Customer Reviews

Perfect Nightmare

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Perfect Nightmare was my first John Saul book and it was fast, intense and extremely dark as simple words rang truth in my ears like bells and they were terrifying and depressing but made for a really good horror book. There were no super natural monsters, no vampires and witches but a soul of a man so dark and rotten that it chilled me to the bone as I read this book in two days, as it was a very fast and smooth read. I must admit that the story left me feeling down and sad because it was so real and horrifying yet I knew it was a book so I kept reading, if it was a newspaper article I don't know if I would have had the guts to continue.

Kara Marshall and her husband Steve were planning on moving form the charming Long Island home to the city, where Steve worked because they couldn't afford to stay in the house and needed help with their finances. As they decided to put their home out on the market, they unknowingly invited a stranger into their house for an open house who ended up doing the worst harm a mother can imagine; he was responsible for having her only daughter, Lindsay who was a seventeen year old girl, disappear without a trace. I have never read a book so dark and twisted, as the mother's agony was so clearly written, I felt pain as I read it and I felt sick reading about the cold blooded killer who tortured and kidnapped women out of their homes and who were thought to be dead by their family members. I have been told by some people that a loss of a child is the most macabre thing a parent can suffer, and I got a major does of the end, the sadness and the finality of someone else's actions as they ended a mother's happy life and set her life in eternal shadows as her own child was being tortured and pushed to brinks of death. I got to read and feel the emptiness, the sadness, the way the mother knew her child was out there and was not coming back, that no matter what dreams she woke up from that nothing was ever going to be the same. Just as things got bad they got worse very quickly and darkness turned to inky blackness as I had no hope for any of the captured girls.

This was a gloomy, morbid book, and it caught me in a surprise a few times, but I'm glad I read it, as it made me look around more at people and made sure to always keep safe. This really read so realistically that I'm still trying to shake it off, but I know its fiction and it was a good read from a solid and well known author, and I will definitely read more of his stuff.


As someone else mentioned, I don't know hot Saul wrote this, as it was insane and real but I respect him as a writer, as clearly his skills were sharp, and despite the negative reviews, maybe this was too dark for some, to me this was a great read.

...but quite enjoyable. John Saul to me has always been an enojoyable read. He is quite dark, however, and not for everyone. Most of his novels involve gruesome and disturbing deaths, sometimes involving young people. With novels entitled Suffer the Children and Punish the Sinners, one should realize that Saul is dark.

Perfect Nightmare is no exception. However, he does not involve the supernatural that is prevalent in many of his novels. Instead, he concentrates on a very disturbing kidnapping story. The novel, for the most part, centers of the Marshall family, whose only daughter Lindsay is kidnapped after an open house. Saul does a very good job with character development within the Marshall family. The reader truly feels for them, especially Lindsay and Kara. Some of the extras seem to be simply that, except when he wraps up the novel at the end.

The writing is above par for Saul (I was not impressed with The Manhattan Hunt Club). There is more than the fair share of scares, gasps, shudders, and cringes. As in the typical Saul novel, there are bodies, although the body count is not as high as usual.

I do recommend Perfect Nightmare. Fans of Saul will be impressed, and those not familiar with the author may become fans. But beware, it is a John Saul novel...don't expect to smile much.

If ever there was a book that your real estate agent didn't want you to read, it's this one.

I'm a fairly new reader of John Saul's -- got hooked after reading Midnight Voices and have now read most of the backlist -- and I was excited to hear about his new book. After reading a number of great reviews in the "traditional" media and some surprisingly mixed reviews on Amazon (are we all reading the same book?), I rushed out to get my own copy of Perfect Nightmare.

I can honestly say that I have no idea what the few negative reviewers are talking about. I guess any author with as many best sellers and legions of fans will have his detractors on any given title and we all have our favorite books by our favorite authors, but this is one of John Saul's best books and I urge you to give it a read. Is it dark? You betcha. Is it creepy. Unbelievably so. But, hey, this ain't Chicken Soup for the Weenie's Soul and if you're not a fan of dark and creepy, what are you doing reading John Saul anyway?

