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In the Dark of the Night: A Novel

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Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

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. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of John Saul

JOHN SAUL's first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. He has since written twenty-three successive bestselling novels of suspense, including The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, Guardian, and The Homing. 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. Mr. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui, Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

  • 4 stars out of 5Like the title says...

    Posted January 25, 2009 by Dan, East Haven

    Once you get into this book you'll practically feel the chills and hear the voices as they appear in the book...kinda creepy actually. The smaller stories within the main theme kept your attention throughout and kept you thinking.

Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

1.43 MB

Number of Pages

336

eBook ISBN

9780345493675

Excerpt from: In the Dark of the Night by John Saul

CHAPTER 1

The hands on the classroom clock were crawling far too slowly toward the weekend. Eric Brewster fidgeted in his seat as Mr. Smallwood reiterated the English assignment, but Eric wasn't paying much attention. Everybody in class everybody in school had spring fever, including the teacher, and Eric was certain that nobody intended to do much homework, any more than Mr. Smallwood expected it would get done. Not tonight, not this weekend, not next week, which was the last week of school before summer vacation.

When the bell rang, Eric was out of his seat, out the door, dodging fast-moving bodies as he made his way to his locker to dump his books. Long summer evenings weren't made for studying, and he was already thinking about the possibilities when Kent Newell started working the combination to the locker next to his. Which meant that Tad Sparks, the third member of the triad that had formed in kindergarten and was still thriving in the next to last year of high school, wouldn't be far behind. When any two of them were together, the third was sure to be close by.

Except in summer, when the Newells and the Sparkses headed for rented summer houses in Wisconsin, while the Brewsters sweated it out in Evanston, just barely north of Chicago, and, where they lived, not quite close enough to Lake Michigan to catch whatever cool breeze the water might conjure up. But maybe this summer would be different. This summer his parents were looking for a summer rental, too. Of course, so far the looking had proved futile. It seemed every house at Phantom Lake had been rented months ago, and the ugly possibility that he might be stuck without his friends for another summer was starting to seem like an even uglier reality.

As usual, Kent Newell read his mind. "Your folks find a house yet?"