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    Thumbprint: A Story
    Thumbprint: A Story
    Thumbprint: A Story
    Ebook53 pages52 minutes

    Thumbprint: A Story

    By Joe Hill

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A New York Times Bestseller

    Thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In the Tall Grass,” one of two stories cowritten with Stephen King and the basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

    A little door that opens to a world of fairy-tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.”  

    In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain”—now an episode on Shudder TV’s Creepshow—two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” cowritten with Stephen King.

    Replete with shocking chillers, including two previously unpublished stories written expressly for this volume (“Mums” and “Late Returns”) and another appearing in print for the first time (“Dark Carousel”), Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 23, 2012
    ISBN9780062252531
    Thumbprint: A Story
    Author

    Joe Hill

    Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).

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    Reviews for Thumbprint

    3.5/5

    76 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Thoughtful. Well-written. Ending left too much to chance. I don't usually like open-ended stories, but I liked this one.
    • 4/5
      A hell of a read for ninety nine cents. It was dark, brutal, and effective. I had initially wished there was more, but now I think it was the perfect length. Hill tackles the Iraqi prisoner torture issue with unflinching detail; certainty not for those who get squeamish reading details of torture and violence. There was also a sample of his newest book which I'll certainly be checking out before too long.

      P.S. Hey self, why did you wait so bloody long to read Joe Hill? Honestly!
    • 3/5
      This short story has no ending. It's completely open-ended, so be warned. I didn't feel this was Hill's worst story, but it was FAR from his best. It covered some aspects of the military that I definitely do not agree with.

      Not much else I can say without giving away the story, sorry. A big plus, in my opinion, was the teaser for Hill's upcoming book, N0S-4R2, which I'm highly anticipating.
    • 3/5
      I have to say firstly, that I usually don't read many short stories anymore. I like to get involved in the characters, and the storyline in a much more intimate way than the short story format gives you the ability to. I also have to say that I have never been a fan of war-themed anything; novels, movies, what-have-you. So after purchasing Thumbprint for 99 cents at amazon! I was a tiny bit dismayed that the story was about this. But then I thought, hey - this is a Joe Hill story, so it's gotta be good, right?

      Well, it is.... For 42 pages. And based on some soldiers after their return from the war..... And their condition. (And that's all I'm telling you!)

      It was shocking, a little horrifying, and quite interesting...and I wanted to know what happened next! But then the story was over, and you had to make up your own mind. I don't think I want to go there...... Lol

    • 4/5
      Graphic Novel:
      I read the short story first and I LOVED it. The graphic novel is not nearly as powerful - for some reason the two share the same ISBN on Goodreads. The illustrations are underdone and it lacks the power and the pain of a soldier who has done terrible things and is suffering for them. Just like with movie adaptations I find that it's more difficult to convey the thoughts, feelings, and insights into characters the way that a novel or a short story can.


      Short Story: (Read Dec. 2012)
      Delicious! Joe Hill is an amazing short story writer and a good novelist. If he keeps up this show of talent he may rival his father one day!

      ...meaning I should be buying signed copies of his books, now... :D
    • 3/5
      Wow...I'm really torn and speechless on this one. I love Joe Hill. I've never read anything he's written that I didn't absolutely admire and adore, both for the wordsmith and creativity.

      Until now.

      I've purposely refused to read anything about this story prior to reading it, I wanted it to be a fresh experience. I'm guessing that this was a story written early in Hill's career, republished now. I remember seeing different cover art somewhere, I think.

      It's not a horror story; moreso a military-themed character tale.

      As I sit here pondering what I just read, it's hard for me to objectively distinguish whether I didn't really care a lot for the story itself, or if I simply had a hard time enjoying the story because of the unrelentingly hateful way it portrayed American soldiers. I have many friends in the military, friends who served in Baghdad during the time period described in this story; I have friends serving in the middle east right now; let me just say - I have never known anyone in the military who even vaguely resembles the soldiers presented in this story.

      Of course the Army has had soldiers commit atrocities during the war, that fact is not disputable. But in this story Joe Hill paints pretty much the entire Army as nothing but barbarian, out-of-control animals savaging every native they come across with impugnity. If he had presented even one or two reasonable soldiers it would have made this tale more realistic and easier to swallow. As it is, his presentation of the Army is just so at odds with reality as to make it seem like the story is unfolding in an alternate universe.

