The veteran horror writer's circuitous 16th outing (stories: Magic
Terror, 2000, etc.). A suburban mom's suicide, a spooky abandoned
house, and a teenager's unwitting pursuit of the truth about "one
of the nation's livelier serial killers"-such are the ingredients
here. They're pieced together, after a fashion, by successful NYC
novelist Tim Underhill (first seen in Koko, 1988), who's summoned
to the midwestern town of Millhaven by his brother Philip, a
misanthropic high school vice-principal. Tim learns that his
teenaged nephew Mark has found his mother Nancy dead in her
bathtub. Following this essentially straightforward setup, the
novel breaks apart into alternations of present action with
flashbacks, experienced and relayed through various characters'
viewpoints, Tim's "journal," and an omniscient narrative voice only
intermittently firmly distinguished from Tim's own. The central
action is Mark's exploration (initially abetted by best pal Jimbo)
of the uninhabited house directly behind his own-a house, we're
asked to believe, that Mark had scarcely noticed (!) prior to his
mother's suicide. Its secrets-sharply imagined and brimming with
promising narrative menace-have to do with Nancy Underhill's first
cousin Joseph Kalendar, a serial rapist, child abuser, and
murderer. As the intrepid Mark (a sweet-natured golden boy whose
stunning good looks are rather creepily overstressed) keeps
uncovering nauseating things, Tim and Philip and involved local
authorities (aided by Detective Tom Pasmore, on loan from Mystery,
1989, and The Throat, 1993) also zero in on Kalendar's horrific
legacy. The fates of adolescent boys lured away by a malign sexual
predator are painstakingly, laboriously connected to that of a
"lost girl" (herself an otherworldly seductive force) who "haunts"
those who failed to save her. And, in a nod to Straub's sometime
collaborator Stephen King, Tim realizes that (a la King's The Dark
Half) his own literary creations may have assumed lethal form.
Strikingly imagined indeed, but the zigzag structure blurs the
momentum and effect of what might have been one of Straub's best.
(Kirkus Reviews)
A new psychological thriller from the co-author of the massive
international No 1 bestseller BLACK HOUSE. From the ferocious
imagination of Peter Straub springs a nerve-shredding new chiller
about the persistence of evil. A woman kills herself for no
apparent reason. A week later, her teenage son disappears. The
vanished boy's uncle, Tim Underhill, returns to his home town of
Millhaven to discover what he can. A madman known as the Sherman
Park Killer has been haunting the neighbourhood, but Underhill
believes that Mark's obsession with a local abandoned house is at
the root of his disappearance. He fears that Mark came across its
last and greatest secret -- a lost girl, one who has coaxed Mark
deeper and deeper into her mysterious domain. Only by following in
their footsteps will Underhill uncover the shocking truth.
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