Keith Rosson’s trajectory has been defined by a sharp convergence of gritty crime fiction and speculative horror—stories characterised by structural violence, emotional depth, and systemic decay. With his latest novel, Crone, Rosson pushes these stylistic bounds further, fusing the investigative noir thriller with folk horror to expose an ancient, insatiable threat:
A decade after his daughter’s sudden disappearance, former detective Eli Lamp is a shadow of his former self, scraping a living as a mob enforcer. A shot at redemption arrives with a dark caveat: clear his debts by solving the brutal execution of his boss’s son. Reluctantly partnered with his missing daughter’s former best friend, Eli begins pulling at a thread that leads back decades, straight into the core of his own unresolved grief.
But the local underworld is only half the problem as a vengeful, clawed entity looms large over the case and the deeper Eli and his companion dig, the clearer it becomes: the past isn’t simply catching up with them — it’s actively hunting them down.
Brimming with brutal atmosphere and pitch-black dread, Crone is an absolute knockout of a genre hybrid. Rosson anchors skin-crawling terror in authentic human tragedy to deliver one of the most compelling horror novels of the year.
To mark the book’s release today, CinemaChords spoke to Rosson about his hybridisation of noir tropes, supernatural horror, and regional folklore, his recurring thematic interest in addiction, and how he handles real-world violence: delivered in authentic, unpredictable shocks guaranteed to knock the wind right out of the reader.
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