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A review by harrietj
In the Dark of the Night by John Saul
2.0
This wasn't great. It was a bit obvious the whole way through, and the ending was very abrupt. I felt like I was still waiting for the big climax when I closed the book. I also felt that the author perhaps doesn't have a very good grip on character. The people in this book were all fairly 2D and unbelievable. The younger child in the family was supposed to be I think ten or eleven, but she was written as though she were four or five. The mother's anxiety was so all-consuming that it threw any other characterisation she may have had right out.
It was a quick read, and would have been fine to get through a plane journey with, perhaps, but it wasn't worth rereading, and having read two of his books now I won't seek out any more John Saul. His style is oddly old fashioned - I could easily have believed this was a pulpy throwaway novel from the 80s if not for the references to modern technology, and even they were few and far between. I do not mean that it provides a nostalgic pleasure. I mean it's thinly written and shallow. But in fairness I don't think it's pretending to be anything else.
It was a quick read, and would have been fine to get through a plane journey with, perhaps, but it wasn't worth rereading, and having read two of his books now I won't seek out any more John Saul. His style is oddly old fashioned - I could easily have believed this was a pulpy throwaway novel from the 80s if not for the references to modern technology, and even they were few and far between. I do not mean that it provides a nostalgic pleasure. I mean it's thinly written and shallow. But in fairness I don't think it's pretending to be anything else.