This story freaked me out (and I mean that in a good way). If you've ever sold a house and had hundreds of strangers traipsing through your house and your stuff, you know exactly the feelings that this story will evoke. Saul takes it to the next level, though, with his antagonist. It's edge-of-your seat, I-can't-believe-he-thought-of-that, holy crap... sort of stuff that will leave you reeling and thinking about the plot and characters for days after you've read the book.

I hate reviews that give away the plot, so I'll just give this book a huge thumbs up and suggest you take a look for yourself. I think it's one of Saul's best and I guarantee that you'll never look at an open house the same way again.

"Perfect Nightmare" by John Saul starts with a nifty premise. A kidnapper targets victims by stalking open houses and homes for sale on the internet. Great idea, and one that hasn't been done yet, to my knowledge, or done to death (no pun intended). The main and core characters are likable, sympathetic and realistic. You can relate to them and you care about what you just know is going to happen.
But starting about midway through the book, I felt that Saul began to lose his focus. Maybe it was the introduction, or reintroduction, of some secondary characters - - mostly thrown in for red herring purposes. But I felt the book lost some of its snap.
The seemingly pointless and senseless death of a major character threw me for a loop - - and not in a good way.
The "big reveal" at the end of the kidnapper was no surprise, as the signs were much too obvious much too early in the book.
The story seemed to end rather quickly, as if Saul himself got tired of the characters and the story.
That being said, although I like Saul's other works, I felt this was formulaic (for him) and seemed an almost phoned in effort. For a new writer, or one less prolific or proven, it might come across as a better effort, but I expect more from Mr. Saul.

There are a Lot of good-looking books out there, numerous authors I'm interested in reading but haven't gotten around to simply because of finite time, especially when there's so much around that looks appealing. I've been meaning to read John Saul since about the late '80s, but it was actually just recently that I read my first Saul, "Perfect Nightmare". It won't be the last and it bloody well won't take 17 years to get to the next one.

Saul has been branded one of the more 'lightweight' authors of horror and/or thrilers by some but I didn't find that to be the case here. "Perfect Nightmare" is about a family, the Marshalls, putting their house (in the smallish New York town of Camden Green) up for sale to move into the big city. After one open house full of strangers - during which the family has all arranged to be away, the parents in New York apartment-hunting, teenage daughter Lindsay at school - Lindsay disappears without a trace. Lindsay has been very upset by the prospect of moving and the police think she's just taken off for a night or too in a fit of young angst, while her parents - especially her mother Kara - thinks something worse has happened. Kara's right.

The villain of the novel - and this is clear from the early pages, so it's not a spoiler - is a serial abductor who infiltrates family's homes through just such events as real estate open houses. Although the police's search for the abductor becomes an angle in the book, it's different in that less time is spent on that hunt than the emotional turmoil and the helplessness of the Marshalls (and other characters who've lost people through various means), the tearing on personal relationships, and the seeming impossibility of an untrained family and small group of friends trying to make a dent in the search for a single person in an area with a population of the greater New York region, and their individual efforts in spite of the odds.

The prose itself is, well to be honest it's generally on the plain side. Not bare-bones plain to the point where it ruins a good concept, but not possessing the vast descriptive powers to be found in the typical Clive Barker or Dean Koontz book. But it does the job, and it does it well. The characters come to life a Lot better than what one might think with this style of writing, and the generally brisk pace helps keep things very tense and very interesting. It was a Lot more of a compelling, don't-put-it-down read than a great many books with techically more proficient prose (in this case I'm not referencing Koontz or Barker) and was more of a personal read with powerful emotion than a lot of those more technically-accomplished books. It's the kind of novel where after you turn in for the night after a couple hours of reading it really keeps you active thinking about how and where it should proceed.

The other apparant shortcoming: predicatability. It seems like early on you're going to be able to figure out pretty much how everything is going to unfold. And yet I found it only minimally hampered by the seeming lack of potential for surprise twists. I see 'seeming' and 'apparant shortcoming' because it's all an illusion. In the final quarter of the book 90% of what I thought I'd figured out in the first few chapters turned out to be offbase, in some cases Way offbase. I'll say no more on that.

