Book Review: lost boy, lost girl by Peter Straub

What’s not to like in this book? An all male cast filled with one dimensional stereotypes. A major failing of the Bechdel test. A serial killer sub-plot that goes nowhere. An evil house that does nothing. A story about evil where the only person who dies is a suicide, and that’s on page one. A story about a ghost where the ghost who finally shows up just wants to have sex…but “off screen,” of course. Wouldn’t want anything to actually happen in this book, would we?

In a book of dull and offensive characters, only Mark Underhill stands out as a decently memorable person. His uncle is a “famous writer,” which means he needs no other personality traits, ever. His father Phillip is a walking steroetype of a racist and msyogonist who can’t stop thinking of himself longer than five minutes. There’s the stereotypical tough talking cop, the plot device super-private detective friend, in case Tim the famous writer needs an answer without actually performing any investigative work, the over confident but really stupid rich white male serial killer in his thirties, Mark’s best buddy Jimbo, and Jimbo’s equally annoying drunk dad, Jackie.

There are only two female characters who have more than a scene or two of dialogue, one of whom commits suicide, Mark’s mother. She rarely talks in the flashbacks, and her presence in the book, even in flashbacks, serves no useful purpose. The other female bit character, Jimbo’s mother, serves as a sex symbol for Mark, and a sidekick for grilling Jimbo with Tim. She coos and says nice things to Mark, and then when Tim needs Jimbo too talk, she wags her finger sternly and repeats the same lines over and over: “Now Jim, you tell Mr. Underhill everything you know!” But otherwise she stays barefoot and in the kitchen like a good little woman. There is also supposed to be a female ghost, but she is only mentioned in passing…having sex with one of the guys.

So Mark is the only reason to keep reading, simply because he’s the only one presented with any personality and no negative stereotypes. In a book of assholes, he’s the only who who doesn’t stink. But that’s really not saying much, and the story frequently proposes that Mark is a super-genius fifteen-year-old, and every cop who ever dealt with the house of a prior serial killer was retarded. And blind. And so is the current generation of cops as well. I frequently found myself snorting, rolling my eyes, or yelling “bullshit” at the sheer lack of logic in most every scene.

And the narration, oho ome-o my-o, what attempts at narrative emotions that pluck pluck pluck at the heart but fail to stir the organ itself. (And seriously, what did this guy’s editor have against commas?) Like the sentence above, the narration FREQUENTLY tries over and over to be artsy, and instead it sucks up what little tension the book has left.

But then it never had much tension to begin with because nothing happens. What did happen is all narrated in the past tense in clinical terms. It’s split between a third person narrator and Tim the famous writer’s dull journal entries, and this whole story is relayed in such a jumbled way that there is never a sense of danger or dread.

The conclusion is a snoozer that frankly makes no sense. The killer claims to have been emulating The Dark Man to scare Mark, but that does not explain how he appeared in front of a cop and disappeared twice. The killer never mentions this either, so it feels like a loose thread that didn’t get snipped out in editing.

This book was dull dull dull with a narrator oh me oh my who was oh-so-gosh darned irritating that I very much long to strangle him with typewriter ribbon. The only reasons I stuck with this story are that I liked Mark and I kept thinking “Any minute now, this is going to get scary.” It never did. This book was a major disappointment. I give it 1 star, and I would not recommend it to anyone.