The Hour Before Dark [Mass Market Paperback]

Douglas Clegg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2003

As children, they played the Dark Game.

When Nemo Raglan's father is murdered in one of the most vicious killings of recent years, Nemo must return to the New England island he thought he had escaped for good, Burnley Island...and the shadowy farmhouse called Hawthorn. But this murder was no crime of human ferocity. What butchered Nemo's father may in fact be something far more terrifying...Something Nemo and his younger brother, Bruno, and sister, Brooke, have known since childhood.

There are secrets buried on Burnley Island.

Within the rooms of Hawthorn, beautiful Brooke Raglan has begun to go mad. She sees faces at the windows and wanders the night, trying to find what she believes is a monster.

Bruno Raglan has wiped the memory of a terrible event from his mind. Now he compulsively picks apart Hawthorn and discovers that within its walls lies a forbidden secret.

As he unravels the mysteries of his past and a terrible night of his childhood, Nemo witnesses something unimaginable, and sees the true face of evil while Burnley Island comes to know the unspeakable horror that grows in the darkness.

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

And here comes a chopper to chop off your head."

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Alongside the dominant stream of horror fiction that, at whatever level of artistic achievement, relies on shock and gore, runs a quieter stream that relies on atmosphere and inference for its unsettling effects (think Machen, Blackwood, sometimes Ramsey Campbell). Clegg (The Infinite; Naomi) has added a superior new title to this latter tradition, with a psychologically astute and genuinely shivery story of a young man who returns to his ancestral home on a remote island off Massachusetts. Nemo Raglan, a failed novelist, is back at Hawthorn, on Burnley Island, because his father, Gordie, has been found slaughtered in the family's smokehouse. Also at Hawthorn are Nemo's errant younger brother, Bruno, and their sister, Brooke, a high-strung artist who'd been living with Dad; the siblings' mother had disappeared from the family when they were children. The killer has, weirdly, left no traces and thus no clues; but then much about Hawthorn and the siblings is weird, particularly the game they played as children, a risky form of mind-projection taught them by their father, who used it as a POW, whereby they were able to explore worlds known and unknown. As brothers and sister get reacquainted and ponder the murder, the air grows tense but also dark. Nemo senses an unseen presence; is the house haunted? Clegg delves deep and precisely into the familial ties that bind but also sunder even as he celebrates the magical isolation of a New England island so adrift from the mainland as to be its own planet. Suspenseful and relentlessly spooky, told in economical prose yet peopled by characters as fully realized as one's own blood kin, this is at once the most artful and most mainstream tale yet from one of horror's brightest lights.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

The brutal murder of his father brings Nemo Raglan back to the New England home of his childhood, where he joins his brother and sister in unraveling the mystery of their father's death and solving the frightening puzzle somehow connected to an old childhood game. The author of The Nightmare Chronicles constructs an eerie psychological tale of supernatural horror that builds suspense gradually as the characters slowly peel back the layers of their past and face the terrors of their shared childhood. Clegg approaches horror with a stark and vital simplicity that is utterly convincing. Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will appreciate this atmospheric gem. For most horror collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843951427
• ISBN-13: 978-0843951424
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #599,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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I'm a novelist living on the New England coast. My first novel, Goat Dance, came out in 1989, and since then, more than 20 of my novels have been published.

I'd recommend: Neverland, Isis, Afterlife, The Words, Purity, or The Priest of Blood (and the entire vampire trilogy, The Vampyricon) if you're new to my fiction.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Won't Read a Better Horror Novel This Year!, October 1, 2002

By 

Sebastien Pharand (Orléans, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hour Before Dark (Hardcover)

Douglas Clegg has established himself as one of the strongest and most original voice of modern horror fiction. His books aren't about how much blood can be shed on each page, or how many characters can be killed in the story. His stories are about real people faced with greater-than-life situations, situations that often tangle with the paranormal.

The Hour Before Dark is undoubtedly one of Clegg's best. The book quietly written (it isn't about shock value) and brilliantly executed. He slowly but constantly builds up the suspense until, in the end, you realize that it has reached sky-high levels.

