Silent Children

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Over the past 30 years, Campbell (The Last Voice They Hear) has perfected a story style distinctive for its stifling atmosphere of dread and oblique approach to horror. Applying it here to the shocking theme of a serial child-killer, he has crafted a nail-biting psychological thriller, his best in nearly a decade. The tale begins on a high note of menace when Leslie Ames and her adolescent son, Ian, move back to the house they had vacated upon the discovery that builder Hector Woollie had stashed the corpse of a young girl beneath its floor. The sense of impending terror only intensifies. Distrusted by the locals and hounded by the tabloids, Leslie and Ian nevertheless let a room to American horror-writer Jack Lamb. Jack quickly befriends Ian and beds Leslie, but says nothing of his secret, shameful tie to Woollie--who has not died by misadventure as reported, but is on the loose and intent on returning to the scene of his crime. Campbell establishes his characters in sharp, precise slashes of chapters, which alternate the viewpoints of the oblivious Ames family, self-tortured Jack and Woollie, a grotesque travesty of a human being, whose sentiments toward children are presented as hideously warped feelings of affection. The climax they build to is a tour-de-force of suspense, in which Woollie's abduction of Ian is abetted by miscommunication, duplicitous motives and a freakish but plausible succession of near discoveries and cliffhanger escapes, all expertly set up in the early chapters. Ingeniously imbedded reflections of family ties, personal responsibility and even the esthetics of horror fiction give the narrative substance without ever slowing its relentless, cinematic pace. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

VOYA

This thriller is akin to a Stephen King novel, placing a young character in peril and forcing him to rely upon his wits to survive. In this novel, a mentally disturbed man has been murdering children to "save" them from abusive parents. The killer's secret is discovered, however, when he attempts to drown a witness, and he fakes his own death and goes into hiding. Some time later, the divorced owner of the house in which his last victim is buried decides to live there with her troubled teenaged son after she is unable to sell the property. News articles by a sensationalist reporter reveal the history of the house just as a new boarder, ironically a horror novelist, arrives. The attractive lodger is not forthcoming about why he is there and who he is. It is not long before the murderer feels the need to return. The murderer soon captures the teenager and his young stepsister in the vacant apartment that shares a common wall to the house. He ghoulishly eavesdrops on developments within the home as they cope with their search for the children. There are many subplots involving school problems, the killer's family, and the lodger's identity that begin to intertwine by the conclusion. The last one hundred pages are taut and nerve-wracking, as the boy and girl try to outwit the increasingly deranged psychopath, and the mother pieces together clues to their whereabouts. The British setting and dialogue may throw some readers, and the children might seem a little too precocious, but the race against the clock and the cat-and-mouse strategies are exciting to watch unfold. VOYA CODES: 4Q 3P J S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Junior High,defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 2000, Forge, 352p, $24.95. Ages 14 to Adult. Reviewer: Kevin Beach

SOURCE: VOYA, December 2000 (Vol. 23, No. 5)

Kirkus Reviews

Campbell's umpteenth dip into darkness (The Last Voice They Hear, 1998, etc.) displays his usual warm hand for British domestic details that help pinch rosy life into the cheeks of his ghouls. Chief ghoul this time out is Hector Woollie, a contractor in Jericho Close who has a taste for bringing peace to young children he feels have been abused by their parents. A pillow over the face is just fine, though a knife across the throat of a noisy kid may be called for, while Hector soothes them by singing a lullaby as their lives snuff out. Hector disposes of the bodies by burying them in the basements of various houses. When young Terrence sees little Harmony Duke's wormy finger in the concrete, however, Hector decides to fake his own death by drowning, then return incognito. (His disguise requires that he pull out all his teeth with pliers, a nice touch.) Divorced Leslie, who runs a record shop, now owns the building where Hector buried Harmony—a place that's become known throughout Jericho Close as the House of Horror. So Leslie can't sell, and she and her 13-year-old son, Ian, can't move. Then Ian and his young stepsister, Charlotte, disappear . . . . Campbell can leave his house, take a walk by swings in a schoolyard, and come back with a novel that writes itself in his sleep—or so it seems.