"Perfect Nightmare" is a great mystery whodunit where the level of evil, twisted villainy of the antagonist makes it also count as a great horror novel. The nature of the villain had me thinking of Jigsaw (from "Saw" and "Saw II"). He doesn't have the same modus openadi or anything (he's not setting elaborate deathtraps for people) but the same nature of madness and sadism. Creepy and unsettling. The squeamish should be warned about the nature of the unsettling elements; it becomes very disturbing at times, even by my fright-loving standards. The way it'll be mostly implicit, then go quite jarringly graphic but only for a few sentences, and then ease off the throttle quickly, doesn't allow the reader much of a chance to acclimitize to either a 'suspenseful/unspoken' style of fear or a more brutal, unflinching kind of narrative.

Overall a great book for fans of mystey, horror, suspense, or dramas dealing with the emotional onslaught put on individuals dealing with fear or loss and how people lean on and provide support for each other at the same time. Very good, very frightful, very moving, much more original than one might think from the early pages, and very recommended.

This is an average Saul novel. As always, the read was interesting and I finished the book in less than a week. People have mentioned that there is brutality toward children in this book, but it is not explecit. There is certainly stuff implied, but it is not written out luridly like some would have you believe. The story is basically about the disappearance of a teenage girl and her parents search for her and the stranger they believe took her. I figured out who it was about halfway through, but Saul throws out enough red herrings to keep you guessing throughout the book. The shift to first person perspective to the kidnapper was interesting and gives a real insight to his/her thought process. A decent read, but not the first Saul novel you should start with.

This was my first time reading a John Saul book, and I found it a little disappointing.

The book started out with a lot of promise. 17 year-old Lindsay Marshall disappears one night after an open house and her mother, Kara, is convinced she has been kidnapped. The police believe she is a runaway, until another woman disappears, also after an open house. Kara finds support in Patrick Shields, a man who has recently lost his wife and children in a house fire. The set up for the story is good and Saul throws in a few red herrings to keep the reader guessing. The book begins to fall apart with the death of a main character in a car accident. After that, the story becomes contrived and pointless.

There were a few too many chapters from the kidnappers point-of-view, and I found them to be a bit unnecessary. Also, the chapters describing Lindsay and Ellen's ordeal were very uncomfortable to read at times. It's as if Saul enjoyed having his madman/kidnapper character terrorize these women. It was a little too much for my liking.

I will probably give some of Saul's other books a try. I just hope they are a little better than this one.

I was hoping when this book came out that it wouldn't follow the basic John Saul formula and thank God it doesn't. God love Saul but most of his books are like the same. I did enjoy many of his books, namely The Presence and The Homing. But he seems sometime to follow a basic formula. And it is kind of daunting that children are usually in trouble or abused is his books (not that this doesn't happen in real life). Well, anyway enough of my ranting.

Perfect Nightmare is one of those books that starts off with a bang. The villian is setting a house on fire, not seeing or getting what he wanted from his latest victim. This is done in a haunting first person point of view. We then go to a family that is moving and having an open house. The novel moves slowly jumping from the family to the first point of view of the stalker. Then a girl is kidnapped after the open house. What follows is a study in grief, as the mother spins out of wack. Then we meet a father who has also lost his family who relates to the mother Kara Marshall. We also get a picture of what is happening to Lindsay Marshall. The book moves slowly back and forth again until another woman is kidnapped, then the book takes a tragic and insidious turn.

Filled with many red herrings, like real estate agents and butlers and such. But the truth behind what is really happening is vintage Saul, which is where the book falls just a little short. But it will keep you guessing until the end (even though I had it figured out before then). I believe it is one of Saul's best in a long time.

I won't analyze this book to pieces, as some others did. I read for entertainment, and this one had me from the first page. I'm a huge fan of Horror Fiction, especially Saul & Koontz, and I was constantly surprised at developments. Mr. Saul is often quite brutal in his depictions of children being mistreated or victimized, but he sorta modified his expected style to create some interesting surprises. Indeed, I was surprised at many developments, and was never quite sure who the bad guy was until the final revelation. Red herrings a-plenty, I had fun, and it was a satisfying reading experience for me. I enjoyed it a lot.

I read this a few days after purchasing it locally. The book is not his best, but it is worth reading, and the storyline is pretty dark. If you don't want to hear about a psycho who kidnaps young teenagers, then this book is not for you. I do have to wonder how his mind could conceive such a script, because it really does sound very realistic. If you are a John Saul fan, I'd say read this one anyway, but it can wait until the paperback comes out. If you have never read Saul, don't judge his previous work by this one.