Bridging horror, noir, and psychological thriller—the tale of an outsider in an isolated motel, contending with the lies of a fleet of uncanny characters
Set in the borderlands of 1960s northern Minnesota, The Petting Zoo Motel centers on Billy Green, a young drifter cut loose after his girlfriend and best friend betray him. When his car breaks down, he takes work and lodging at the Tall Tower Motel against the warnings of locals. The property, encircled by a massive barbed wire fence, carries the legacy of its former incarnation: the notorious Petting Zoo Motel. Razorback boars and wolves fill the woods outside.
There, Billy finds himself among a bizarre cast of characters: The owner, Walter, exudes a friendliness that’s always on the verge of breaking; his wife, Loretta, has a suspicious, sexual charm; her mentally unstable sister Nora murmurs about the woods; the maid, Sally, is a fierce, paranoid woman steeped in religious zeal and aggression; and there are endless stories of Ozzy Walker, Pig Boy, a mythic, half-man half-pig figure said to live in the hills and murder and cannibalize with abandon.
As Billy settles into his new role working at the motel for lodging and livelihood until his car gets fixed, he gradually begins to realize the danger that seems just out of sight may not lie outside the tall gates of the motel after all.
“Billy stuck his head out of the window. A tiny red light blinked way above them. ‘That’s some tower.’
“Walter climbed into the driver’s seat and punched Billy’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to the Tall Tower Motel, Billy. Believe me, we’re gonna have a hell of a time.’”
The novel excels at building slow, pressurized tension with a flurry of twists and turns. Rumors abound about dangers in the woods, hidden money, missing people, and the histories of The Tall Tower Motel and its owners. These half-truths and conflicting stories accumulate until it’s hard to distinguish fact from fiction, danger from safety, kindness from cruelty. Why does Nora need to be handcuffed to her bed? What lies behind Walter’s dream of building a massive TV antenna? Are the animals in the woods truly as frightening as everyone seems to believe?
Moving through the strange geography of the fenced-in motel, one gets the sense of dominos slowly being erected, lined up perfectly, ever more ready to fall in one giant, cascading disaster. When violence does arise, it comes with visceral, coiled energy—releasing pent-up suspense in fast, graphic battles.
“Panting, he realized how much he could not handle a fight right now. His face felt like raw hamburger, his arms weighed a ton. He couldn’t catch his breath, could barely see through the sweat running into his eyes.”
Harrowsmith leans heavily into noir staples with gorgeous, smoky prose—alcohol flows freely and there are femme-fatales, young men of dubious morals, and kindly patriarchs with bad intentions. In fact, no one’s intentions are quite what they seem. The dark mood spreads out into a gritty environment of rusting cars, dilapidated buildings, and people that seem to always be towing the line between humanity and animalistic urge. The dialogue is especially sharp, capturing rhythms, ordinary speech, and a sense of place without slipping into caricature. People interrupt, deflect, threaten, and joke in ways that feel true to life, overheard rather than written. This allows relationships and identities to take shape naturally on the page. Even as moments of explosive violence occur, the true tension comes from what goes unsaid and remains unknown, with every exchange carrying the possibility of escalation.
“Billy had to think about that. He was on a four-and-zero losing streak when it came to trusting women: Linda, his ex; Joan, the hitchhiker; Nora, the liar; and Loretta, the seductress. But Sally wasn’t like any of them. Sally wasn’t like anybody. Maybe she would put an end to the streak.”
While the book conjures a phenomenal sense of place and and humming threat, it opens rather abruptly, with Billy’s car troubles and the dangers surrounding the motel emerging in awkward alternating chapters that make it difficult to enter the story. This hurried beginning contrasts with later stretches that slow dramatically.
Once it’s in full swing, the novel demonstrates a masterful ability to swing from atmospheric buildup to sudden bursts of action or revelation with little transitional space, harnessing abruptness and lurching movement to further the instability at the plot’s core. An atmospheric thriller about the darker sides of human nature, The Petting Zoo Motel follows a stranded traveler to a remote motel with a long, sordid history.
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