House of Reckoning: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

John Saul has had success as a writer of popular horror fiction for over four decades. He has maintained his popularity by continuously applying the elements of horror and conflicted characterization that signifies this genre. With HOUSE OF RECKONING, his latest effort, Saul returns to this familiar landscape and once again features his signature element: the teenaged protagonist.

High school student Sarah Crane is lamenting the loss of her mother to cancer six months earlier. This tragedy has crippled her father, Ed, and has forced him to seek solace at the bottom of the bottle. And as if things weren't bad enough, his alcohol abuse serves as the catalyst for two horrific events: the manslaughter of a fellow bar patron during a drunken brawl, and the injuring of Sarah in a drunk driving accident. The former deed places Ed in prison and Sarah in foster care.

Sarah eventually is taken in by the Garvey family. Ironically, her foster father Mitch happens to be a prison guard where Ed is being held. The Garveys are staunchly (if not hypocritically) religious, and Sarah does not fit in well there. Furthermore, she must face the constant taunts of her new high school classmates, who mock both her permanent limp and her murderer father. The only student with whom she is able to connect is another outcast, Nick Dunnigan, a delusional schizophrenic.

Sarah also finds comfort in an art class, taught by a unique character named Miss Bettina Phillips. Bettina resides alone with several dogs and cats in Shutters Mansion, a place that once served as an insane asylum. In eerie fashion, she is able to channel feelings from Bettina's home, and she begins to paint images of Shutters and some of its less-than-friendly past inhabitants. Additionally, while Sarah is painting these unfamiliar images, Nick is having visions of his own that involve acts of violence and terror stemming from the dark heart of the old asylum.

As these events begin to unfold, the Garvey family prohibits Sarah from speaking with Bettina outside of class and labels her a "witch." In similar fashion, Nick's father won't allow Nick to maintain a friendship with his new classmate and forbids his mentioning of Shutters or Bettina. Why do these adults and other members of the town seem to fear Bettina and Shutters so fiercely? What sordid secrets are they trying so desperately to hide?

At the heart of the novel is the answer to these questions, as Shutters contains more than just Bettina and her animal comrades. It also houses the history of Warwick, and the town's secrets and sins. The time for "reckoning" is now upon them as Sarah and Nick become the keys to unlocking the strange doors found inside Shutters and learning that not all past memories are benevolent.

Although HOUSE OF RECKONING wraps itself up a little too quickly, the journey to the conflicted climax is worth the trip. John Saul is at his best when he gets inside the heart and mind of his teenaged characters, and the team of Sarah Crane and Nick Dunnigan firmly represents teen angst at its darkest and most dangerous. This is a perfectly eerie tale presented just in time for the Halloween season.

--- Reviewed by Ray Palen

House of Reckoning is John Saul's 36th novel and he doesn't veer too far off the plot track of his previous 35, with spooky kids, a haunted house and a laundry list of baddies just begging to be punished.

The basic plot: Sarah Crane has led a pretty cruddy 14 years. Her mother died, and her father, drowning in his own grief, gets drunk and kills a man - and then driving home drunk, hits Sarah on her bike, breaking her hip and leg and setting into motion the remainder of the book.

Now in an abusive foster home, Sarah is an outcast, a "crip" because of her limp. Nick Dunnigan is equally shunned by his classmates; he suffers from apparent schizophrenia, hearing voices in his head. That is, until he meets Sarah. I won't spoil the second half of the book very much, but will say that Sarah, Nick and art teacher Bettina Philips have a sort of unholy connection to a former mental institution that Bettina has inherited and is living in. Anyone who's read previous John Saul novels (especially his earliest work) knows what follows; ghostly voices, a sort of psychic connection between Sarah and Nick, a house that comes alive with a vengeance (literally).

Pros for House of Reckoning: there are some interesting plot points that tie the three lead characters together, and towards the end of the book, Saul does live up to his reputation for turning on the chills. I also liked his filling out of all of the characters. Given the short-ish length of the book, it takes great skill to get into the heads of the number of characters playing key roles in the story. Saul's writing is generally crisp; there wasn't a time when I was tempted to skip ahead, even for the first half of the book, which was actually rather boring.

Cons: it took roughly 200 pages in for the real action to start. I kept expecting something, some more chilling foreshadowing or supernatural signs of where the book was heading. There was a small bit of both, between Sarah's artwork, Nick's voices and Bettina's pets going all Cujo-ish, but it just wasn't something that would make me turn all the lights on, something I actually remember doing when I read Saul's first few books, which I highly recommend for their scary quotient. The ending handful of pages, wrapping up the book were a little too..something. Pat? I can't believe I'm complaining that the storyline became unbelievable at the end, given what went on for the previous hundred pages, but it just left me thinking, "Really? So that's it?"

All in all, I would recommend this book to fans of Saul's obviously - there's nothing here that would be surprising in terms of his style, but it's still a good example of the genre and a very quick read once you get past the first couple of slow background-filling chapters. There's a bit of gore (not much), some scary endings for some characters and some overall spookiness; I would put this more on the side of paranormal suspense than a horror story.

This wouldn't be a book I'd read more than once, but it's not a bad way to spend a handful of chilly autumn hours.

While I do like John Saul's work, this book just isn't the best thing he's put out. The book promises a lot of stuff, some of which is typical Saul fare: children in peril, human & supernatural evils run amok, & twisty plot turns. Unfortunately the book just couldn't live up to those promises, at least not entirely.

The plotline follows the character of Sarah, a young girl whose mother died when she was about 14. When her father is incarcerated for a barroom brawl gone murderous, not to mention accidentally running her over, it seems as if Sarah will never be happy again. These fears only grow stronger when her new foster family is barely hospitable to her & grows even less so by each passing day. Only her art class & a strange boy lifts Sarah's spirits, even as mysteries spring up around her & evils from the past mingle with the evils of the present.

Where do I begin with the critique of this book? While I did enjoy reading this book, I just felt as if the book took the easy way out of everything. The plotline was interesting, but it felt sort of... mechanical. Everything seemed to be a little rushed & none of the book's characters or plot progression seemed to be organic. It felt more like "plot point A leads to plot point B which leads to...". Don't get me wrong- this is an enjoyable read for a few hours, but I've read far better from John Saul in the past. This just came across as sort of a first draft of sorts. It just needed to be fleshed out more & have the rough edges smoothed out. The ending especially needs to be slowed down a bit- it just seems to go a little too fast for everything that has happened. (Maybe if some of the ending happened earlier in the book?)

But overall this book was ok. (Even when he's not at his peak, Saul's still a pretty entertaining read.) Die-hard collectors of Saul will undoubtedly get this to keep their hardback collections up to date & die-hard fans will rush out to get this as well. But for the average John Saul fan, I suggest waiting for the paperback or getting it from the library. And if you haven't read Saul at all, I recommend reading some of his earlier stuff first. This book isn't bad, but it's not his best.

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