Again, I am back to rant about John Saul. Who I keep reading despite the fact that he hasn't, in my humble opinion had a good or original novel since The Presence (which is my favorite Saul book). After last years luke warm Perfect Nightmare (read my review), I was hoping for something a step up from that. This book begins like all Saul books, a mysterious person is doing something unsavory and someone dies. Then, we cut to the present where sixteen-year-old Eric Brewster is agonizing over that he might have to spend the summer in Chicago, instead of spending it with his friends Tad and Kent in Phantom Lake. First complaint, obviously we know that something bad is going to happen just by the name of the town, too cliche. We meet his mother, who through the whole book is worrying about everything. It becomes quite tedious. Eventually, as predicted, all three family's end up at Phantom Lake. The Brewsters have rented a house that has been abandoned for years (predictable). Tedious everyday occurences happen until maybe 100 pages into the book when things start taking a wrong turn. You see, the original owner of the house was a physiciatrist who investegated serial killers. And in a back room that is hidden in the old carriage house on the property, the boys find artifacts belonging to famous or infamous serial killers. At first it seems like fun to poke around and then bad things start happening. Also, there is a creepy hermit who rows around in a boat with a cross attached to it and in my eyes is a pretty worthless character. What he is thinking all the time is kind of boring. Everything comes to a head on the Fourth of July when everything starts to make sense. But it is too little, too late. My problems: the mother is a worry wart, we get it move on. The house is creepy, stop saying it. We never learn who the person in the prologue is (but you can pretty much figure it out) and we never find out what happened to Dr. Darby. With a worthless epilogue that is kind of dumb, In the Dark of the Night is definitely not one of Saul's best. This plot in a more capable writers hands probably would have been much scarier. Rating: ***
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