Billy - Hardcover

Strieber, Whitley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399135847 ISBN 13: 9780399135842

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 1990

Synopsis

Barton Royal, a deranged misfit, kidnaps twelve-year-old Billy Neary from the video arcade at the Crossland Mall and imprisons him in the secret black room beneath his house, in a tale of madness and evil

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Strieber's latest (after Communion ) is by turns gripping, plodding, truly horrifying and, finally, falsely sunny. Fat, 40-ish Barton Royal, kiddy-clown in an L.A. bookstore, is obsessed with pubescent boys. He wants to be their "father" but when they turn against him he has a "black room" for their punishment. Seeing 12-year-old Billy Neary in an Iowa shopping mall, Barton is smitten. He follows the boy home, craftily and boldly abducts him and begins a nonstop drive to L.A. The book alternates scenes of the devastation wrought on Billy's family, a national manhunt, Billy's growing awareness of his peril and Barton's violent mood swings. We get chilling glimpses of Barton's past--he talks of skinning boys alive--and his plans for Billy. Bright, winning Billy is worn down almost to madness. Barton's tortured self-justification and Billy's brainy sweetness are believable but the other characters have much less depth. The bloody pater ex machina climax is followed by worse-than-expected revelations and an oddly upbeat finale that rings not quite true.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0399135847
• ISBN 13: 9780399135842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 317