Customer Reviews

Hellfire

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Carolyn Rogers marries her childhood flame, the rich Philip Sturgess. The last male heir in the Massachusetts town's local nobility, Philip Sturgess is an impressive man. Unlike his forebears including his aged mother Abigail and 12-year-old spoiled daughter, Tracy, Philip is a kind and reasonable man. He is not too different in temperament and interest from Carolyn's first husband, Alan Rogers, whom she divorced.

Twelve-year-old Beth Rogers is miserable at Hilltop, the Sturgess home. Tracy treats her shabbily, humiliates her and does whatever she can to make Beth's life miserable. Beth seeks solace in her old friends who lived on Cherry Street ("where we were happy") and the times she spends with her father.

A gentle, intelligent man, Alderman Rogers is involved in a project with Philip Sturgess. Both men want to reopen an old shoe mill with an incindiary history. One century earlier in 1886, several child workers perished in a fire in the old mill. Questionable incidents surrounding the mill crop up; its history looms large. Alderman Rogers, a town alderman as well as an architect/builder has taken on the project at Philip Sturgess' request.

Like Michelle from "Comes the Blind Fury," Beth believes she has made contact with a child who died a century earlier in the fire. Like Michelle, Beth is 12 and believes in the supernatural.

Strange things happen in the mill. Two boys die in similar circumstances several decades apart; the place reeks of fire. Questions around the old mill are not resolved and the story concludes in a blast of heat.

Sympathetic characters, a spooky plot and a heated resolution all make for a compelling story.

A well written tale that primarily focuses on a little girl's private struggle for love and acceptance among her new peers when her mother re-marries and she is thrust into a whole new unfriendly world. Add to that the haunting secret of an old shoe mill and the vengefl spirit of the little girl that dwells within its cursed walls and you've got a story to remember.

It's got a few plot holes but the characters and the story line are well written so if you like John Saul you'll enjoy this one.

It seems to be a John Saul defining characteristic to write in a plainer, simpler style than most of horror's other consistently good authors. It also seems to be a Saul trademark to tackle familiar, not especially original-sounding material, and to open it up in such a way as one quickly feels they know exactly where things are going. More notable, though, is Saul's ability to use that plain language, those simple premises, and the illusion that things will unfold predictably, to continually create intriguing, genuinely scary tales with characters one can care about, with ideas that one can really get into more and more as the book goes along, and with out-of-nowhere surprises and twists that start cropping up just when the novel feels like it's boxed itself into a corner and can't possibly move in any unforseen direction.

"Hellfire" is the story of an old mill with a dark history, that's about to be worked on for the first time into a century and converted into a shopping mall. The central character of the tale is Beth, a 13 year-old girl who moves in with her mother to the mansion belonging to her mother's new husband, (Beth's stepfather), and his daughter (slightly older than Beth), mother, and staff of servants. Inside the mill, someone or something is not happy with its being opened up, and Beth seems to develop a connection with that prescence. When you're working material like this, it can either come off feeling like you're treading cliched ground, or like you're treading classic ground. Classic ground turns out to be the case here, as "Hellfire" develops into a great addition to the realm of horror material involving haunted buildings and/or menacing prescences. In the early chapters, the novel builds up slowly, developing characters, taking some along lines where you really like, others along lines that you really start hating them; and slowly mounting an air of mystery and later, dread. Beth's new home is not happy, tormented by her nasty stepsister and under the disapproving glare of her snobbish grandmother, but one interesting twist is the situation with Beth's mother, her new stepfather, and her biological father. What's different is that Phillip Sturgess (the stepfather) and Alan Rogers (the father) are best friends and have stayed that way, and there's no great acrimony between Carolyn (Beth's mother) and Alan. Usually in novels with the divorce/remarriage angle present, there's a lot of angst and such, but in a refreshing twist, Beth's parents seem to have parted simply for the real-life reason that sometimes things don't work out. Having a likable core group like this becomes important to the tale as things around the protagonists start to turn darker, in both supernatural and more worldly ways.