The story concentrates on Nemo, a man who returns to his family house (situated on an island) where his father has been murdered. There, he finds his sister Brooke, a strange and sligthly disturbed young woman, and his brother Bruno, a no-nonsense kind of guy. As they are brought together to face their past (and also the present), their family house becomes alive with energy. And the only way for them to face this evil will be to play what they call 'the dark game', a game their father thought them, a game that must be played in the hours before dark, a game that can be dangerous and deadly. The very game that made all of this begin in the first place.

This novel has many great and creepy moments that you will not soon forget. It is a tour-de-force of horror suspense that will leave your breathless. The pacing is amazing, as the suspense builds constantly, never stopping, until the very end (and even in its final pages, the suspense rises again). And the ending itself is simply perfect.

The Hour Before Dark will be this year's best horror novel. Read it before everyone else does!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TALK ABOUT A FAMILY WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS!!!, October 7, 2002

By 

Wayne C. Rogers (Las Vegas, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hour Before Dark (Hardcover)

If Stephen King is the "Master of Horror," then Douglas Clegg (author of THE NIGHTMARE HOUSE, INFINITY, BREEDER, and YOU COME WHEN I CALL YOU) is definitely the "Prince of the Macabre!" In Mr. Clegg's newest book, THE HOUR BEFORE DARK, he takes us to Burnley Island, which is just off the coast of Massachusetts and is the home of Gordie Raglan, the owner of the Hawthorn property. When Gordie is brutally murdered by a psychopathic killer and his body later discovered in the property's smokehouse by his daughter, Brooke, the local police are soon stumped as to who could have committed such a heinous crime. The oldest son of the Raglan clan, Nemo, returns home to be with Brooke, and his younger brother, Bruno, hoping that the three of them will be able to figure out who killed their father. It isn't long, however, before something very dangerous in the Hawthorn house causes long forgotten memeories to rise to the surface in the minds of the three siblings. To save their sanity and their lives, Nemo, and his sister and brother will have to delve into the past to find the answers to their father's secrets and to the Dark Game that they used to play as children. THE HOUR BEFORE DARK is a powerful testament to the writing skill of Douglas Clegg. This is an author who knows how to grab the reader by the jugular in the first few pages and not let go till he's gotten the very last drop of blood out of us. He writes characters that are fully formed with the same fears and desires and psychological problems as our closest friends. Well, maybe not the same fears and maybe a lot more in the way of mental disorders. All three of the Raglan children have trouble loving and trusting and being close to another human being; but, then again, don't we all? Mr. Clegg also has a unique talent in being able to show the innocence of childhood with flashbacks and how quickly it can be taken away without a second's notice. And, yes, the atmosphere of the Hawthorn house has been created to perfection with its strange eeriness, beckoning shadows, and unexplainable voices that come from out of nowhere. One can easily imagine death lurking around every corner, anxious to claim its next victim. As for the Raglans, the author has structured a family with very special secrets...secrets that can kill like a sharp knife through an eye socket. This makes THE HOUR BEFORE DARK the ideal Halloween gift for those of you yearning to experience the true essence of fear!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, November 5, 2002

By 

Deborah A. Woehr (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Hour Before Dark (Hardcover)

The Hour Before Dark is Douglas Clegg's best novel to date. It begins with Gordie Raglan's brutal murder in a small island town in New England. His sons, Nemo and Bruno, come to the house to comfort their sister, Brooke, who is considered a suspect.
The killing stirs up painful memories for Nemo. His mind keeps flashing back to the day his mother left the family. Then there is the "Brain Fart", which left a week-long hole in the memories of all three children. Nemo blames this on the Dark Game (taught to them by their father in the smokehouse where he was murdered) that went a little too far. The gap continues to bug Nemo, along with his sister's increasingly bizarre behavior.
Bruno isn't faring too well, either. He hates his father for the way he punished them. Nemo tries to gloss over those incidents, blaming his mother's desertion for his father's violent temper. As he cooperates with the police and pacifies his sister, he finds himself both drawn to and repelled by the smokehouse. He doesn't believe the town's theory that a serial killer had struck his father down. Something far more sinister and evil had killed Gordie, and it was still in the house, tormenting them with nightmares about a woman who held a striking resemblence to their mother. Brooke's deteriorating mental state forces the brothers to carry her to the smokehouse to play the Dark Game one last time, to banish the demon that is preying on them.
What they received was a horrifying replay of the past, which they barely escaped from. Clegg did an excellent job with the climax. That scene was one of the most harrowing, breath-holding scenes I've read in my life. Highly recommended.