, throws them into a blender with much more wit and intelligence than any of those movies displayed, in a truly original, compelling, suspenseful tour de force with a knowing wink. Hendrix has a rare, unique voice in a genre sorely in need of more!" Mick Garris, writer and director (The Stand, Bag of Bones, The Shining miniseries)

"A crazy emotional roller coaster ride that took me right back to 1980, but it needs a warning label: may cause severe anxiety, suggest reading with CBD and a glass of wine." Adrienne King, actress, artist, and Friday the 13th s first Final Girl

"The Final Girl Support Group is perfect for anyone who loves old slasher movies and, oddly enough, anyone who hates them. Grady Hendrix has somehow crafted both an homage to B-horror schlock and a clever dissection of the genre, all delivered in the form of one long breathless chase punctuated by both unpredictable twists and thoughtful insight." David Wong, New York Times bestselling author of John Dies at the End

"A (bloody) valentine to the slasher franchises of the VHS era, but also a smart novel about survivor guilt and the concept of the enduring heroine." Kim Newman, author of Anno Dracula