The Reckoning

Set in present-day England, Pinborough's gripping tale of supernatural suspense focuses on four childhood friends, Gina, Rob, Jason and Carole-Anne, whose innocence vanished one tortuous summer after a series of bizarre and violent incidents at Syracousse, the beautiful estate house belonging to Gina's parents. Since the day Gina's mother murdered her father, Syracousse has stood empty. A quarter-century later, without warning, more strange violence afflicts the four. After Carole-Anne's mysterious suicide, Rob, Jason and Gina—reunited almost as strangers—link the recent tragedies to Syracousse, where they return for a gruesome finale. Particularly adept at writing from the male perspective (the scenes involving Rob and Jason tend to be more emotionally convincing than the ones with Gina and Carole-Ann), Pinborough (The Hidden) deftly handles the multiple subplots. While some readers may feel she overdoes the foreshadowing in the book's many flashbacks, fans of Bentley Little, Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz will be pleased They were children then, in that magical summer so long ago when Robert, Carrie-Anne, and Jason first met Gina. It was a summer of fun, of friendship, and of discoveriesincluding the discovery of Gina's strange abilities. But it all ended in a moment of madness and blood. Now, twenty years later, Robert is still haunted by nightmares of that time. He has returned to his small hometown to confront his past and reclaim his life, but his homecoming is far from happy. Gina moved away long ago. Jason is bitter and resentful. And Carrie-Anne is about to commit an act that will horrify them all. Something unexplainable has infected the town, inhabiting its dreams, bringing with it insanity and terror. Could the secret lie in the past, in Gina's old house, abandoned long ago but never quite empty? Robert returns home to put his past behind him and move on with his life, but before he can do that, he must confront an unspeakable evil, linked to his childhood, that has infected the town, causing its residents to commit random acts of violence