Billy - Softcover

WHITLEY STRIEBER

3.7

822 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0708849016 ISBN 13: 9780708849019

Publisher: TIME WARNER PAPERBACKS, 1992

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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

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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.

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