The Hour Before Dark

While trying to sort out the problems within their dysfunctional family, the Raglan siblings must now face the brutal murder of their father, Gordie, and return to the childhood home that they desperately wish to forget.

From Publishers Weekly

Alongside the dominant stream of horror fiction that, at whatever level of artistic achievement, relies on shock and gore, runs a quieter stream that relies on atmosphere and inference for its unsettling effects (think Machen, Blackwood, sometimes Ramsey Campbell). Clegg (The Infinite; Naomi) has added a superior new title to this latter tradition, with a psychologically astute and genuinely shivery story of a young man who returns to his ancestral home on a remote island off Massachusetts. Nemo Raglan, a failed novelist, is back at Hawthorn, on Burnley Island, because his father, Gordie, has been found slaughtered in the family's smokehouse. Also at Hawthorn are Nemo's errant younger brother, Bruno, and their sister, Brooke, a high-strung artist who'd been living with Dad; the siblings' mother had disappeared from the family when they were children. The killer has, weirdly, left no traces and thus no clues; but then much about Hawthorn and the siblings is weird, particularly the game they played as children, a risky form of mind-projection taught them by their father, who used it as a POW, whereby they were able to explore worlds known and unknown. As brothers and sister get reacquainted and ponder the murder, the air grows tense but also dark. Nemo senses an unseen presence; is the house haunted? Clegg delves deep and precisely into the familial ties that bind but also sunder even as he celebrates the magical isolation of a New England island so adrift from the mainland as to be its own planet. Suspenseful and relentlessly spooky, told in economical prose yet peopled by characters as fully realized as one's own blood kin, this is at once the most artful and most mainstream tale yet from one of horror's brightest lights.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The brutal murder of his father brings Nemo Raglan back to the New England home of his childhood, where he joins his brother and sister in unraveling the mystery of their father's death and solving the frightening puzzle somehow connected to an old childhood game. The author of The Nightmare Chronicles constructs an eerie psychological tale of supernatural horror that builds suspense gradually as the characters slowly peel back the layers of their past and face the terrors of their shared childhood. Clegg approaches horror with a stark and vital simplicity that is utterly convincing. Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will appreciate this atmospheric gem. For most horror collections. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

From the terrifying imagination of Douglas Clegg, comes his most powerful novel yet. The Hour Before Dark is a page-turning blockbuster of a novel about the shadow between good and evil, innocence and brotherhood.

About the Author

Douglas Clegg is the author of The Infinite, You Come When I Call You, Naomi, and others. His collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He lives near New York City, and his novella, "The Words" can be found in the book, Four Dark Nights, also from Dorchester Publishing.

Reviews

News