The House on the Hill [Paperback]

Judith Kelman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1992

The psychopath: Released from prison after losing his sight and incarcerated in a once-deserted home at the edge of the woods, he is under constant electronic surveillance, his every move monitored by closed-circuit cameras.  There is no way he could possibly escape....



The parole officer: One of the few people in town who knows what is locked inside the isolated house.  Quinn Gallagher thought she was hardened to human evil until she looked into the sightless eyes of a child killer and felt a law officer's outrage--and a parent's nameless dread....



The mother: Moved to Dove's Landing after the breakup of her first marriage hoping to start a new life with her daughter and her new husband--a  hope that is devastated when eleven-year-old Abby disappears one ordinary afternoon.



The nightmare: Now a killer may be on the lose on the streets of the small Vermont town...preying on the young and the innocent...and the horror is beginning all over again.  And the only clues to his identity lie in the dark confessions of a madman...and in The House On The Hill.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kelman's ( Someone's Watching ) creepy suspense novel bears so many similarities to Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs that it's difficult not to make comparisons and find faults. The book opens as 11-year-old Abigail Eakins, weary of her mistreatment by a unnamed man whom her family trusts, runs away from her rural Vermont home. When she enters the yard of an ordinarily abandoned house, she notices its strangely lived-in appearance, turns to flee and is kidnapped. Enter parole officer Quinn Gallagher, a temperamental redhead assigned to blind parolee Eldon Weir. Weir has a rep for torturing and mutilating young girls that has never been proven in court, so he's under electronic surveillance in a specially designed house: the one where Abigail was abducted. As Abigail is subjected to a series of traps and illusions, it is unclear whether Weir is her captor. However, only Weir--speaking in riddles and innuendos--can illuminate his own criminal mind and lead Gallagher to the girl's rescue. Impetuous, hysterical women, brilliant, often twisted men and a step-family that seems to lack adequate concern for a missing child populate this chilling yet not particularly fresh crime story.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

The psychopath: Released from prison after losing his sight and incarcerated in a once-deserted home at the edge of the woods, he is under constant electronic surveillance, his every move monitored by closed-circuit cameras. There is no way he could possibly escape....

The parole officer: One of the few people in town who knows what is locked inside the isolated house. Quinn Gallagher thought she was hardened to human evil until she looked into the sightless eyes of a child killer and felt a law officer's outrage--and a parent's nameless dread....

The mother: Moved to Dove's Landing after the breakup of her first marriage hoping to start a new life with her daughter and her new husband--a hope that is devastated when eleven-year-old Abby disappears one ordinary afternoon.

The nightmare: Now a killer may be on the lose on the streets of the small Vermont town...preying on the young and the innocent...and the horror is beginning all over again. And the only clues to his identity lie in the dark confessions of a madman...and in The House On The Hill.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Crimeline (June 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553291017
• ISBN-13: 978-0553291018
• Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,881,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story, characters, and suspense, disappointing ending, September 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The House on the Hill (Paperback)

The book is well written with engaging, though somewhat predictable, characters, and the story and suspense are well developed. However, the book falls flat at the end. A lot of the elements of the story, especially the illusions and how a blind man could do what he supposedly did (as well as Hugh's nasty tricks), are not explained or resolved by the end of the book. The fact that all kinds of lose ends were left dangling at the end spoiled the book for me. This is too bad because the author certainly can write.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Too Bad of a Mystery-Ending Could Have Been Better, May 28, 2003

By 

J. Kirkman "book jen" (St. Petersburg, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The House on the Hill (Paperback)

Overall, I did enjoy this book.It was a book that made you wonder what might happen to the lost girl next.

Released from prison after losing his sight, and then incarcerated in a once-deserted home at the edge of the woods, Ellie Weir is under constant surveillance electronically. They say it is a fail-proof system and that he can't possibly escape
But this isn't so.

Abigail, Nora's ten year-old girl wanders over to the deserted home one day with the fence. But once inside the gate around it, she never returns home. Quinn Gallagher, the police/detective is trying to solve the case, as she is convinced that somehow Ellie must be holding Kate somewhere. And she needs to do it before it's too late.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a great story if you can stay on track, May 7, 2002

By 

DeRosset Myers "DeRo" (St Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The House on the Hill (Paperback)

Not to be confused with the film, "House on Haunted Hill", The House on the Hill is about a blind convict, living in a formerly condemned house, who's crime involved raping young girls. The tale is told non-narritvely through three characters: a cop, a mother, and her daughter.
If you're looking for a scary book, this is it. The situations of the kidnapped daughter are especially terrifying as you never know what is going to happen next. The only problem really is that the story can get confusing -- it took me awhile to figure out which house I was looking out of on the cover. I know that sounds lame, but it's just an example.