Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Night Strangers-Chris Bohjalian

The Night Strangers


Chris Bohjalian

Crown, Oct 4 2011, $25.00

ISBN: 9780307394996



The seventy seater regional jet flies out of Burlington, Vermont with forty-three passengers, three attendees and a first officer as well as pilot Chip Linton. Geese fly into the two turbines, dying while destroying both engines. As the plane descends and feeling he can not make Plattsburgh or Burlington, Chip decides to land on Lake Champlain just like the heroic landing on the Hudson. He does everything right but a massive wave caused by a ferryboat makes the plane do a somersault. Most on board died while the pilot considers suicide as he suffers from survivor’s guilt depression with the image of Dora the Explorer imprinted in his brain.



Chip’s wife Emily, an estates lawyer, decides the family needs a change so that Chip can start to heal. Thus Emily, Chip, and their twin ten year old daughters move to the White Mountains in New Hampshire where they purchased a fixer-upper Victorian. However, the house proves not to be a home as they begin to get visitors from the beyond including the father and Dora the Explorer daughter who make demands of Chip to have his children befriend the dead girl and find secret passages including a hidden crypt. Their benign welcoming neighbors have sacrificial designs on the Linton twins.



This suspenseful haunted house psychological thriller is a tense tale with a strong cast especially the Linton family, the neighbors and the ghost from the plane crash. The story line is fast-paced with a sense of impending doom. Although the Linton adults’ response to the otherworldly assault seems off kilter, readers will appreciate this scary ghost tale.



Harriet Klausner

No comments: