Midnight Voices

May 20, 2002
Saul knows how to dish out thrills, and with a sly tribute to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, as well as other horror classics, this latest pulp shocker should have fans lining up. Mother of two and widow of a murdered Central Park jogger, Caroline Evans thinks she has found the answer to her prayers in her new husband, Anthony Fleming. The family moves into his apartment in the Rockwell, a storied old Upper West Side building. Ryan and Laurie, the children, quickly begin to have nightmares in which they are haunted by menacing voices, while Ryan realizes that he doesn't like his creepy stepfather. Elderly, eccentric neighbors bring them strangely flavored food. Laurie befriends ailing Rebecca, the foster child of a neighbor couple, who is mysteriously wasting away. Tension mounts when Rebecca's social worker, a close friend of Caroline's, can get no information from Rebecca's doctor—yet another elderly resident of the Rockwell—despite her threat to obtain a subpoena. Soon the social worker disappears, Rebecca follows on her heels and Laurie herself becomes ill with whatever Rebecca had. Meanwhile, the "niece" of an elderly neighbor, who looks suspiciously like a younger replica of the old woman, replaces her aunt in the Rockwell. Readers who appreciate Saul's homage to undead fiction will probably see the plot twists coming, but die-hard devotees should enjoy the chilling, sometimes gruesome goings-on at the Rockwell nonetheless.

February 1, 2002
A widowed mom meets the man of her dreams, but the apartment house where he lives turns out to be a real nightmare.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2002
This novel is deeply creepy right from the outset, opening with the brutal murder of its protagonist Caroline's husband in Central Park. Six months after that trauma, Caroline is struggling to make ends meet and to take care of her two children. Then she meets Tony. He seems the perfect gentleman, and she marries him after a long-enough courtship. When she and the children move in with him in the exclusive Rockwell building, she at first dismisses the stories she hears--the Rockwell's inhabitants are actually witches and vampires--as just so many urban legends. Then her daughter starts hearing voices in the walls at night, and Rebecca, the only other child in the building, who is already mysteriously ill, disappears. When her daughter falls ill with symptoms remarkably similar to Rebecca's, Caroline realizes she can no longer dismiss her aged neighbors as eccentric but basically harmless. Saul's handling of an old horror conceit conjures all the nail-biting tension of successful suspense, and the ritzy Central Park West setting he chooses makes everything even creepier (tip of the hat to " Rosemary's Baby," perhaps?). This is good, drafty atmospheric horror stuff unafraid to indulge in not-at-all-subtle gory bits. Just the thing to read late at night in an empty house.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)