Admirers of H.P. Lovecraft's classic supernatural tales will find
much of interest in this intricately contrived horror story. The
protagonist, Ned Dunstan, a computer programmer whose 35th birthday
is fast approaching, in fact "enters" a world specifically inspired
by Lovecraft's demon-infested "Cthulha Mythos" as he returns to his
Illinois hometown for the funeral of his mother Valerie (a.k.a.
"Star," an itinerant jazz singer whose roofless life made her
almost as much a stranger to Ned as was the father he never knew).
Almost immediately, inexplicable things begin to happen: Ned is
accused of crimes he couldn't possibly have committed; the dream
that has troubled him since childhood - of his shadow pursuing and
threatening him - edges ever closer to reality; and reunions with
his Illinois relatives turn up evidence that he may have been the
son of Edward Rinehart, a mad writer of supernatural fiction
himself descended from a family cursed for its dalliance in
slave-trading and witchcraft. Straub (The Hellfire Club, 1996,
etc.) pulls several tangled narrative strings adroitly, as Ned
discovers his facility for levitation and time travel, among other
dark arts. Intermittent chapters presented from the viewpoint of
the self-styled "Mr. X" offer teasing glimpses of the truths Ned
labors to uncover, as the story moves right along, lifting plot
elements here and there from Stephen King and Shirley Jackson as
well as Lovecraft - and, incidentally, featuring several dead-on
parodies of the latter's notoriously purplish prose. Twins
separated at birth, antiquarians and poltergeists, a plucky love
interest whose own family harbors dark secrets, a fiery climax
straight out of the early Frankenstein movies, and a denouement
offering no fewer than three turns of the screw: Straub doesn't
miss a trick, or omit a cliche peculiar to the genre. Overlong and
sometimes embarrassingly lurid, though more often than not quite
entertaining. Not by any means Straub's most accomplished work, but
one of his more interesting recent books all the same. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Every year on his birthday, Ned Dunstan has a paralysing seizure in which he is forced to witness scenes of ruthless slaughter perpetrated by a mysterious figure in black whom he calls Mr X. Now, with his birthday fast approaching, Ned has been drawn back to his home town of Edgerton, Illinois, by a premonition that his mother is dying. On her deathbed, she imparts to him the name of his long-absent father and warns him that he is in grave danger. Despite her foreboding, he embarks on a search through Edgerton's past for the truth behind his own identity and that of his entirely fantastic family. But when Ned becomes the lead suspect in three violent deaths, he begins to realize that he is not the only one who has come home…
"Mr X marks Straub's triumphant return to the tale of the paranormal and the supernatural . . . When Peter Straub turns on all his jets, no one in the scream factory can equal him. The plot is challenging, the characters are intriguing in their complexity and the language is a delight."
STEPHEN KING
"Peter Straub, who shot to literary prominence twenty years ago with is groundbreaking novel Ghost Story, returns with panache to the supernatural which over the years he has made so much his own. Powerfully told. It's a must for every horror aficionado, but also recommended for anyone who enjoys the challenge of a meaty, meandering whodunnit."
DAILY EXPRESS
"A dauntingly tangled mystery . . . continually surprising . . . wonderfully devious."
MIAMI HERALD
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