Bedbugs (original 2011; edition 2011)

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.

SYNOPSIS
Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.

Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell

What a fab nasty little story! I loved the slow build up with that 'out of the corner of your eye 'stuff, 'did I or didn't I?' paranoia.

Is Susan really seeing the bedbugs from hell or is she paranoid, over stressed and on her way to loosing her mind?

You actually being to doubt yourself...I changed my mind several times about what was happening during the course of the story.

Clever and well written, the hints that something supernatural is afoot is deftly done but I felt the ending was really out of kilter with the rest of the book ( )

Not great. Not terrible. It was a book I read. Surprising degree of violence at the end, entirely out of whack with the rest of the book. ( )

You may also read my review here: http://www.mybookishways.com/2012/09/bedbugs-by-ben-h-winters.html

Alex, Susan, and little Emma Wendt just moved into a new apartment, the second floor of a wonderful Brooklyn brownstone, 1,300 sq. ft, a little under $3, 500/month. Sounds like a steal, right? Maybe too good to be true? It’s perfect for their little family of three, and even if Andrea, their new landlord, seems a bit strange, it’s nothing they can’t handle. Alex’s photography firm, specializing in jewelry, is up and coming, and it’s been successful enough that Susan has quit her job to stay home and take up painting again. It’s idyllic at first, until strange things start happening, and Susan eventually becomes convinced the apartment is infested with bedbugs. Everyone else, including professionals, says otherwise, but Susan has seen the bugs, and felt the bites. Unfortunately, she’s the only one. Is Susan going crazy, or is something more sinister at work?

If you’re someone that gets squirmy reading about teeny little bugs, brace yourself. Bedbugs is a rather short book, but the author manages to pack some serious dread into those pages. Honestly, at first, I didn’t like Susan all that much. Not working, at home with a 3 year old, and she hires a nanny to take Emma off her hands while she proceeds to get…not much done, accept for a few errands and unpacking the house. Ostensibly she’s supposed to be painting, and eventually she does. In fact, she goes on quite a little painting spree that ends up having sinister results. Then there’s her odd landlord, who seems to have quite a few secrets of her own, a friendly but somehow imposing handyman sort of seems to lurk in the background, and it doesn’t help that Alex is becoming more sullen every day. I was absolutely convinced that Susan was going batty, but it’s not so simple, and that’s the fun of this chiller. Slow dread builds into out and out terror, and it’s a heckuva ride. You’ll probably devour this one in one sitting, if you can keep your skin from crawling long enough. Get out your bug spray and give this one a try. There’s a lot to love for thriller and horror fans alike! ( )

creepy like stephen king. made my skin crawl. a wicked fun quick read! ( )

I'm not sure what kind of story Ben Winters was trying to tell in Bedbugs, and perhaps more troubling is that I don't think he did, either. The story bounces back and forth between hinting that it's a reality-based thriller and a supernatural horror, and while this can be an effective way of telling a story, it only works if you're competent with that kind of change-up. Unfortunately, Mr. Winters is not.

The story beings with Susan Wendt searching for a new apartment for her family. She's a lawyer that has quit working to pursue her art. Alex, her husband, is a photographer specializing in catalog photos for jewelry stores. Emma, their daughter, is three and does cute things. As the story begins, Susan has found that too-good-to-be-true ad for an apartment in Brooklyn; a two bedroom, two bath that occupies the top two floors of a brownstone. Alex is skeptical, but agrees to go check it out with her. They meet their potential future landlord, Andrea, like what they see, and sign a lease.

From here the story just kind of meanders for a bit about the moving process; mail fowarding forms, hiring movers, finding new stores, etc. All very thrilling. Thing start going south for Susan when she finds a picture of the previous tenants hidden away in a window frame. Then she starts suspecting her apartment is infested with bedbugs. Are these pests real, or just a figment of a troubled mind? And what happened to the previous tenants? We do get answers to these questions, and they're not terrible.

One of this book's larger problems is that Susan is not a likeable protagonist. She obsesses over inane and unrelatable details. She also has a tendency to just gloss over things that while perhaps not terribly important to the actual plot, probably deserved a little more focus. At one point she starts worrying that Alex's business isn't doing so well (and in fact he ultimately confirms as much), yet she repeatedly goes out and spends like she has a money tree in the back yard. It could be argued that this is part of the potential psychotic break Winters tries to set up, but the details of that break we're presented with don't mesh well with this interpretation.

The largest problem, though, was that Winters couldn't decide if he wanted a thriller or a horror story. It's not unusual for a reader to be left in the dark until the very end; as I said, that kind of confusion can be very effective if used properly, but it wasn't in this case. In fact it really seems like Winters had decided exactly what kind of story to write and come to an appropriate ending, but then he tossed in an epilogue that basically says, "OR IS IT?! *dun dun duuuuuuuuun*" It was just very clumsily done.

All of that said, I think there was real potential here. Though he skipped between tones a lot, when Winters was exploring one possibility, he moved things along nicely and set up a bit of actual suspense. He also nailed the characters of Alex and Emma. Alex is a loving father and husband that is supporting his family through difficult economics times, and is under some stress because things aren't going so well for his small business. Emma is a three year old, and does three year old things; colors, plays with toys, runs around, says cute stuff, etc. I suspect the bases for these characters were pulled from examples in Winters' life. ( )