From Publishers Weekly
Strieber's latest (after Communion ) is by turns gripping, plodding, truly horrifying and, finally, falsely sunny. Fat, 40-ish Barton Royal, kiddy-clown in an L.A. bookstore, is obsessed with pubescent boys. He wants to be their "father" but when they turn against him he has a "black room" for their punishment. Seeing 12-year-old Billy Neary in an Iowa shopping mall, Barton is smitten. He follows the boy home, craftily and boldly abducts him and begins a nonstop drive to L.A. The book alternates scenes of the devastation wrought on Billy's family, a national manhunt, Billy's growing awareness of his peril and Barton's violent mood swings. We get chilling glimpses of Barton's past--he talks of skinning boys alive--and his plans for Billy. Bright, winning Billy is worn down almost to madness. Barton's tortured self-justification and Billy's brainy sweetness are believable but the other characters have much less depth. The bloody pater ex machina climax is followed by worse-than-expected revelations and an oddly upbeat finale that rings not quite true.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
Product Description
When Billy Neary is kidnapped by Barton and taken across the country, his parents are frantic and the police search out the trail. Billy is smart and tries to forge a relationship with his deranged abductor but when he discovers two corpses, he and the reader realize that time is running out.
