In the Dark of the Night » (Reprint)

In the Dark of the Night is John Saul’s thirty-third novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii. Join John Saul’s fan club at www.johnsaul.com.

Summer vacation becomes a season in hell for an ordinary family who unwittingly stir something invisible, insidious, and insatiable from its secret slumber–unleashing a wave of horror only the darkest evil could create, that only a master of spine-tingling terror like John Saul could orchestrate. For deep in the shadows in the dark of the night lurks something as big as life . . . and as real as death.

It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it’s the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring. Which is how Eric and his teenage friends discover the curious cache of discarded objects stowed in a hidden room of Pinecrest’s carriage house. The bladeless hacksaws, shadeless lamps, tables with missing legs, headless axe handle, and other unremarkable items add up to a pile of junk. Yet someone took the trouble to inventory each worthless relic in a cryptic ledger. It has all the makings of a great mystery–whispering, coaxing, demanding to be solved.

But the more the boys devote themselves to restoring the forgotten possessions and piecing together the puzzle behind them, the more their fascination deepens into obsession. Soon their days are consumed with tending the strange, secret collection–while their nights become plagued by ever more ghastly dreams, nightmares that soon seep into reality. And when a horrifying discovery surfaces, so does the chilling truth–about the terrifying events that rocked the town seven years before, the mysterious disappearance of Pinecrest’s last resident, and a twisted legacy with a malevolent life of its own . . . and a bottomless hunger for new victims.

Publishers Weekly

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. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.