The dark history of the mill - drawing a lot on real-life horrors and inequalities of the 1800s - is intertwined with the Sturgess family history, and both begin to be revealed simultaneously. I found that with this novel I could really feel in sync with the characters - it's like you can feel a portion of what they're feeling directly, not just from an observer's vantage point, and there are a couple of instances in which a character's discovery - such as a secret, or of the death of another of the book's characters - really packs an uncommon wallop. The tension and suspense really veer up in the last third of the book and make it hard to put down. The final chapters are jolting, moving, and left me wanting more. "Hellfire" is definately a book horror readers - or mystery readers, for that matter - shouldn't pass up.

This was among a friend's book collection that she gave me to read. And this one is just creepy ~~ not scary and not spooky, just creepy and malicious. I think I read it as a teenager when my sister had it ~~ so it's not that unforgetable.

This one has Carolyn Rogers who married Philip Sturgess, who inherited the mill. The mill holds a deep dark secret and as the book progresses, the secret is let out. Over a hundred years previous, several kids were trapped in the mill during a fire and was killed. Philip's older brother, Conrad Jr., was killed there when he was a child. Philip's daughter Tracy and Carolyn's daughter, Beth, are also main players in this novel. The secret reveals itself to Beth and Tracy, who hated her stepsister with a passion, did anything she could to drive her away. Somehow their stories are tied up with Amy's story of the day she died.

This book is creepy and felt very unfinished. It dragged on several chapters and then rushed to the end. It's not my favorite of Saul's works. It is creepy enough though to make a good evening's reading under the blankets. But not creepy enough to make you recheck all the locked doors and windows. It's more sad than spooky.

8-29-06

Carolyn Rogers marries Phillip Sturgess -- rich, eligible, successful bachelor with a heart of gold despite his snobbish breeding. Phillip, along with Carolyn's ex-husband, plan on reopening a mill where a group of the town's children burned to death in the late 1800s and has recently become the site of many mysterious accidents. And that's about all the Carolyn and Phillip have to do with the story.

The main focus of the story is Beth Rogers, Carolyn's daughter from her first marriage, and Tracey Sturgess, Phillip's daughter from his first marriage. Tracey goes out of her way to make Beth feel unwanted through any means necessary, and Beth finds herself miserable and lonely. Beth befriends a girl-child who died in the fire at the mill (not unlike the girl in Saul's Comes the Blind Fury) who becomes something of a best friend to Beth. Finally, this all comes to head in a "grand finale".

This was a good read, typical early-Saul fare. It shared many similarities with Comes the Blind Fury, but it was different enough to keep me reading. Saul has a way of really making you love and hate his characters. I sort of thought that the ending was a little rushed and the revealed "secret" a little weak, but an enjoyable read still.

If you are a John Saul reader, you don't need a review. You already know how good he is. If you are not a reader already, then get this book and get started. You will be hooked like the rest of us already are.

This book was my introduction to Saul's work, and while it was a good read, there were certain things that I felt were a "cop-out" and could have been handled better. The storyline is good and I devoured the book in less than 24 hours. While the story is typical Saul, from what I've read of his other books, the ending of this one is lacking. What builds up through the book is anticlimactic at the end. I found myself wishing that I could rewrite the ending or that I'd find one more chapter that would satisfy my desire for what was missing. Read it, but be prepared to be disappointed with the last couple chapters.

This was the second book I read by John Saul. In my opinion he is a genius. He knows how to get in your head and play with your emotions, and he has earned my respect, not that he needs it. Some of his newer works seem to repeat the story in some form, so it's better to buy anything he wrote up to The Second Child. Check out The Unwanted too.

John Saul is a fantastic writer and uses many different types of suspense to make his writings much more interesting. He uses the methods of keeping the reader on the edge, guessing, and fear/excitement.- M. Ratliff, BDH

I'll keep this review very simple. Hellfire is not John Saul's best, and it's not his worst. It's good, enjoyable, easy to read, and the plot is never boring. The main storyline is given a nice wrap up, and there is enough nastiness to keep horror fans happy. It also helps that the characters are interesting, and I wanted to follow them.

Pick it up. It's barely over three hundred pages, and it flies by. I read it in one night, and when the book was over, I felt satisfied with what I'd read. Perfect for when you are stuck inside, and daytime TV just isn't cutting it.