      But that might just be my own bias getting in the way, so let me try to judge the story on it's own merits. I did enjoy the overall experience, the story took me places, and was well-written and flowing, vivid and descriptive. The style of writing was much different than the prose found in 20th CENTURY GHOSTS; much more to the point and straightforward, without much flourish. Perhaps that was an artistic decision, given the military nature of the main character, perhaps Hill wanted to write the story in the same type of direct, stacatto language he imagined an army vet would use.

      The ending felt a bit premature and sudden, and I turned the final page back and forth unsure of whether the story had just ended or if I had accidentally skipped a page; but short stories would be novels if they didn't end sooner, so overall I was satisfied with the conclusion - since honestly I think everyone would predict the same ultimate ending had it gone on for more pages.

      Overall, I thought that this was a solidly written, if not overly exceptional story; definitely not horror, and a tale I would have personally enjoyed more if I didn't think the overall point of it was that American soldiers are monsters. I really, really wanted this review to be different, wanted to fall in love with this story. As it is, I respect it - but also respectfully disagree.

    Book preview

    Thumbprint - Joe Hill

    Thumbprint

    JOE HILL

    Harper_Imprint_Logos.psd

    Contents

    Thumbprint

    An Excerpt from NOS4A2

    About the Author

    Books by Joe Hill

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    THUMBPRINT

    THE FIRST THUMBPRINT came in the mail.

    Mal was eight months back from Abu Ghraib, where she had done things she regretted. She had returned to Hammett, New York, just in time to bury her father. He died ten hours before her plane touched down in the States, which was maybe all for the best. After the things she had done, she wasn’t sure she could’ve looked him in the eye. Although a part of her had wanted to talk to him about it and to see in his face how he judged her. Without him there was no one to hear her story, no one whose judgment mattered.

    The old man had served, too, in Vietnam, as a medic. Her father had saved lives, jumped from a helicopter and dragged kids out of the paddy grass, under heavy fire. He called them kids, although he had been only twenty-five himself at the time. He’d been awarded a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.

    They hadn’t been offering Mal any medals when they sent her on her way. At least she hadn’t been identifiable in any of the photographs of Abu Ghraib—just her boots in that one shot Graner took, with the men piled naked on top of each other, a pyramid of stacked ass and hanging sac. If Graner had just tilted the camera up a little, Mal would have been headed home a lot sooner, only it would have been in handcuffs.

    She got back her old job at the Milky Way, keeping bar, and moved into her father’s house. It was all he had to leave her, that and the car. The old man’s ranch was set three hundred yards from Hatchet Hill Road, backed against the town woods. In the fall Mal ran in the forest, wearing a full ruck, three miles through the evergreens.

    She kept the M4A1 in the downstairs bedroom, broke it down and put it together every morning, a job she could complete by the count of twelve. When she was done, she put the components back in their case with the bayonet, cradling them neatly in their foam cutouts—you didn’t attach the bayonet unless you were about to be overrun. Her M4 had come back to the U.S. with a civilian contractor, who brought it with him on his company’s private jet. He had been an interrogator for hire—there’d been a lot of them at Abu Ghraib in the final months before the arrests—and he said it was the least he could do, that she had earned it for services rendered, a statement that left her cold.

    Come one night in November, Mal walked out of the Milky Way with John Petty, the other bartender, and they found Glen Kardon passed out in the front seat of his Saturn. The driver’s-side door was open, and Glen’s butt was in the air, his legs hanging from the car, feet twisted in the gravel, as if he had just been clubbed to death from behind.

    Not even thinking, she told Petty to keep an eye out, and then Mal straddled Glen’s hips and dug out his wallet. She helped herself to a hundred and twenty dollars cash, dropped the wallet back on the passenger-side seat. Petty hissed at her to hurry the fuck up, while Mal wiggled the wedding ring off Glen’s finger.

    His wedding ring? Petty asked when they were in her car together. Mal gave him half the money for being her lookout but kept the ring for herself. Jesus, you’re a demented bitch.

    Petty put his hand between her legs and ground his thumb hard into the crotch of her black jeans while she drove. She let him do that for a while, his other hand groping her breast. Then she elbowed him off her.

    That’s enough, she said.

    No it isn’t.

    She reached into

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