Mr. X: A Novel - Softcover

Straub, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449149900 ISBN 13: 9780449149904

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2000

Synopsis

Every year on his birthday, Ned Dunstan is cursed with visions of horror committed by a savage figure he calls "Mr. X." This year, Ned's visions will become flesh and blood.

A dreadful premonition brings Ned home to find his mother on her deathbed. She reveals the never-before-disclosed name of his father and warns him of grave danger. Driven by a desperate sense of need, Ned explores his dark past and the astonishing legacy of his kin. Accused of violent crimes he has not committed and pursued by a shadowy twin, Ned enters a hidden world of ominous mysteries, where he must confront his deepest nightmares. . . .

About this title

Review:

Peter Straub's Mr. X is an enthralling, complex tale of a decent young man troubled since childhood by barely understood flashes of precognition and an awareness of a shadowy "other."

Ned Dunstan returns home to Edgerton, Illinois, a raffish and atmospheric Mississippi River city, as his mother, Star Dunstan, lies dying. Impelled to trace his tangled paternal lineage after Star's death, Ned finds himself caught up in a web of murder and other heinous crimes, not only in the present but also in a past that his elderly great aunts Nettie, May, and Joy would prefer remained undisturbed. The aunts, whose remarkable gifts include teleportation and telekinesis, frustrate his search for knowledge, partly to protect their own secrets and also to shield Ned from the mysterious and omnipresent force that seems to dodge his every step. He is aided in his efforts to discover the mysteries of his birth by a doppleganger who may or may not be his twin, and also by a lovely young woman, Laurie Hatch. She is the estranged wife of Stewart Hatch, an Edgerton scion whose own history is inexorably linked with Ned's and with the entire Dunstan family.

The secondary characters, from the elderly aunts to a lawyer named Creech who is the essence of the small-town "fixer," are deftly drawn. --Jane Adams

From the Back Cover:

"Ghastly, hide-your-eyes horror; when Peter Straub turns on all jets, no one in the scream factory can equal him."
--STEPHEN KING

"STRAUB IS TERRIFYINGLY ACCOMPLISHED IN THE ART OF HORROR."
--Entertainment Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0449149900
• ISBN 13: 9780449149904
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544