From Publishers Weekly
Over the past 30 years, Campbell (The Last Voice They Hear) has perfected a story style distinctive for its stifling atmosphere of dread and oblique approach to horror. Applying it here to the shocking theme of a serial child-killer, he has crafted a nail-biting psychological thriller, his best in nearly a decade. The tale begins on a high note of menace when Leslie Ames and her adolescent son, Ian, move back to the house they had vacated upon the discovery that builder Hector Woollie had stashed the corpse of a young girl beneath its floor. The sense of impending terror only intensifies. Distrusted by the locals and hounded by the tabloids, Leslie and Ian nevertheless let a room to American horror-writer Jack Lamb. Jack quickly befriends Ian and beds Leslie, but says nothing of his secret, shameful tie to WoollieDwho has not died by misadventure as reported, but is on the loose and intent on returning to the scene of his crime. Campbell establishes his characters in sharp, precise slashes of chapters, which alternate the viewpoints of the oblivious Ames family, self-tortured Jack and Woollie, a grotesque travesty of a human being, whose sentiments toward children are presented as hideously warped feelings of affection. The climax they build to is a tour-de-force of suspense, in which Woollie's abduction of Ian is abetted by miscommunication, duplicitous motives and a freakish but plausible succession of near discoveries and cliffhanger escapes, all expertly set up in the early chapters. Ingeniously imbedded reflections of family ties, personal responsibility and even the esthetics of horror fiction give the narrative substance without ever slowing its relentless, cinematic pace. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kirkus Reviews
Campbell's umpteenth dip into darkness (The Last Voice They Hear, 1998, etc.) displays his usual warm hand for British domestic details that help pinch rosy life into the cheeks of his ghouls. Chief ghoul this time out is Hector Woollie, a contractor in Jericho Close who has a taste for bringing peace to young children he feels have been abused by their parents. A pillow over the face is just fine, though a knife across the throat of a noisy kid may be called for, while Hector soothes them by singing a lullaby as their lives snuff out. Hector disposes of the bodies by burying them in the basements of various houses. When young Terrence sees little Harmony Duke's wormy finger in the concrete, however, Hector decides to fake his own death by drowning, then return incognito. (His disguise requires that he pull out all his teeth with pliers, a nice touch.) Divorced Leslie, who runs a record shop, now owns the building where Hector buried Harmony--a place that's become known throughout Jericho Close as the House of Horror. So Leslie can't sell, and she and her 13-year-old son, Ian, can't move. Then Ian and his young stepsister, Charlotte, disappear . . . . Campbell can leave his house, take a walk by swings in a schoolyard, and come back with a novel that writes itself in his sleep--or so it seems. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
