Customer Reviews

Hide and Seek

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jack Ketchum is one of horror's most gifted writers and has attracted a cult following over the past two decades that now includes yours truly among its ranks. Why his talent has not been brought to the attention of more horror and mainstream fiction fans is a mystery to me. Hide and Seek, his second published novel, varies significantly from his incredible debut novel Off Season, but it packs just as much of a punch as its predecessor. Where Off Season was horrible and disturbing, Hide and Seek is downright spooky. I have read enough horror to become immune to the scare tactics most authors rely on, but Ketchum managed to really give me the creeps in the later chapters of this incredible tale. The book does start a little slowly, with character development taking up the first half of it, but midway through Ketchum cranks up the tension and advances the plot at an increasingly intensive, addicting pace. About thirty pages from the end, I found myself covering up the right hand page with my hand because it was all I could do to stop myself from jumping ahead and seeing how things played out. I must say that I found myself more than satisfied with the ending. Many authors put their characters through the ringer only to wrap things up with a fairy tale ending. Ketchum is far too honest to back down at the last minute and give his readers what they might want at the end. This honesty and loyalty to both his characters and his readers is what distinguishes Ketchum in my mind as one of horror's most praiseworthy writers.

The story itself seems rather simple and conventional: two young men and two young women go to an abandoned house out in the woods of Maine in order to play a game of adult hide and seek--the house has long been the subject of gossip and rumors but it cannot really be characterized as haunted. The idea for this seemingly foolish pursuit comes from Casey, a complicated, fascinating female character. Her constant shows of bravado and risk-taking bother our protagonist yet he never refuses her requests. The first half of the novel establishes Casey's character and background pretty well, so the context of the game makes sense to the reader. When the gang arrive at midnight and commence their game, this novel quickly shifts into overdrive. Having to follow our protagonist around this creepy house in the dark, searching for the hiding places of his friends, got this reader's blood pumping a little harder, but the increasingly scary nature of the game is actually no more than a prelude of the horror to come.

The only flaw I can identify in my own mind is Ketchum's level of characterization. He spends a lot of time introducing us to the four players of the hide and seek game, but I never fully came to know them. The complex Casey remains somewhat of an enigma to me despite the revelations we receive about her life and history. A few events seem very important when they happen but are never fully dealt with later on. Of course, Ketchum is mainly trying to scare readers, and to some extent it matters little whether or not we completely understand and care deeply about the players in his fictional universe. The fears Ketchum manipulates here are some of man's most primal, instinctive ones, which makes it almost impossible for the reader not to get sucked into the story and taken along for a wild ride. If you have begun to think that all horror novels are basically alike, Ketchum will surprise and delight you with his refreshing originality, realism, and honesty.

This is the fourth Ketchum novel I have read. It ranks second behind his masterpiece of the disturbing: "The Girl Next Door" ("Joy Ride and "The Lost" are tied at a solid third). I only wish I didnt know anything about the plot before I read this novel. I would have loved to have been completely in the dark;like the characters, until the the bone chilling climax. Oh well, this book was still creepy fun. P.S.: Never mind reviews that suggest this novel starts out slow. These are readers who obviously dont understand concepts like plot and character development (and do not have any patience: its not that long of a novel!). This is a perfectly paced gem.

Dead River, another small town up north. There are few things to do and even fewer things to aspire to be in such a dry local.

Dan, a local kid who wanted to go college, becomes another victim of a less than industrious town. He works in a lumberyard and his job is about as boring as the rest of his life.

His life begins to change when he meets three kids from one of the neighboring colleges. He falls in love with one of the girls, named Casey. She's not quite a stable person, and is always looking for a thrill with her friends. Casey is looking for something riskier each time and Dan goes along to be with her. The adventures culminate in an old abandoned local house, whose previous residents have a questionable history at best.

Definitely nothing original here. However, it is a quick and entertaining read overall. Ketchum's style flows well and is easy to read. It's enjoyable and not a bad one to have in your collection. Just don't expect it to be one of your favorite keepsakes.

