In the Shadow of Evil : The Handkerchief [Paperback]

John Saul (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: NY (1980)
• ASIN: B000MUIMOY
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

More About the Author

House of Reckoning is John Saul's thirty-sixth novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Faces of Fear, In the Dark of the Night, Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The tension builds..., June 24, 2000

By 

A. K. Berger "filburt_girl" (Nebraska, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief (Blackstone Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars STILL the same.., August 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief (Blackstone Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

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..

4.0 out of 5 stars "Germaine sank to her knees, sobbing, helplessly watching as the ants swarmed...feeling the fire of their millions...of bites", September 18, 2011

By 

Mark Louis Baumgart (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief (Blackstone Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

********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).