The most unsettling kind of horror is not the kind that hides in the dark, but the kind that looks back at us from the mirror. Jeffrey Abney’s Empty Piñatas reminds readers that evil doesn’t always wear a mask or come from the shadows. Sometimes, it lives in the ordinary, the quiet rage, the wounded pride, the small choices that lead people down an irreversible path. What makes this story disturbing is not its violence, but how familiar that violence feels once we understand where it comes from.
Set in 1960s St. Louis, Empty Piñatas follows FBI Special Agent Cole Hunter as he investigates a series of murders that defy logic and morality. The victims are found hollowed, their organs surgically removed, as if the killer were dissecting not just bodies but souls. At first, it seems like the work of a cold-blooded monster. But as the investigation deepens, the novel shifts focus, from the gruesome details of the crime to the people orbiting it. Their anger, fear, and guilt begin to blur the line between innocence and corruption.
Abney doesn’t rely on jump scares or supernatural tricks. Instead, he uses psychology and moral conflict to create unease. Each character, from the killer to the investigators, is driven by a need for control, over others, over truth, over their own pain. The result is a story that asks uncomfortable questions: What makes someone cross the line? Is revenge ever righteous? And if we believe our actions are justified, are we really any different from those we condemn?
What separates Empty Piñatas from traditional horror is empathy. The reader isn’t invited to fear the killer as much as to understand him, and that’s where the discomfort lies. The priest’s confession scene in the final act turns the story on its head, revealing that the true horror is not in madness but in reason. The killer’s motives are grounded in logic, even a twisted sense of justice. That logic makes him human, not monstrous, and that realization stays long after the last page.
This kind of storytelling recalls the unsettling realism of American Psycho and Silence of the Lambs, where readers are drawn into the minds of those they should despise. Abney achieves a similar effect but grounds it in a world that feels historically and emotionally real. The smoky streets, the moral codes of mid-century America, and the restrained dialogue all make the horror more believable. We’re not just watching a killer work, we’re watching a society unravel, one small compromise at a time.
Empty Piñatas shows that the scariest thing about evil is not its existence, but its familiarity. It grows from the same emotions that shape us all: love, anger, shame, and the need to be seen. Abney forces readers to recognize that anyone, under the right circumstances, can justify the unthinkable.
That is what makes Empty Piñatas a powerful and unsettling read. It doesn’t ask you to fear the dark; it asks you to look into it and see yourself. For readers who want a story that is as thought-provoking as it is chilling, Empty Piñatas by Jeffrey Abney is a haunting place to start.
Grab your copies from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/196986883X/.
