** spoiler alert ** I'd give it three and a half stars if I could. The book is very good and has a timelessness that I don't often find in novels as old as this one (1973), but ultimately it suffers from two problems that prevent me from giving it four or five stars. First, it just takes too long to get to the real meat of the narrative. The narrator doesn't begin to suspect the town is more sinister than it appears until almost three quarters of the book (300 pages) have passed. Tryon's prose is engaging, but his pacing isn't as good as his description. Second, the narrator does some very weird things toward the end that both seem contrary to his character and considerably reduce the reader's sympathy for him. [MAJOR SPOILERS] I can't say that if I'd just uncovered a twenty-year-old plot to murder a girl and fake her suicide, my first reaction would be to go skinny dipping and then violently rape* the woman trying to ruin my marriage. Perhaps the knowledge of the murder deranged him, but they both seem like strange choices to make when what he really ought to be doing is convincing his wife and daughter to help him pack the car.

EDIT: I should add that there is one other big character issue that is frustrating me a little. To me, the real source of threat throughout the entire story is the danger to young people--especially girls--represented by A) what really happened to Grace Everdeen and B) the presence and well-established frailty of Ned's daughter. It seems completely out of character, given his concern for Kate at the beginning of the book, that Ned is not more concerned about her well-being in the middle and at the end. Instead of trying to locate and extricate his daughter from the danger represented by the upcoming Harvet Home ritual (he does this in a shallow way during the dance scene, but it is never more urgently revisited as things go from bad to worse), he seems more interested in simply understanding the secret ritual being kept from him.

Ultimately, the end works well and it is clear how many modern horror writers and film makers Tryon has inspired with this book. I really enjoyed it, but it's not without its warts.




*Also, the character's internal monologue during the rape where he imagines killing his (willing) victim with his dick was perfectly ridiculous.