In the Dark of the Night by John Saul Review
February 8th, 2007 by admin
This is the story of three teenage boys; Eric, Kent and Tad. They, along with the families, spend their summer in Phantom Lake. All three boys and their families are from the Chicago area; and for the past several years Kent and Tad’s families have spent their summers in Phantom Lake (a fictitious town in Wisconsin) enjoying themselves.
Eric has spent time during the summer in Phantom Lake with his friends, but his worry wart mother has never wanted to spend time there. But this year even Eric’s dad is working to convince Eric’s Mom they should spend their summer there even though all the Dads will only be there part of the time because they still need to work.
Eric’s family gets the last rental available, a house that hasn’t been lived inhabited for years and whose owner, Dr. Darby, has been missing for several years.
Eric and his friends find strange things in a room in the carriage house; some of them in a hidden room behind a wall that’s been bricked up and sealed. There is a special table, among other things. None of them look like they are worth much, but according to Dr. Darby’s journal, he paid a lot of money for each of the items he collected.
The boys find that when they are in the hidden room time flies by and they also notice a special energy and voices trying to talk to them when they are in there. They eventually start to take the items they find and reassemble (every one of them in some way has been taken apart.) For instance, there’s a white table with only three of its legs on and a hacksaw with the blade taken out. After the boys put the items back together, terrible things start to happen.
The boys also eventually discover that Dr. Darby worked with serial killers and that those items he paid lots of money for were owned by some of the most notorious.
There are some stereotypical characters in the book. Adam Mosler is one of them. He’s an angry teenage “townie” who resents the “summer boys” coming to the area and getting in his way. There are several conflicts in the book between Adam, Adam’s friends, and Eric, Kent, and Tad.
Another character pivotal to the book is Logan. He was once a patient of Dr. Darby’s. Apparently Dr. Darby told Logan to keep things in the carriage house safe. Logan isn’t sure what to do when the boys find them but he keeps watch and does what he feels he needs to.
It’s a creepy and disturbing book, but the plot didn’t seem that well developed to me. The story crawled along through most of the book, with the only good part being the last several pages; with the notable exception of the ending which was kind of lame.
For me, a large part of the book was boring. But I continued to read because I read one of the author’s other books and really liked it. John Saul has been writing for many years. This is his 33rd novel and several of his other novels have best-sellers.
If you’re a die-hard John Saul fan, read the book. If not, don’t waste your time on it. It’s just not that good.
My rating (0-10 smilies): 3 ☻☻☻☺☺☺☺☺☺☺