In the Dark of the Night

June 5, 2006
At the start of this unoriginal but undeniably creepy horror chiller from bestseller Saul (Perfect Nightmare
), Eric Brewster and two high school pals, Kent Newell and Tad Sparks, are looking forward to a summer vacation with their families in picturesque Phantom Lake, Wis. The Brewsters have rented Pinecrest, an age-blackened old house once the home of Dr. Hector Darby, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances seven years before. Eric's mother, Merrill, has a bad feeling about the house, as well she should, but the rest of the family is insistent, so she goes along with the plan. Once at Pinecrest, Eric and friends discover a secret room in the carriage house, a room filled with deadly surgical instruments, medical files, books and artifacts relating to Dr. Darby's research into the minds of serial killers. The boys begin to hear strange voices and experience terrifying dreams. Or are the dreams real? It's more YA novel than adult, but Saul has been in the business long enough to know how to send shivers up the spines of readers of any age.

May 15, 2006
With twelfth grade looming, Eric Brewster is finally getting to join lifelong buddies Kent and Tad at the northern Wisconsin lake on which their parents rent summer homes every year. Despite Eric's worrywart mom, Eric's dad commits to a restored mansion as right next to Eric's friend's places as 10-acre lots allow. Of course, a boathouse accompanies the manse, as does a carriage house that irresistibly draws the three boys. There's one further accompaniment in the form of a shaggy recluse, a former mental patient, who trolls the lake at night in a rowboat fitted out with a cross at the bow. The night rower knew the former tenant, a specialist in criminal insanity who disappeared nine years ago, after which the rower stowed the psychiatrist's most important stuff in--the carriage house! He bricked up the door of the room he put it in, but his handiwork is no bar to curious Eric, Kent, and Tad. Whenever they're in the carriage house, they lose track of time, and the more they discover, the worse dreams they have, and all dream the same, gruesome things. Resolving itself in mayhem on the Fourth of July, Saul's latest is another of his kids-in-spooky-trouble thrillers, not as good as " Black Creek Crossing" (2004), perhaps, but exerting a certain Hardy Boys charm. Great beach reading, especially for those days when a chill would be oh so welcome. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)