Bob Randall (1) (–1995)

A decent enough horror-thriller from the 80's that rips along a cracking pace. It also balances the mundane American lifestyle with some genuine sudden creepiness - Randall does a great job conveying a sense of genuine dark power emananting from the phone and there are some very shocking death scenes.

However, despite it's short length, there's not much here to hold it beyond a short story. It's clear the direction this ends in and despite a rather lame attempt at a twist late in the story - show more which does more to sidetrack and dissipate the power behind the threat - it's all fairly predictable. And the sheer volume of distracting parentheses became quite grating after a while.

I enjoyed it certainly, I just wish more was done with the concept - or perhaps less in order to leave things more open to the imagination. '80's characters can be rather vacuous in horror and that holds true here. A suitably bleak ending salvages it, but even at only 170 pages it still took too long to get the inevitable. show less

Read in print. Spoilers are here.
This is a weird book. Very much of its time, I think. It is an epistolary novel & I love epistolary novels. It does pretty well at keeping the reader's understanding of the situation limited by what is said in the letters but, on the other hand, broader than the understanding of any of the individuals.
I've been reading way too many junk romances so I was a little shocked when this book didn't stick to the formula.

Bawdy and aging Broadway star Sally Ross and her tough secretary, Belle, who cling together against the realities of lost loves and life passing, enter a world of bizarre terror when a persistent fan's letters turn perverse, obscene... and menacing.

Told in the form of letters of correspondence (1970's--would be emails & texts today). Read it in one sitting--somewhat predictable but still, the format made it intriguing reading.