Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief (Blackstone Chronicles)

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This is the point in the Chronicles when the town of Blackstone is no longer a normal New England town. The citizens are beginning to worry, and I can clearly see the plot thickening and the climax beginning in this book. This is a good thing after reading the three extremely repititive tales that came before this one. This installment easily proves that the next chronicle will be more suspenseful than the last.

In the fourth installment, John Saul still tells the same story as in the first three parts. Someone receives a gift - and dies. The only thing which makes this part a little better is that only now some people in Blackstone begin to notice that something is happening. So, the story advances a little bit - but JUST a little bit..

********THERE MAY BE MINOR SPOILERS OF PAST NOVELS IN THIS SERIES********

For whatever reason, the town of Blackstone has okayed an extensive renovation of its feared and hated Blackstone Asylum. In this episodic six-part, monthly serialized novel somebody has been seeking vengeance for this defamation of the Asylum. In the first a cursed doll was sent to the developer's family, in the second, a locket was sent to the banker that okayed the loan for the renovation, in the third a lighter ended up in the possession of the Wards. When these gifts show up, the family that receives them always ends up involved in misery, madness, and death. In this book, a beautifully embroidered handkerchief that was created by a schizophrenic patient who would latter hang herself, ends up in the possession of a family whose matriarch once worked for the Asylum, and who may very well have contributed to the death of the young woman.

Oliver Metcalf is the editor and publisher of "The Blackstone Chronicle", the town's weekly newspaper, and he is in love with Rebecca Morrison, the town's assistant librarian. After the death of all of her immediate relatives, and the destruction of her house in "Ashes To Ashes: The Dragon's Flame", Rebecca has been taken in by her boss and the town's librarian, Germaine Wagner. Unfortunately, Germaine is just as bad an abusive person as Rebecca's late, but unmissed Aunt Martha. Germaine wants to destroy any chance of Rebecca having a life with Oliver so that Rebecca can serve as unpaid slave labor for her, and her even more emotionally abusive, and controlling mother.

Meanwhile, Oliver is investigating, badly and reluctantly, the rash of deaths that have suddenly been plaguing Blackstone. As he is investigating some records of the Asylum that he has found in his attic, his father being the last supervisor of the Asylum before it was closed during Oliver's childhood, he finds a beautifully embroidered handkerchief amongst the Asylum's surviving records. Seeing the handkerchief's beauty, and that it has been embroidered with an "R", Oliver decides to give it to Rebecca.

Unfortunately, Germaine in an effort to brownnose and please her bitchy and controlling mother, steals it from Rebecca and gives it her mother, who has a violent reaction to it.

Meanwhile, Oliver has been having increasingly agonizing migraines throughout this series. These migraines have included visions of a young boy being abused and tortured, and now, through the reading of the Asylum's medical records he is also beginning to find out some unpleasant truths about his father, who suicided in 1959.

Also, it looks like the renovation project, which has suffered a long delay due to the death of the previous president and owner of First National Bank Of Blackstone, seems to be back on track. That is if it is okayed by Melissa Holloway, the current president.

And through it all, somebody is watching, and planning, and hating.

Saul amps up the suspense, and mixes up the formula again with this fourth episode as it is becoming clear that all of the mysterious happenings are starting to come to a climax. The main problem so far in these novellas CONTINUES to be the characterization. Everybody is STILL cliché, as if coming from central casting. Oliver is a not-too-bright, not very good investigative reporter, Rebecca is the Pollyannish Jobian character who constantly finds the sunny or positive side of everything, even of her abuse by those that keep taking advantage of her, Germaine and her mother are just by-the-numbers cartoons, etc.

On the other hand, this is an enjoyable pulp thriller for whom the plotting is at least getting better and more interesting, as a main character is either murdered or kidnapped by this episode's ending, leading me to wonder what Saul's going to do in the last two episodes.

For this site I have all six of these volumes in this series:


The Blackstone Chronicles #1: Eye for an Eye: The Doll (Blackstone Chronicles).
The Blackstone Chronicles #2: Twist of Fate: The Locket (Blackstone Chronicles).
The Blackstone Chronicles #3: Ashes to Ashes: The Dragon's Flame (Blackstone Chronicles, Part 3).
The Blackstone Chronicles #4: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief (Blackstone Chronicles).
The Blackstone Chronicles #5: Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope (Blackstone Chronicles, Part 5).
The Blackstone Chronicles #6: Asylum (Blackstone Chronicles) (No 6).

