BiblioBlog

November 01, 2003
The Halloween Man by Douglas Clegg

The Halloween Man by Douglas Clegg: another great novel by horror master Clegg dealing with devil worship in a small New England town.

At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Stony Crawford just as he’s kidnapped a small boy - a boy with amazing powers - from a compound of religious zealots in Texas. I was immediately prepared for Stony to be a bad guy and was surprised to find out that this wasn’t necessarily the case.

A large section of the novel is told in a flashback to the year that Stony was fifteen and in love with a beautiful girl, Lourdes Maria. During this flashback we learn who Stony truly is and why he had to kidnap the boy. Without giving too much away, the novel deals with “devil” worship, small town secrets, and the hidden nature of Stony.

I enjoyed this book a good deal, though for a while I wasn’t sure I knew where it was going. Luckily, the murky part of the plot cleared up and it was all the better for being a bit unclear. Clegg’s characters are very strong and the poignant way that he wrote about first love between Lourdes and Stony made me long to see them happy together.

At first I thought that I liked The Hour Before Dark (the last book I read by him) more, but the more I think about The Halloween Man, the more I like it and now I’m not sure that it might not be the better of the two. Highly recommended.



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