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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 38 |
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Ron reviews the new thriller by David Morrell |
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What evils still lurk within
the halls of Hotel Paragon?
of TheColumnists.com
How about this for a situation? It's a cold night in late October and you find yourself with a small group of "urban explorers" as they get ready to break into the long-abandoned Hotel Paragon in ghostly Asbury Park, New Jersey.
They're going to spend most of the night exploring this brooding old building that's soon to be torn down. What they're doing is, in fact, clearly illegal, even though they plan to leave everything as they find it and to leave no trace of their coming.
But this is no ordinary hotel. It was built a century ago by an eccentric billionaire who designed it for his own personal pleasure. It has sliding doors and hidden corridors and secret passages. Everything about it is....well, strange. And frightening.
That's the basic setup for "Creepers" (CDS Books, $24.95) the immensely involving and incredibly chilling new novel by David Morrell, the author of "First Blood," "Brotherhood of the Rose," "Nightscape" and so many other novels that have elevated the genre of the thriller to new heights since he first began writing them in 1972.
Morrell has designed "Creepers" to be an experiment in terror. It's not a horror novel ala Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but it packs in plenty of shuddery moments as we follow these intrepid explorers on their one-night journey in real time. The book takes so many hours to read--and you, the reader, are sharing the exact seconds, minutes and hours that the characters are living along with you.
Is there something in that hotel besides the explorers? Most certainly there is. In fact, there are a number of "somethings," each as terrifying as the next. Will it drive you away if you don't believe in ghosts? It shouldn't. Morrell has carefully concocted a story that could very well happen tomorrow or the next day.
One of the reasons David Morrell is a giant among thriller writers is that he always leaves you with something to think about after you finally get off his roller coaster. In "Creepers," for instance, he has a lot to say about our "throwaway culture" that can tolerate not only a beautiful old building like the Paragon Hotel being left to rot in a prominent public place, but also a whole section of a city...like the real Asbury Park in New Jersey.
He also has some very arch things to tell us about the teacher-student relationship. The leader of his band is a professor--which Morrell was, once upon a time--and his followers are former students who think of him not only as their instructor, but as their guru. Is this a healthy relationship? You'll be given plenty of reasons to wonder about that as they go their merry way together.
Morrell's story isn't just another "Haunting of Hill House," where the unexplained issues pile up until the climax. It's in large part an action-adventure saga because the perils of exploring an ancient building like the Paragon are mighty physical. These explorers take the same sort of equipment they might take on a mountain-climbing expedition. This place hasn't been inspected for perils in a long, long time and they crop up everywhere.
The author based his story on a real phenomenon that hasn't had much public exposure so far. There are thousands of real-life "urban explorers" and Morrell has found their websites literally swamping the internet.
Yet I doubt if any of their exploits could rival the ones Morrell has planned for his readers to enjoy. And always in the background is the feeling that they're going to discover something immensely terrifying before journey's end. Believe me, they do. Does it have something to do with the thousands of rats they find in the chambers below the hotel? Does it have something to do with the deformed cats they find haunting the place? Does it have anything to do with the sounds and lights they seem to hear below them as they climb to each new floor?
I'm not telling. I wouldn't want you to miss the thrill of accompanying reporter Frank Balenger as he joins with the professor's skilled "creepers," the nickname "urban explorers" have chosen for themselves, as they probe the darkness of a very mysterious old hotel.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
The book cover illustration is courtesy of CDS Books. This column
first posted Friday, Sept. 30, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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