Guest Review: The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli

Horror/Thriller 
Released 2007, 352 pages



*Review may contain slight spoilers*

My husband has been reading through my tbr pile for me.  He has a lunch hour and I don't but I'm not bitter. Since our reading tastes are pretty similar when it comes to horror and thrillers (well, if you don't count The DaVinci Code which I despised and he seems to think is perfect) I trust him when he says a book is a dud.  His reviews are usually minimal and to the point. It was good, what more do you need?! But he went on about this book for quite a while stunning me with his memory when I asked him to describe it for me.  He really should review books but I guess I'm the only review writing geek in the family. Still he indulged my weirdness and gave me his "review" to spare me from having to read at least one book out of the hundreds in the pile.

Unfortunately I was tired last night and my memory isn't nearly as good as his. I swear I did indeed listen to every word he spoke (though he'd probably deny that) but these are the bits I can remember:

This book was very misleading.  The back of the book makes it sound like it's all about a child protective service officer discovering a nightmare inside a fancy home in Long Island but it's not. (Apparently, he still trusts blurbs and Amazon's #1 reviewer unlike jaded me.)  In fact, that all happens within the first part of the book and it wasn't what I'd consider a nightmare at all.

This is the nightmare (and this may be a bit of a spoiler even if it does happen right away). The officer finds an autistic man locked up in a dog crate and attempts to remove the child and the man from the home.  The snooty mother shoots at him, she ends up dying, the officer then takes the child, the man and the child's dog to safety. The officer is then approached by people with odd notes throughout the remainder of the book and these people end up getting murdered (I make some crack here about The DaVinci code which he ignores). Blah, blah, blah, I guess he says. (Note: I did not tune out here, it's my poor memory, really it is.) More stuff happens (he told me what but hell if I can remember), somehow the officer ends up under water with the kid and the dog, and more mysterious but dull sounding adventure ensues.  It ends with a big reveal that made little sense.  It was hard to stick with this book, he says, but he finished it nonetheless and it was a big let down.

Needless to say, I'm not going to read it since he so kindly spared me the bother. I gave it a 3 for him since I forgot to ask him for a number rating and it sounds like a middle of the road book to me.

Have you read it? Should I?

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