I was a huge fan of Peter Straub’s horror novels back in the day. Reading GHOST STORY and FLOATING DRAGON were incredible experiences, and his collaborations with Stephen King, THE TALISMAN and BLACK HOUSE, are must reads for anyone who loves horror and fantasy. I also very much enjoyed Straub’s earlier forays into the supernatural, JULIA and IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW. The man had a way with words that really pulled a reader into his world, and unlike most authors in the genre back during the horror novel boom of the ‘80s, he did not go in for the grue and gore prevalent in most of the paperbacks on the shelf in the drug store book rack; Straub didn’t rely on such tropes as the “creature on the loose” or the “evil child.” Instead, his horror was more subtle and supernatural; his books were filled with vengeful ghosts, and malevolent entities whose nature could not quite be determined except that they held a grudge against the living. His best stories were puzzle pieces where the legacy of some crime or atrocity in the past collides with the present day. Where his friend, Stephen King, was clearly influenced by the old EC horror comics of the ‘50s, Straub’s inspirations were Poe, Hawthorne, and Henry James. In the ‘90s, Straub shifted gears somewhat, and began writing thrillers and mysteries where there were hints of horror, but it was not the primary focus. Most of these books had the central character of Tim Underhill, a Vietnam veteran and bestselling author. In all honesty, I can’t say I liked the Underhill books as well as his earlier horror works.

LOST BOY LOST GIRL is a Tim Underhill book which came out in the early 2000s, the last decade of Straub’s writing career and it sat on my shelf for quite awhile before I got around to reading it. I was prompted to pick it up after all this time because unlike the other Underhill books, this one had a much more distinct supernatural element to the story. The book is set in the small mid-western town of Millhaven, the place where Tim and his brother grew up, and where his sibling and his family still live. Tim returns to his boyhood home when his sister-in-law, Nancy, commits suicide, quickly followed by the disappearance of his fifteen year old nephew, Mark. The disappearance of Mark is the mystery Tim tries to solve, and compounding the problem is a serial killer on the loose whose victims are young boys.

My feelings on the book: There is a narrative that jumps from one POV to another, including that of Mark, and it sometimes requires attention as to who is speaking at any certain point in the story. Also, information is given to the reader outside of chronological order, which also demands attention. Some familiar tropes and themes from Straub’s earlier work appear, including heinous crimes committed decades in the past that were covered up or just unknown, an old house filled with grisly secrets, inquisitive teenage boys, an apparition that appears to some people and not to others, and who might be The Big Bad. Straub has a knack for crating distinctly unsympathetic characters, like Tim’s brother, who could easily win a Bad Husband and Dad of the Year contest, and is equally at adept portraying teenagers such as Mark, and his best friend, Jimbo. Some of the plotting feels lifted from Serial Killer 101, and the police seem to be particularly dense when it comes to an important clue that would have easily put them on the trail of the killer. As has been noted in other reviews, Straub is not much on giving women prominent voices in his narratives, and this book is no different, though I take exception to those who called him a misogynist. As with any contemporary book written in the early years of the 21st Century, some of the tech used is now totally obsolete. My paperback copy comes in at 336 pages, so this is a fairly short read, and some other reviewers have expressed that they wish it was longer, and delved into the back story more, and expanded on the conclusion. And the finale might be a bone of contention for some, as it does suggest a strong supernatural element with the existence not only of ghosts, but of other realms and worlds beyond this one. A number of things are left unexplained, so much so that a reader might surmise that we have been left with the words of an “unreliable narrator” and that there is another explanation of events altogether.

