He picked Billy out of a crowd at the mall, followed his every step, obsessed with this bright, perfect child. He would take him far away, keep him as the son he'd always wanted. For Barton Royal, finding Billy was a dream come true.
For Billy Neary, torn from the security of his loving family, it was a nightmare beyond his imagination. And the terror had only just begun ...
August 1, 1990
Strieber's latest (after Communion ) is by turns gripping, plodding, truly horrifying and, finally, falsely sunny. Fat, 40-ish Barton Royal, kiddy-clown in an L.A. bookstore, is obsessed with pubescent boys. He wants to be their ``father'' but when they turn against him he has a ``black room'' for their punishment. Seeing 12-year-old Billy Neary in an Iowa shopping mall, Barton is smitten. He follows the boy home, craftily and boldly abducts him and begins a nonstop drive to L.A. The book alternates scenes of the devastation wrought on Billy's family, a national manhunt, Billy's growing awareness of his peril and Barton's violent mood swings. We get chilling glimpses of Barton's past--he talks of skinning boys alive--and his plans for Billy. Bright, winning Billy is worn down almost to madness. Barton's tortured self-justification and Billy's brainy sweetness are believable but the other characters have much less depth. The bloody pater ex machina climax is followed by worse-than-expected revelations and an oddly upbeat finale that rings not quite true.
September 30, 1991
Twelve-year-old Billy Neary is abducted from an Iowa mall and driven toward L.A. by violent, 40-ish Barton Royal, a man obsessed with pubescent boys. This is ``by turns gripping, plodding, truly horrifying and, finally, falsely sunny,'' said PW .