Whoever puts it on (and it always manages to get put on) turns into a homicidal maniac, kills someone, usually in a gruesome fashion, and then dies of some improbable, fatal, and usually gruesome accident. It's an evil thing that causes murder and dismemberment and won't let itself just get lost in a river or something. Where did the cursed amulet come from? How did Jo get it? How exactly does it work? Sarah asks these questions but never gets an answer. And so begins a tragic series of gruesome, inexplicable murders and fatal accidents that cuts a swath through the little Alabama town of Pine Cone. She gives the wife of the factory manager, a friend of Dean's, a mysterious black amulet. Sarah's mother-in-law, Jo Howell, is fat, lazy, and vicious, and blames the factory, the town, and the rest of the world for her son's misfortune. Ironically, Sarah works at the very factory that made the rifle that maimed her husband.

A freak accident causes a rifle to blow up in his face, and he's sent home as an empty shell of a man. Sarah Howell is the young bride of Dean Howell, a recently drafted rifle instructor at the nearby Army base, waiting to be shipped off to Vietnam. It's a page-turner with no pretensions, just lots of homicide and gore. He just gets right to it: big, mean, momma is pissed that her boy got maimed, and proceeds to wreak vengeance on the town with a cursed amulet. It's got some rough edges and plot holes, but mostly because McDowell doesn't waste time with exposition or creating a complicated plot. I think he was really quite a gifted and underrated writer.

I've enjoyed every one of Michael McDowell's bloody little supernatural Southern Gothic thrillers, published in the 80s during the paperback horror boom. As the inexplicable murders continue, Sarah and her friend Becca Blair have no choice but to track down the amulet themselves, before it's too late. Sarah believes the amulet has something to do with the rising body count, but no one will believe her.

Jo blames the entire town for her son's mishap, and when she gives a strange piece of jewelry to the man she believes most responsible, a series of gruesome deaths is set in motion. After long and tedious days on the assembly line, she returns home to care for her corpse-like husband while enduring her loathsome and hateful mother-in-law, Jo. When a rifle range accident leaves Dean Howell disfigured and in a vegetative state, his wife Sarah finds her dreary life in Pine Cone, Alabama made even worse.

The amulet by michael mcdowell