Customer Reviews

Blair Witch: The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This novel, which I assume must be tied into the sequel to "The Blair Witch Project," is a well-crafted piece of horror genre. Given the wretched state of horror fiction in general right now, that's high praise, indeed. "The Secret Confessions" is chopped and channeled, stripped down to the basics of spare prose, straightforward narrative and the final twist in the tale down the back stretch, where everything falls into place with little effort.

Rustin Parr is the recluse hung by the State of Maryland in 1941 for the murders of seven children in the basement of his house in a forest near Burkittsville. Parr's final confession is given to a young Roman Catholic priest who has some sins of his own that he carries with him from Burkittsville. Sixty years later, an acquaintance of the priest, who has long since renounced his holy orders, struggles to find out why the old man burned his house down, killing his beloved wife in the process and leaving him comatose with third-degree burns.

You won't need to be a Blair Witch fan to enjoy this novel, which can be read in one sitting. Stern gives you everything you need to understand what happened in Burkittsville and why the evil there found its way to the home of an elderly couple in Florida. Horror fiction rises or falls on a few key points. One involves whether the supernatural action arises from simple human frailty, a dark force entering through a chink in the armor of an otherwise decent, normal person. Good horror hews close to reality -- at all points, we must be able to empathize with the human targets of evil, which requires them to act and react in ways that we ourselves would react if faced with the same situation.

D.A. Stern accomplishes both of these goals here. He also doesn't condescend to the reader with a neatly-wrapped ending. You'll be able to figure out what happened in Rustin Parr's basement, but only if you pay attention, catch the clues Stern provides and put them together on your own.

For a book no doubt designed simply to keep public interest alive in a popular horror movie, D.A. Stern has gone above and beyond the call of duty. "The Secret Confessions," with its echoes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, is one of the best piece of horror fiction you will run across this year.

Journalist D.A. Stern gets a call that his 87 year-old friend Dominick Cazale has been hospitalized, incurring severe burns over 30% of his body after setting the fire to his Miami home and killing his wife Mary. After arriving in Miami, Stern receives a journal Cazale had kept of the final weeks leading up to the fire.

Reading from the journal Stern discovers that after Dominick and Mary returned from a vacation in Burkittsville, Maryland (the center of the Blair Witch legends), the woman developed mental disorders, reducing her to become a shut-in and hysterically delusional, with strange markings soon developing on her body. After Dominick found her chasing a cat she had lured inside, he writes how he became increasingly worried about the risk Mary posed as a danger both to herself and to others.

In addition to the Cazales' misfortune upon returning from Burkittsville, Stern also discovers that Dominick, a former Roman Catholic priest, once was the pastor of that town. Specifically, Cazale was there in May 1941. It was during that time that the remains of the bodies of seven missing local children were found in the basement of the home belonging to a recluse named Rustin Parr. Another child who was missing, Kyle Brody, would turn up claiming Parr had taken him too, keeping him alive only to witness the violation and murder of the others. An acquaintance of Parr's and the closest thing he had to a friend, Cazale wrote in his journal that he was the last person to speak with the man, and that he had told him the real and full truth of what had happened out there in those woods.

Ultimately THE SECRET CONFESSIONS Of RUSTIN PARR is an interesting but lackluster addition to the Blair Witch 'mythos.' Stern developed an even paced and intriguing plot, then gets it sidetracked with nostalgia until it simply peters out and fails to deliver anything worthwile. The book itself is short, and half of it comprises Dominick Cazale's journal. Although supposedly panic-stricken over the degeneration of his wife, Cazale, however, prefers rather to reminisce about his mother and two brothers and their old Baltimore neighborhood. When he writes about Burkittsville, he spends too much time on the diffulties he, as a "city boy," had to overcome living out in the country. He also dwells far too long over the mutual infatuation between him and Kyle Brody's mother, Carol. That which we are waiting for: Parr's confession, isn't brought up until the near end, where it is surrounded by melodrama and vague enough to be considered simply an intimation.

What Stern wrote here could become the basis for a very good story about a young priest's early ministry. But it certainly isn't good horror.

Short, sweet, and very chilling, this novel expands nicely upon the Blair Witch backstory presented in the movie, but does so in a way that shouldn't require readers to have actually seen the film. (At least, that's my guess; it's hard to be sure, since I have seen the film.) Author DA Stern demonstrates more than a mere understanding of the Blair Witch fictional mythos with this story; he clearly understands that what made the original movie so creepily effective was its "less is more" approach to horror. This novel uses the same philosophy; what it tells us about former priest Dominic Cazale and accused serial murderer of children Rustin Parr isn't half as scary as what it doesn't tell us. Like the previous Blair Witch spin-offs, the comics collected in the Blair Witch Chronicles book, fans of the movie should find more of what they enjoyed in this novel. Between this book and the comics, I'm pleased enough that I want to give the Blair Witch Files books a try!

