Thorn’s Thoughts: Robert Dunbar’s The Streets

The Streets is the third novel in Robert Dunbar’s ambitious Pines Trilogy, a sequence of books connected by sustained interest in the Jersey Devil—a folkloric creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The first novel, The Pines (1989) mines old-school Gothic dread from its setting in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, while its sequel The Shore (2007) makes similarly eerie use of its coastal town, Edgeharbor. Although key characters from both novels return in The Streets, it’s not absolutely necessary to read The Pines and The Shore in order to enjoy the trilogy’s closer. Having said that, this novel’s impact is amplified when put into conversation with its predecessors; and for readers who have read all three entries, The Streets satisfyingly deepens its precursors’ previously established relationships.