The fourth volume of this serial novel opens as Newspaper editor Oliver Metcalf finds a hand embroidered handkerchief in some of the Blackstone Asylum files. He decides to give it to the Rebecca, the young woman he is trying to court. After the tragedy in the last volume, Rebecca is staying with her employer, the head librarian, and her employer's mother. The librarian has been using Rebecca as a servant and to take care of her chair-ridden mother. Rebecca refuses to complain. When she receives the handkerchief it is confiscated. The librarian gives it to her mother who refuses it so she takes it back.

The Handkerchief was made by an asylum inmate who was delusional. Now the holder of the handkerchief becomes delusional as well. Tragedy strikes again in the house Rebecca is staying at but she manages to survive.

Meanwhile Oliver has been looking into the history of the asylum. His father was the last director. He learns that his father was no more humane than previous directors and the knowledge he uncovers starts a series of blackouts as Oliver begins to remember something from his youth.

The book ends with the mysterious inhabitant of the asylum preparing the next gift for delivery.

The serial is really shaping up and I look forward to the next installments. Unlike Stephen King's serial, this one will have no trouble being collected in one volume.

In this six-volume series set in Blackstone, New Hampshire, a "dark figure" has been drawn back to the long-abandoned Blackstone Asylum, which is being developed into a shopping mall. Having found the trove of personal objects which once belonged to residents of the Asylum, the "dark figure" begins to wreak vengeance by distributing them throughout the town, each "gift" resulting in horror. Here in Volume 4, John Saul once again uses Rebecca Morrison, the slightly handicapped survivor of a terrible accident which killed her parents, as the unwitting instrument of the horror which follows.

(No spoilers.) When Oliver Metcalf, editor of the local newspaper, searches through some old records in his attic, stored there because his father was the superintendent of the Asylum fifty years ago, he finds a beautiful handkerchief in the files. Since it has the letter "R" on it, he decides to give it to Rebecca, her first gift in a long time. When Germaine Wagner, the woman with whom Rebecca lives, appropriates it and gives it to her demanding, elderly mother, the stage is set for another tale of horror.

Once again, Saul begins the story by introducing a scene of torture in the Asylum. This time, however, he provides the name of one of the sadistic employees, making the action in this tale far more satisfying than in earlier ones because the developing horror seems directed and not simply random. As in previous novels, Oliver Metcalf is the victim of blinding headaches, fainting spells, and visions of horror related to the Asylum, and his own background, involving the mysterious death of his twin sister at the age of four, is introduced, though he has no memory of crucial events.

As the town begins to suspect that the "suicides" featured in previous novels may be connected to the Asylum, the series tension builds, not because of the gory tales but because the reasons for the horror and the choice of specific victims remain unclear. One wonders who is the "dark figure" and what has made him return--and who will be the next victim, and why.

This novel is the turning point in the series. The "dark figure" hints that he is beginning to recall events and a character disappears, though there is no reason to suspect that foul play has occurred. Though Saul develops the suspense connecting the novels slowly, it is clear that he has a grand finale planned. n Mary Whipple

Three suicides have occurred so far in The Blackstone Chronicles, leading up to a possible fourth--or more (you'll just have to read it to find out)--in "In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief." After Rebecca Morrison's aunt died in the previous book, "Ashes to Ashes: The Dragon's Flame" (#3), she's left in the care of her demanding employer, Germaine Wagner, and her even more demanding, wheelchair-bound mother. When Oliver Metcalf, a newspaper editor who has feelings for Rebecca, gives her a present--an 'R'-initialed handkerchief--something horrible begins to happen in the Wagner home. The climax, not to sound morbid, is one of my favorite death endings among the six parts; and the story itself ends on quite a cliffhanger for Rebecca. It'll certainly have readers eager to read the next part: "Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope" (#5).

What fun this series is. This book, though similar in structure to the earlier ones, is different enough to keep me happily reading. A quick read where I'm totally into it!

John Saul's The Blackstone Chronicles keep getting better and better. Part 4, In The Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief was great. I would highly recommend this series to anyone who loves a good mystery. I can't wait for Part 5