Pin

Young Leon and Ursula had little except each other. Mother was driven by a psychotic need to clean—constantly—everything in sight. Father was consumed by his medical practice and an analytical approach to life. But he understood the sensual hunger growing inside his children’s young bodies. He knew they could help each other answer, “The Need.” Father had Science. Father had Reason. And he had Pin. Pin who answered all the children’s questions in a voice not unlike the doctor’s. Father’s clever trick. Father’s brilliant illusion. But then there was the accident and Mother and the doctor were dead. Still there was Pin—who had so much to tell then even yet…whose enigmatic stare held such wisdom. There would just be the three of them now. Quiet Leon, beautiful and frightened Ursula, and wise, implacable Pin. They were all each of them would need. Ever.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Without the 1998 cult horror film by the same name, this 1981 psychodrama may have slid off the map entirely—a crime, considering just how terrifically upsetting it is. Leon and Ursula are teenagers living alone in a mansion after the death of their wealthy parents. Well, not entirely alone. They are joined by Pin, the full-sized, translucent medical dummy with which their physician father amused patients by throwing his voice. (This is the point where, if you’re the nervous type, you slowly back away from the book.) As children, Leon and Ursula treated Pin as a confidant, though now that they’re older, it’s only Leon who holds entire two-sided conversations with him while Ursula plays along. It’s a bizarre stasis indeed, but everybody is happy—until the day Ursula brings home a boyfriend who has a damning diagnosis of Leon: “He’s as loony as can be.” With the family trio threatened, Leon and Pin hatch a plan—it involves hypodermic needles—to rid themselves of this new bother. Yes, it’s a heck of a plot synopsis, though it can’t convey Leon’s calm, aristocratic first-person narration, nor does it touch upon the queasy, incestual relationship that turns the siblings’ every interaction into the kind of barely hidden perversity V. C. Andrews would had loved. (Neiderman, in fact, became Andrews’ ghostwriter after her death.) If you’re a fan of clever psychos or medical horrors—or if you’re just an all-around sicko—I’d like to introduce you to your new best friend. --Daniel Kraus

About the Author

Andrew Neiderman is the author of numerous novels of suspense and terror, including Deficiency, The Baby Squad, Under Abduction, Dead Time, Curse, In Double Jeopardy, The Dark, Surrogate Child, and The Devil’s Advocate—which was made into a major motion picture starring Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron. He lives in Palm Springs, California, with his wife, Diane. Visit his website at Neiderman.com.

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