But that is what makes reading Peter Straub both interesting and challenging. At his best, I thought his horror writing actually surpassed Stephen King, and I’m sorry they never got to collaborate on a third book. On the cover of LOST BOY LOST GIRL, King provided a blurb that stated he thought it “May be the best book of his career.” I would not go that far, but still concede that LOST BOY LOST GIRL contains many of the elements that drew us to Straub in the first place, and is well worth reading. ( )

I was hugely disappointed in this book. It is the story of a young teen that becomes obsessed with an empty house on the other side of the alley where he lives. It is a house that horrible murders took place many years prior. His mom knows the secret of the house and she ends of committing suicide and then the boy disappears. There is a serial killer on the loose and the assumption is he was now a victim of this man. There were parts of the story that were quite interesting but it did jump around a bit and I just, honestly, was not impressed with how this one went. ( )

Unfortunately, after the enjoyable sequence of 'Mystery' and 'The Throat' by this author, this novel, which continues the story of Tim Underhill, best-selling author, was a major disappointment. The first part, in which Tim's sister-in-law kills herself and Tim comes back home to attend the funeral, then his nephew Mark goes missing, was a good, slow, build-up of tension. Told in a mix of first person narrative from different viewpoints including Tim's journal, and shifting around in the time line, gradually it is revealed that Mark became obsessed with a derelict house directly behind his own, which eventually turned out to be connected to his own family in a horribly dark way.

But for me the book unravelled at the point where the 'ghost girl' appeared, and the ending was a contrived wish-fulfilment fantasy by Tim who couldn't face the likely truth. Even the cameo appearance of Tom Pasmore, hero of 'Mystery' who also played a key role in 'The Throat', failed to rescue it. (I did think quite early on, when Mark was telling his friend Jimbo that he wanted to find out who owned the abandoned house, that he should just ask his uncle Tim to get Tom to look it up online. When eventually Tim does do so, the identity of the present killer who has been abducting adolescent boys, is soon revealed - unlike one of the killers in 'The Throat' he didn't have the intelligence to hide his identity behind a corporation.)

Another problem I had with the book was its lack of continuity - it was established in the previous volumes plus 'Koko', that Tim had a sister, murdered as a child. In 'The Throat' Tim returns to his hometown and spends days there on two occasions (on the second, he and Tom were working undercover but that wasn't the case on his first visit) - and yet he never once visits his brother's family. As that takes place about eight years previously, Mark would have been about seven years old. Tim tells us frequently that he loves his nephew, although he and his brother don't get on, mainly because his brother is a sour, hardhearted and unloving man, yet Tim never once even mentioned that he had a brother, sister-in-law and nephew in either 'Koko' or 'The Throat', the previous two books where Tim figures largely. Also, in 'The Throat' it is clear that his parents' marriage ended soon after the murder of his sister, and his father became a homeless drunk. In the current volume, although a drinker his father does hang around for some years at least, taking his sons to bars. This is a major changed premise and made even weirder by the fact that Tim's sister isn't mentioned in this book either. I found it irritating. The author does like to play around with reader sensibilities - in 'The Throat' it transpired that 'Mystery' was apparently a book written by Tim Underhill and the major incident of Tom's childhood, being run over by a car, had instead happened to Tim - but I found this creation of a readymade family for Tim a step too far.

The shift from straight crime (the previous books about Tim) to weird supernatural didn't work for me. In the other books, Tim does "see dead people" from time to time, but it is left nicely ambiguous. It can be ascribed to his mental state, stress (some of the experiences happen in Vietnam after he has witnessed appalling scenes), or survivor guilt in the case of his glimpses of his dead sister, plus we know that Tim had a drug addiction when he lived in the far East for some years. In those stories, it is left open-ended as to whether he has really seen ghosts. But in this, we are expected to believe not only that the dead can affect the concrete, material world but that it is possible to somehow cross over to that realm in one's physical body. Even if this is just a consoling fantasy, the story as written forces this interpretation onto the reader.

Having now read the sequel, 'In the Night Room', things go on to unravel even further. In any case, with the present book, given that the first half was decent, I am awarding it 3 stars overall (3 stars on GR carries the 'liked it' connotation - I liked the first half at least). ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2005-03.html#lost-boy-lost-girl ( )

I was hugely disappointed in this book. It is the story of a young teen that becomes obsessed with an empty house on the other side of the alley where he lives. It is a house that horrible murders took place many years prior. His mom knows the secret of the house and she ends of committing suicide and then the boy disappears. There is a serial killer on the loose and the assumption is he was now a victim of this man. There were parts of the story that were quite interesting but it did jump around a bit and I just, honestly, was not impressed with how this one went. ( )