The People Next Door: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

Caroline Crane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1988

Debra Gillis was always a worrier. But now, in her familys new home by the seashore, Debra has good reason to be afraid. A rash of break-ins strikes the area. A child is found dead on the beach with his neck broken.Then there are the people next door, Frank and Enid Maul, who own the house the Gillises have rented. Not long ago the Mauls suffered a terrible tragedy that took place in the basement of that same housea tragedy that, for Enid, never ends. A desperate suicide attempt by her only son has left him brain-damaged and mute. Debra, mother of baby Drew and stepmother to teenage Gigi, tries to befriend her neighbor. But Enid is filled with hate, embittered over the fate of her strange, silent boy, and begrudges Debra her own healthy children.Theres danger in the air. Is it from Enid? From her crippled son? And what secrets is the headstrong Gigi keeping? Debra knows the girl is in trouble, but her husband, Kurt, wont listen. Debra has always been a worrier. Then Gigi and Drew disappear

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This cumbersome and slow-moving novel by the author of Summer Girl follows an irrational course through Luna Beach, a Long Island resort town plagued with rampant infidelity, unfettered gossip and unsolved burglaries, and disturbed by the mysterious and unresolved death of a three-year-old boy one year earlier. When Debra Gillis and her difficut family (a hostile step-daughter, a philandering husband, a spoiled and truculent two-year-old son, Drew) move to Luna Beach, they are greeted with active dislike by their landlady. This unpleasant woman, who lives next door, has her own problems: an unfaithful husband and a severely brain-damaged son, Billy. Debra's adolescent stepdaughter Gigi soon becomes deeply involved with handsome drug pusher Todd Jorgenson. Debra's husband Kurt, a professor at the local college, begins an affair with a colleague, and Debra starts to worry about the unsolved murder of the little boy, particularly since Todd has made some menacing remarks about Drew. Issues of why Billy is brain damaged and what Todd really intends to do with Drew come to a climax in a lengthy, frenzied, incoherent and inconclusive finale. Pallid characters add to this book's considerable burdens. Doubleday Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When Kurt and Debra Gillis move to Luna Beach, New Jersey, second wife Debra experiences a sense of foreboding, probably due to the fact that their landlord's son shot himself in the house they rent. Teenage stepdaughter Gigi soon falls in with a drug-dealing 19-year-old, and Debra faces conflicts because of her obsessive attachment to toddler Drew. Despite Crane's experience, this is shallow, transparent, weak, and ultimately unconvincing.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: Dodd Mead; 1st edition (May 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0396092403
• ISBN-13: 978-0396092407
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,982,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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