When attorneys Brad and Lisa Miller take a short driving vacation, Lisa plans to tell Brad they will soon be parents. Everything's guaranteed to be romantic and perfect. But that day, they are harassed by a van on the highway. The mysterious driver tailgates and pulls back, tailgates again. Eventually, he hangs way back, shadowing them—and soon the highway patrol pulls over Brad and Lisa. The van's driver makes a citizen's arrest, having contacted police and accused the Millers of erratic driving. Brad is booked and thrown into a cell for the weekend. Lisa checks into a motel.

And that's when their lives are forever changed. The van driver returns to kidnap Lisa and takes her to a remote cabin, where she is to become the star of a snuff film commissioned by a rich pervert. Chained in a bedroom, Lisa is brutalized by Animal, a hooded sadist whose sole interest in life is raping, torturing, and killing innocent victims while cameras roll, recording the action for an "elite" clientele of jaded porn connoisseurs.

If this sounds familiar, it's because J. F. Gonzalez previously published a portion of this material as the novella Maternal Instinct. Expanding to novel length allows the author to explore not only Lisa's torture at the hands of her captors, but also the effort to find her. We're given an altogether too-uncomfortable look into the secret "underground extreme hardcore scene," in which an endless supply of runaways and drug addicts may fall into each year, performing sex shows for wealthy clients and, just possibly, giving the performance of their lives in snuff films. Hardcore films that end in on-camera murder have been reported since the '60s, but no proof has ever been found that they're anything but urban legends. Gonzalez manages with a few deft strokes to convince that they could indeed exist, and his novel is a blueprint for how victims could be weeded from the population. A major twist is at work here, so I'll avoid further discussion of the plot—suffice to say that it'll produce pangs in your guts you'll not soon forget.

Gonzalez tackles his themes with gusto, but also with a clinical eye. From the perverts who buy the films, to those who perform in them for fun, to those who produce them merely "for the money," to the victims, who may hail from different backgrounds, Gonzalez avoids sensationalism and employs instead a measured pragmatism. What Lisa must do to stay alive, what each player must do to maintain the status quo, what Lisa's loved ones must do behind the scenes to find her—all of these are handled with a practiced deftness. Besides the exciting and suspenseful moments of attempted escape, which are standard to thrillers, this is extreme horror, unflinching and uncompromising, a long stare into the soul's dark abyss. It's not pleasant and it's not for everyone, but it will reward readers who dare, if for no other reason than the fact that we must examine our evil up close before we can banish it from our experience forever. J. F. Gonzalez puts a face on evil—but is it a window we're gazing into, or a mirror? Survivor is an unforgettable walk into hell, all the more poignant for its unwavering realism and grimness.