When Nemo Raglan's father is murdered in one of the most vicious killings of
recent years, Nemo must return to the New England island he thought he had
escaped for good, Burnley Island . . . and the shadowy farmhouse called
Hawthorn.
But this murder was no crime of human ferocity. What butchered Nemo's father
may in fact be something far more terrifying--something Nemo and his younger
brother, Bruno, and sister, Brooke, have known since childhood.
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"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 ....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...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."
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."
When I sat down to write The
Hour Before Dark, I was sure it would be about the the
games we play as children that haunt us when we're adults.
When I had finished, the novel had become a psychological
thriller about the secrets and rituals of family itself.
I believe many of us -- perhaps all -- had some Dark
Games we played as children. These are the forbidden or at least not
socially-acceptable forms of play that children have -- whether its a game of
hostages or pranks or secret diaries or schoolyard dramas.
I had a Dark Game -- I went into my mind as a child to
escape some difficulties I had. And that mind game became a refuge -- and
that's how I knew I wanted to be a novelist at all. I had begun making up new
lives to replace the world around me, and soon enough I was writing them down.
But in The Hour Before Dark, the game
being played by the three Raglan children is anything but good for them. It is
a game of imagination and power -- and it takes more away from them than it
gives. As they grow older -- and a terribly murder occurs in their family home
-- they must return to put the pieces of a puzzle together that their Dark
Game had hidden from them.
If I were only going to recommend one novel of mine to
readers, this would be it. I hope you enjoy The Hour Before Dark.