The book amounts to a fine detective story by D.A. Stern, however it is lacking in one very essential ingrediant. You might expect a book titled "The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr" to actually contain that confession. Howecer, this book skirts the issue very finely. It left me with a need to go back and see if I had missed something. Good plotting and pacing, poor follow through, though.

I bought this book thinking it would, indeed, contain the "Secret Confession of Rustin Parr". As another reviewer said, it skirts that issue neatly. Author D.A. Stern does, however, deliver an interesting mystery, and makes it fit with all of the other facts in the Blair Witch "History". The book keeps the prerequisite amount of ambiguity, and as in all other Blair Witch products, there are many ways one could interpret the events depicted. Overall, it's a good read, if a tad quick. Stern manages to deliver some truly creepy moments, and the ending does pack a punch. I'd recommend potential readers check out Stern's Blair Witch Project: A Dossier, and the video The Massacre of the Burkittsville Seven beforehand, though, as both are heavily referenced throughout the book.

This book is a follow up of sorts to Stern's previous book, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT: A DOSSIER. Similarly, it expands on the mythology behind The Blair Witch Project film (soon to be *films*). That's where it stops, though: this book reads more like a regular novel than a collection of assorted facts and interviews.

ex-father who took Rustin Parr's confession the night before he was executed. Things go wrong from the start: Cazale's house near Miami has burned to the ground, killing his wife and placing him in the hospital. 30% of his body has been consumed by third-degree burns, requiring a succession of skin grafts that basically make him off-limits to Stern. Stern is forced to begin investigating by himself. With some minor assistance from one Detective Yanama and one Father Callahan (of the church Cazale has attended of late), Stern begins to accumulate some interesting facts. Apparently, the Cazales have been shut-ins the past few weeks, they recently took a weekend trip to Burkittsville, and Yanama thinks that Cazale's house was consumed by arson...committed by Dominick himself. And then, a late package reaches Stern: Cazale's journal, documenting a fair deal of the goings-on in Burkittsville in 1940 and 1941...

Ultimately, it's a very interesting book. It puts several twists on the "Blair Witch mythos" established so far. Sadly, many of these come off as no more than twists, and certain points -particularly those regarding the revealed contents of Parr's confession- are vague. This is most likely intentional, leaving room for elaboration in the upcoming Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 film and its book tie-in on the same name. That considered, this book fails to prove anything more than interesting in its own right: a casual reader not interested in the Blair Witch phenomenon will most likely feel gipped. However, the reader that is interested will enjoy it immensely, and begin salivating in anticipation of "what happens next" upon finishing the book.

A timely novel for grandmothers raising grandchildren, but more than that, it's a great read. Day by Day is a heartwarming story of three women, dreaming of the day they retire and how they'll spend those years. But each of their lives gets interrupted and dreams are put aside.

Parr deals with the subject with honesty, not hiding the real emotions these women go through. A grandmother myself, I was able to relate to one or the other of these characters all the way through. And I love the characters she develops. They're all such different personalities if they hadn't the commonality of grandchildren, they would never have become friends. That's one of the things that makes this book work so well.

I'm not going to talk about the plot, but simply tell you to get the book. Parr writes wonderful stories that captivate and hold you spellbound until you turn the last page. She has jumped to my five favorite authors list. If you love Deborah Raney, Robin Lee Hatcher, Sally John or Roxanne Henke, you'll love Delia Parr. This reviewer gives Day by Day a high recommendation.

Sure, it is a movie tie-in, and I suspect its release was timed to build the hyper for the Blair Witch sequel, but The Secret Confession of Rustin Parr is actually a satisfying, quick mystery/horror novel. I admire the author for keeping it short and sweet, for not overextending the material.

It's a pretty basic plot: Rustin Parr admitted to the murder of seven children in Burkittsville, Maryland in 1941. He was a hermit, anyway. Sentenced to be hanged, he confessed a shocking truth to a priest named Dominick Cazale on the night before his execution. Cazale doesn't reveal the truth until he is own his own deathbed, 60 years later, as a result of a tragic house fire.

As with the Blair Witch movies, the twists and the ending of this novel tie-in are ambiguous and open to interpretation. Recommended to any horror fan.

THIS IS A PURE WASTE OF TIME. WHILE TRAPPED IN A HOTEL ROOM, DURING A SNOW STORM, I CRACKED OPEN THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK. I WISH NOW THAT I WOULD HAVE PACKED A DIFFERENT BOOK. WITH ONLY ABOUT 148 PAGES, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT WOULD BE BAD. BUT I THOUGHT I WOULD GIVE IT A SHOT. THE ACTUAL CONFESSION OF RUSTIN PARR, MAYBE TAKES UP A PAGE OR A THIRD OF A PAGE. IF YOUR BORED AND THIS IS THE ONLY BOOK YOU PACKED, DONT READ IT, WATCH TV.

thank u jo jo's book for sending me this i have yet to read it but the book came in mint condtion and im a huge blair witch fan i love the others books, book of shadows. i love the pscyologic feeling off the ghost and witch stories its a whole differnt story from the typical horro movies im sure it will be most enjoyable