Review: lost boy lost girl

When you pick up Peter Straub’s ‘lost boy lost girl’; you are standing on the porch of a long abandoned house with your hand on the doorknob. Your heart is racing; your mind is filled with dread and excitement. When you turn the knob and walk in, you’ve made a deliberate choice to enter a very dark place.

In Millhaven, Illinois, Nancy Underhill has committed suicide for reasons that escape her self-involved and morose husband, Peter. His older brother, horror writer Tim Underhill (Koko, The Throat) returns to the town he grew up in for her funeral. In a journal he keeps, Tim tries to come to terms with why the soft-spoken and ‘quietly stressed-out little woman’ would take her own life. And he wonders what will become of Peter and Nancy’s fifteen year-old son, Mark.

Eight days later, the mystery deepens when Mark vanishes. His uncle feels a keen sense of double-loss and is determined to find out what happened to the boy. Nancy’s behavior before she died and the disappearance of his nephew seem inextricably linked.

Phillip is convinced his son has either killed himself or that he is the victim of the "Sherman Park Killer" who has taken the lives of two boys near Mark’s age. As the police concentrate on the killer, Tim begins to unravel the secrets Mark kept. Tim brings in P.I. Tom Pasmore to investigate what is tangible while Tim investigates what is not. Pasmore quickly discovers information about Nancy. He asks Tim if he knew that his late sister-in-law was related to Millhaven’s first serial killer, Joseph Kalender?

Over twenty years before, Kalender had raped and killed women in the area. Found not guilty by reason of insanity at his trial, he was later killed by a fellow inmate at a hospital for the criminally insane. And he had lived in the house behind Peter Underhill’s.

Jimbo Monaghan, Mark’s best friend, speaks of Mark’s obsession with the house and about his mother’s behavior in the weeks before her suicide. Mark’s own behavior began to change as he and Jimbo explored the house. Convinced the killer was hiding out in its shadows, Mark had become determined find him. Both boys see a man in the house; whether or not he is real is a question their misadventure leaves unanswered. Jimbo also relates the strange influence the house held over Mark; an influence that left Jimbo confused and terrified. He was powerless to keep Mark from seeking the source of this influence on his own.

When Pasmore uncovers a string of murders similar to the ones occurring in Millhaven, the realities of what could have happened to Mark begin to merge. And the answers are in the house at 3323 North Michigan Street.

This book left me in a reading haze of images and feelings that are difficult to shake. It is a powerful tome that explores family secrets; the power of obsessions and the marks evil deeds can leave on people and places.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan

Book Review: lost boy lost girl