Swimmer

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Like the start of a new school year, Masterton's novels of paranormally sensitive English teacher Jim Rook are full of energy and bustle that usually dissipates once the regular routine resumes. This fifth adventure (after Snowman) finds Rook preparing to leave his remedial class at Los Angeles's West Grove Community College for a new job at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., when he's delayed by a former student who begs him to investigate inexplicable circumstances surrounding the drowning of her child. This proves only the first of several instances in which Rook's students and friends are victimized by a "swimmer," a vengeful spirit that manifests frighteningly in shapes of water or boiling steam. With the help of Susan Silverstone, an ex-student turned psychic, Rook traces the swimmer's origins to a tragic episode in the school's recent history, and suffers several near brushes with drippy death as he plots its exorcism. Though the story features some inventive supernatural incursions including the awesomely animated contents of a swimming pool forcing its way into a house it's ultimately grounded in the same plodding homilies of personal responsibility and episodes of instructive poetry reading that serve as ballast in its predecessors. The swimmer's assaults give the plot occasional jolts but become so repetitive that only a bizarre moment of feline ex machina at the climax relieves their monotony. Still, the amiable Rook is fun to follow, and the mix of classroom capers and occult horror will put readers in mind of a bush-league Buffy bonanza. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Like the start of a new school year, Masterton's novels of paranormally sensitive English teacher Jim Rook are full of energy and bustle that usually dissipates once the regular routine resumes. This fifth adventure (after Snowman) finds Rook preparing to leave his remedial class at Los Angeles's West Grove Community College for a new job at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., when he's delayed by a former student who begs him to investigate inexplicable circumstances surrounding the drowning of her child. This proves only the first of several instances in which Rook's students and friends are victimized by a "swimmer," a vengeful spirit that manifests frighteningly in shapes of water or boiling steam. With the help of Susan Silverstone, an ex-student turned psychic, Rook traces the swimmer's origins to a tragic episode in the school's recent history, and suffers several near brushes with drippy death as he plots its exorcism. Though the story features some inventive supernatural incursions including the awesomely animated contents of a swimming pool forcing its way into a house it's ultimately grounded in the same plodding homilies of personal responsibility and episodes of instructive poetry reading that serve as ballast in its predecessors. The swimmer's assaults give the plot occasional jolts but become so repetitive that only a bizarre moment of feline ex machina at the climax relieves their monotony. Still, the amiable Rook is fun to follow, and the mix of classroom capers and occult horror will put readers in mind of a bush-league Buffy bonanza. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Fifth in the Jim Rook chiller series (Snowman, 2000, etc.), this one providing his nemesis in the shape of a see-through teenager made entirely of water-and a very, very naughty girl she is. Rook teaches remedial English at California's West Grove Community College and uses a lot of poetry to make his points. A former student begs him for psychic aid in the drowning death of her son, who was pulled underwater in their swimming pool. Wet footprints led away from the pool, although no one had been near it. Jim first sees a transparent teenager walking across a lawn. Then one of his students dies, pulled under while surfing. His friend Mervyn is nearly drowned in the bathtub. A girl is attacked by steam in the shower. Water in a swimming pool gathers into a wave and menaces a house, trying to drown the people within. It seems as though everyone threatened by this strange force has some tie to Jim's class. Jim himself is assaulted in a carwash as the water girl tries to drown him amid the whirling brushes and drenching spray. Wherever there is water, this malevolent spirit can assemble herself and go on a rampage. So who is she? Plain prose but super-gripping.