I read it for the first time, as a hand-me-down novel from my mom, back in the mid-'70s when it first came out and I was in Junior High. Will, thank you for the write-up on this novel. Even with its unobtrusive sociopolitical allegory - which I can take or leave - this is a mainstream thriller that actually thrills, while touching on the brutal and uncomfortable fact that some victims give themselves piece by piece, bit by bit, to their tormentors, all the while refusing to see their complicity in their own inevitable doom. The Auctioneer unfolds slowly, with the tiniest hint of menace, with the seeds of destruction sown in the very first pages. Simply and strongly told, it's the kind of book you don't want to stop reading because there is such a sense of place and time and character and most of all, story. He realizes he may have more to give than he'd ever thought. And the accidents always somehow get mentioned when John Moore tells Dunsmore and his deputies that no, this time is the last time, he has nothing left to give. And those in Harlowe that don't give freely? Certain accidents start being reported. And they don't take castoff items anymore but property that has meaning and value to the Moores. With echoes of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Stephen King’s Needful Things, Samson’s novel returns to print at last in this long-awaited new edition, which features an introduction by Grady Hendrix ( Horrorstör, Paperbacks from Hell) and an afterword by the author’s husband.Because, of course, after awhile some of those deputies - men the Moores have known all their lives - start showing up for castoff items.

Ī chilling masterpiece of terror whose sense of creeping menace and dread increases page by page, Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer (1975) is a rediscovered classic of 20th-century fiction. As the auctioneer carries out his terrible, inscrutable plan, the Moores and their neighbors will find themselves gradually but inexorably stripped of their freedom, their possessions, and perhaps even their lives. But from the moment the charismatic Perly Dinsmore arrives in town and starts soliciting donations for his auctions, things begin slowly and insidiously to change in Harlowe. In the isolated farming community of Harlowe, New Hampshire, where life has changed little over the past several decades, John Moore and his wife Mim work the land that has been in his family for generations.

Auctioneer by Joan Samson