Book Review: Midnight Voices by John Saul

Caroline Evans's husband is murdered while jogging in Central Park. She is left as the sole parent of their two pre-teen children, Laurie and Ryan. Months later, an old woman, who lives in an old building, the Rockwell, sets up a plot to get Caroline and Anthony Fleming, a young resident at the Rockwell, together. The two marry soon after, much to the dismay of her son, who despises Fleming as much as Fleming does him.

Caroline and her children move into Fleming's apartment at the old Rockwell, a weird-looking building thought haunted by local people. The children hate their new rooms and the old neighbors scare them. Caroline and her children begin having nightmares and hearing voices at night.

Caroline doesn't become worried until Laurie appears more and more tired and anemic each day, like another young adopted girl, Rebecca, in the building who left without saying bye to her daughter. Also, the old people start disappearing with their younger relatives, who all oddly resemble their older family members. The truth starts to emerge when Ryan finds photos of Fleming and other residents that appear to be over a century old.

This 2002 Saul novel is a quick read at only 384 pages. It was a good, fun read, which felt like Rosemary's Baby meets The Shining with the hotel seems alive and the old people nurturing the kids for their own evil purposes.

The characters are good but not with all that much depth. We mostly see into Caroline's character. The old people seem rather thinly written.

The novel's focus is the hotel and feeding off of children, so the story's strength relies on the situation and characters take second place.

The story is creepy, in my opinion, because the old people are a frenzy of vampire-like beings, like a swarm of piranha attacking someone. They are secretive about it during the day but, once the kids go to sleep, the old people scurry around like rats in the walls, using hidden passages to take their victims to a surgery room to drink their blood with tubes andto remove needed organs, like Jeeper Creepers. Sometimes, it's the less violent horrors that give me the willies.

My biggest gripe with the story is that Caroline marries Fleming much too quickly and doesn't notice that her children hate the hotel, Fleming and the old people until it's much too late. It just seems too unrealistic for a kind, conscientious mother and woman, such as Caroline, to act like this.

Another component of the story is the two investigating characters. First, we have Caroline's best-friend, a social worker, whose ward is Rebecca, the other girl in the building. She feels suspicious of the old, rich family that took the girl in and of the family doctor caring for her. The friend's demise is her reward.

Second, is the detective investigating the social worker's death? He just happens to be the same detective on Caroline's first husband's murder. When he finds out that Caroline is also the social worker's friend, the pieces begin to fall into place and result in the old people's demise.

The ending seems too easy but the epilogue really ends the story completely in Romania, where it all began.

Midnight voices is a quick and fun read if you like this kind of horror that is Saul's trademark.

3/5