A trend I'm noticing in Jack's writing style is that he takes a long time to get going. The first 3/4 of this book was just mildly interesting interaction between teenagers, nothing to write home about. It FINALLY got going toward the end, but that just didn't quite make up for the earlier boredom, in my humble opinion. Very good plot concept, although similar to Off Season. Another JK trend - and I don't know if anybody else notices this, but it's pretty obvious - is that he can't write women well AT ALL, and he loves to put them in love/sex scenarios that just aren't realistic in real life. In "Cover" it was a married couple with the husband having a younger, beautiful mistress on the side, yet the mistress and the wife were best friends and they all hung out together. In this book, the two teenage girls and two teenage boys just love to run around naked all the time, checking out each others' bodies without any jealousy. A) most teenage women are NOT like that, and B) most teenage men are not like that either. Jack Ketchum does something strange along these lines in all of his books, which, sadly, makes his characters unbelievable because we can't identify ourselves with them. I think Jack just believes that if he keeps the sex level high, more people will want to read his books. My last complaint is that Jack's books aren't readily available because he chooses to publish them only in signed, limited form and charge big bucks for them. So he's only going to be able to keep the small fan club that already exists - smooth move, Jack.

This is only the second Ketchum novel I've had the pleasure to read. The first was "Ladies Night," an o.k. book that lacked a lot of the things we readers take for granted (a plot, character development, etc.). I shall read more of his stuff in the future, but not as many as I would like due to the high prices publishers and sellers charge for some of his novels. Until there are mass-market reprints of books like "The Girl Next Door," I won't be reading his entire literary catalogue any time soon. That's a darn shame, too, as "Hide and Seek" is an excellent, and surprisingly scary, read.

"Hide and Seek," Ketchum's second novel released in the early 1980's, is set in a small, dirt-poor town in Maine. The main character of the story is Dan Thomas. Dan is small town all the way; he works at a local lumber mill, and whiles away his days drinking with his buddy Rafferty. Dan ought to go to college, but he's young and drifting a bit in life. That is until he meets up with three rich college kids doing the summer thing in town. Dan really goes for Casey, a hot little number with an annoyingly dangerous habit of doing crazy things. Casey, along with her two buddies, Steve and Kim, think nothing of stealing cars for joyrides, shoplifting caviar for lunch on the beach, and taking their clothes off at weird times. Dan is accepted by the group, and quickly becomes wrapped up in their misadventures. Unfortunately for Dan, he makes the mistake of mentioning the Crouch incident to his newfound friends. The Crouch house, considered haunted by the local kids, stands as a tempting target for Casey's nihilistic approach to life. Casey insists on playing a game of hide and seek in the house as a new means for thrills. The tragedy that ensues changes everyone's life forever.

I really liked this book. Ketchum's use of foreshadowing is excellent and the characters are SO well drawn. Even secondary characters, mainly Kim and Steve, are written with some depth. We not only come to understand Dan, we also realize why Casey likes to live on the wild side. I think any guy can understand why Dan is attracted to Casey and why he is unable to break away from her dangerous spell. If you can't understand why, Ketchum explains it in effective ways.

I am also surprised that the book actually scared me. Very few authors can bring out that emotion in me. I think it has something to do with the Crouch family. They aren't supernatural beings like vampires; they are mere humans. For some reason, that little distinction makes the novel scarier. When Dan and his friends are wandering through that abandoned house, and the other part of the house they find later, it is genuinely freaky. Maybe it's because we've all been in that situation (either alone in our own houses or exploring an old house in the woods as kids) that makes it so real and frightening. Whatever it is, I found myself looking over my shoulder a few times after reading the book.

This is one of Ketchum's good ones. I can't wait to read "The Lost" and some of his other novels. I also hope that reprints of his earlier works begin to appear with frequent regularity. Put down your Stephen King novels and visit the world of Jack Ketchum, and do it soon.

The follies of youth - sometimes they lead people to do the strangest things. Sometimes that means impressing people by shouldering less-than-bright ideas that we come up with, and sometimes that means trying to put on lifestyles that we know nothing about. Enter our lead in this story, sitting in his tourist town and noticing how much life is passing him by, and enter our distraction and the friends she courts. Also enter a tale of a house that has a haunting history when we are told about it, and enter Hide and Seek.

As far as Jack Ketchum is concerned, I have to credit him with being one of the most stable character developers I have ever read. When his ideas hit the proverbial blackboard of thought, I can see the people and the little things they bring to the table. Whether they have a nervous tick or some sort of unmentioned OCD that causes them to do some of the oddest things, they have a clarity about them. I also have to credit him with being one of the best set-up men in the business. Many people can place a thing before you and the linearity of it makes you say that it was alright, but Ketchum's paths are anything if straight and the development a reader follows is a beauty to behold. I personally find the way he builds his worlds inciting.

