Lost Boy Lost Girl

I've always felt that Peter Straub has never gotten his due from critics and horror fans. He's the Bob Seger of the literary world: a great storyteller as acknowledged by nearly everyone who has read his work, but without the Hollywood-propped household name recognition of a Stephen King or a Neil Gaiman. LOST BOY, LOST GIRL is just more evidence of this.

Straub is a true master of the genre in both style and substance. This story is a strange wandering through an early 2000s landscape when cameras were not yet everywhere and Internet-enabled technology still felt somewhat magical to the average user. In that way, this novel has probably not aged well.

However, if you set aside the dated technological references and instead focus on the show more double mystery of Nancy Underhill's suicide and Mark Underhill's disappearance, the story is timeless. Familial bonds are tested. Young boys only out to entertain themselves become inextricably linked to a mysterious empty house. Murderous evil people are suspected of wrongdoing. Societal and cultural prejudices hold deadly influence over events and people. And then there's the ghost of the little girl.

There's a great deal to enjoy about LOST BOY, LOST GIRL. I'm glad I picked it up. show less

Peter Straub can scare readers with just a whisper. Other horror writers might give us books which scream blood, gore and guts, but Straub (Ghost Story, Koko, The Throat) puts ice in our veins with a soft, barely-audible "boo!"

To badly paraphrase Carl Sandburg, Straub creeps up on little cat's feet and puts his icy paws on the back of our neck when we least expect it. In his latest novel, lost boy lost girl, he saturates his typically literate prose with an ominous buzz that crescendos right up until the last nerve-shattering sentence.

In lost boy lost girl, novelist Tim Underhill (who also appears in Koko and The Throat) returns to his hometown of Millhaven, Illinois when his sister-in-law commits suicide. The death is shocking, show more especially to Tim's brother Philip and nephew Mark. It was "a death like a slap in the face," the book's first sentence informs us. The family's grief is only made worse when Mark mysteriously disappears a week later.

Based in part on a couple of cryptic e-mails Mark had sent him, Tim starts to think there's something more to his nephew's disappearance than the police department's suspicion that it's the work of the local Sherman Park Killer who has been snatching local teenage boys off the street. Tim returns to Millhaven and begins to investigate the string of deaths and as he gets closer to the truth, he discovers it most likely can be found in the creepy house which has sat abandoned in Mark's neighborhood for years.

As we'd expect from the man who gave us the ultimate Ghost Story, lost boy lost girl eventually turns into another haunted-house masterpiece. The residence at 3323 North Michigan Street becomes a living, breathing, pulsating character in its own right, complete with hidden staircases, sliding panels and poltergeists that move objects from room to room.

Straub is an elegant writer—on the opposite end of the horror spectrum from his chum Stephen King, the Royal Scribe of Sticky Gore. From Julia onward, Straub has penned his stories in a tradition established by people like Hawthorne, James and Saki. Like his literary ancestors, he knows how to scare readers psychologically, rather than with an amplified, Hollywood-ized barrage of "gotcha!" cheap thrills. The result is complex writing which is placid on its surface, but underneath teems with the squirming nasties of the id.

Like the dust-moted rooms of the house, Straub's writing is quiet and intense, choosing not to blare off the page in show-offy fashion (starting with the unobtrusive, e.e. cummings-like title). Instead, we take our horror in small doses, unexpected scenes which can prickle the neck-hairs with a single, well-placed word.

For instance, while out skateboarding one day, Mark comes across a dark, hulking figure we assume is the Sherman Park Killer and the sight fills him (and us) with icy dread:

A thick-bodied man facing the other direction stood silhouetted against the dead sky at the top of Michigan Street….The sense of wrongness flowed from this man, Mark understood—this figure with his back turned. Mark took in the unkempt black hair curling past his collar, his wide back covered by a black coat that fell like a sheet of iron to the backs of his knees. Willful, powerful wrongness came off of him like steam.

You could spend hours deconstructing a paragraph like that to determine how Straub does it, how he goes about the business of icy cat's paws with words like "unkempt," "curling," and "steam."

There are plenty of other instances where the author works his black magic on the reader: for instance, a ghost's footsteps "chimed like brush strokes." As Mark sits in the not-empty-after-all house, those whispery footfalls were like "hearing someone stepping down a passage within his own head."

And, earlier, when Mark and his friend Jimbo first entered the house, he'd looked for footprints in the thick dust carpeting the floors. "He saw only tracings, loops and swirls like writing in an unknown alphabet inscribed with the lightest possible pressure of a quill pen." Straub excels at writing subtly wicked sentences like that which collapse our lungs and tighten our throats. What ethereal being, we wonder, could have made those loops and swirls and—most importantly—are they good or evil?

Both good and evil inhabit the rooms of Straub's haunted house in lost boy lost girl, and it's that conjunction of forces which gives the novel its air of melancholy and, ultimately, majesty. show less

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.” show more 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. show less

*Partial spoilers ahead*

An interesting premise, though Straub takes his time getting to the point and the reader occasionally may wonder if all the buildup is leading to anything. I enjoyed the vividly spooky phantom imagery borrowed from Henry James's classic ghost story "The Jolly Corner" (seasoned Straub fans will be aware of his longstanding fascination with James). In stylistic terms, Straub is fairly successful in translating the flavor of his 600-page bestsellers into a shorter, simpler format, and Lost Boy, Lost Girl is not a bad introduction to his writing for folks who aren't ready to tackle a big, daunting book like The Throat or Mr. X. Where it falls short is in its depiction of teenage characters. Kids are hard to write, I show more get it, and writing them realistically presents a challenge even for authors of Straub's caliber. Unfortunately, a lot of this novel consists of the interactions between two skateboarding adolescent boys, and the characterization, mannerisms and dialogue are consistently awkward throughout.

But don't avoid the book just because of that. Fans of The Throat, in particular, should read Lost Boy, Lost Girl because it follows author/amateur detective Tim Underhill back to his hometown of Millhaven to solve a new mystery: the disappearance of his young nephew Mark, which is somehow related to a shunned neighborhood house where terrible events took place decades earlier. The particulars of the story will be comfortably familiar to Straub fans, and this short novel is a nice warm-up for its sequel In the Night Room. There, Straub revisits the setting of this book, but on surer footing with a cast of adult characters. show less

Many times I almost gave up on this book because I found it tedious and uninteresting. But it’s Peter Straub, so I kept giving it another chance. Not until about halfway through the 336 pages did it finally get interesting and start to grab me like Straub’s books normally would. And grab me it did, with palpable dread, and it had me biting my fingernails. Whew! Then it slowed down again toward the end, and that was ok for a wrap-up.

The book really centers on an abandoned house. Although the plot summary on the back cover talks about a mother’s unexplained suicide and her son’s disappearance, it really has to do with what the son discovers about a house and its old gruesome secrets. Eerie and with a touch of the supernatural, show more “Lost Boy Lost Girl” is a creepy novel that is not consistently entertaining - certainly not one of Straub’s better novels. show less

lost boy lost girl lost mind
...that's what I imagine happened to Stephen King in order for him to have written the blurb on the cover of this - "May be the best book of his career" - unless it was a really nasty left-handed compliment in which case...

golf clap


SPOILER ALERT
I was toddling along with this merrily enough until I got into the last 50? 75? pages when it became clear that the denouement was going to revolve around...


wait



magic teenage sex with the invisible undead. Or something. But it's cool because she's really, really hot.

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 show more '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). show less