In Hide and Seek, the dance of the characters is nice to watch and the thing they are building up to is something you see coming out of the corner of your eye, and that is good. I personally thought the time spent developing the characters were a beautiful thing, and the temperament of the people involved --- it was honest in its own way. I also liked the own and the way it was defined; a thing rotting from the inside and supported only by tourists, giving it a feeling that does not scrub off easily. The run-down homes and the position of nature - sometimes it feels as if there is a statement involved in that and not just a set-up for things to come. The downside of the whole thing is the "what" that happens, or perhaps the briefness of the "what" that happens. You have an event that transpires, people trying to be better than the best they know how to be, and then, ummm, conclusion (?) I personally did not like that, thinking the ending was a bit rushed for my tastes. Still, I did like the book and thought it was a god read/

If you are a fan of Ketchum, these are the days to pick up books that you would otherwise never see. When Hide and Seek used to look at me it looked from a place I could not reach, and that dollar monument was a scary place. Now it, as well as many of his and Edward Lee's works, are being released once more and it is fabulous. Were it not for this, I would not even be allowed an opinion on the book. If you do not know Ketchum, try out books like "The Lost," "Off-Season," and anything else that catches your fancy. I personally recommend Peaceable Kingdom as a starting point for the short story reader, citing "The Box" and the Stoker Award it won.
So, this is reluctantly recommended, getting gold stars for some of its play and silver stars for others. Regardless, it is a good tale and nice to see back in-print.

Jack Ketchum, Hide and Seek (Ballantine, 1984)

Eighties horror novels have a special place in my heart. They're like seventies horror films-- there was a glut of them, and most of them were awful, but awful in such a way that one can have a nostalgia for them. But, once in a while, one appeared that was far better than the general run of dreck. Hide and Seek certainly qualifies.

Jack Ketchum, who'd burst onto the scene a few years earlier with the fantastic Off Season, returns to Dead River, Maine with Hide and Seek. While what you get here isn't much different than what you got in Off Season, Hide and Seek is an obvious link between Off Season and Ketchum's magnum opus, The Girl Next Door; the writing in Hide and Seek is orders of magnitude improved from that of his first novel. Ketchum went a long way towards the mastery of understated description and air of detachment that made The Girl Next Door such a terrifying experience:

"Nothing you've told me can explain this thing to me. No rape, no seduction, no death, no guilt. You must have known. Suspected at least. Why fling your life around like a pocketful of change? It makes no sense. It never has. It must run very deep, as deep as blood and bone, much deeper than you ever knew." (p. 159)

Get to know Jack Ketchum; you won't regret it. While Hide and Seek doesn't have the sheer power of The Girl Next Door, it's certainly a good'un. ****

This is the third Ketchum book I read and I am quickly becoming a fan of his work. Hide and Seek is a story about a young, working class guy living in a small town. He becomes entangled with three rich summer kids, especially Casey a sexy temptress. The three rich kids are so bored in their lives that they take to doing stuff for thrills, stealing cars and shoplifting mostly. Eventually Casey sets her eyes on the town's local "haunted house" for the four of them to break into and play hide and seek. She gets her way and of course all hell breaks loose. This for me was Ketchum's least gory books that I read of his and a much less complex book. Although I did enjoy it I would have to say I liked Off Season (a particularily bloody book and a cult favorite) and The Girl Next Door (which is nothing less that a genius book about child abuse and absolute evil) better. But then anything you can get your hands on that is written by Ketchum is worth the time.

Vintage Ketchum. Starts out innocently enough, then WHAM! This one took a little bit longer to get going than some of his other works, but just as is with everything else that he's written, once you reach "that point" there's no turning back! A little bit like "Ketchum Light". Not as intense as "The Girl Next Door" or as disturbing as "Stranglehold" or as overtly violent and disgusting as "Offspring", this is still an excellent addition to your Ketchum library, and is well worth searching out and reading (it's now OP). Great early stuff from a writer who just gets better with each book!

I wanted to stop; but had read all the reviews where it gets better and very scary toward the end.
So I trudged on.
It was slow and boring to begin with and worthy of eye rolling toward the end.
Too many other good books out there to ever read another one of his.