Disappearance at Devil's Rock

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay

Publisher: William Morrow

June 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-236326-8

Pages: 327

Contemporary Suspense

Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every parent fears late one summer night: Tommy, her thirteen-year-old son vanished without a trace in the woods of the state park that is nearby.

Elizabeth and her eleven-year-old daughter, Kate struggle to understand and comprehend Tommy’s disappearance as the search isn’t yielding any answers for them. Their sorrow is compounded by both anger and frustration and making them feel both alone and helpless. The local police nor the state police have been able to uncover any leads. Josh and Luis, are friends of Tommy and also the last to see him before he vanished. They may also not be telling the whole truth about the night they were in Borderland State Park where they said they were hanging out at a landmark they renamed Devil’s Rock.

Elizabeth is completely unprepared when a series of strange events follow as she is living in all-too-real nightmare. Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadowy figure that seems to be peering through their windows in the dead of night and if that wasn’t bad enough Elizabeth is convinced the wraithlike apparition she saw is of Tommy that materialized in her bedroom. Suddenly random pages torn from Tommy’s journals start to mysteriously appear. The entries also reveal a teenager that is introverted and obsessed with the phantasmagoric. One that is also obsessed with the father he lost, a father that was killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier. Tommy is also completely fascinated with the folktale that involves the devil and the woods of Borderland and the coming zombie “pocketclips” and a horrific incident that Tommy is convinced connects them all.

As the search continues and grows more desperate the implications of what happened become more ominous and sinister and no one is prepared for the shocking truth of what exactly happened that night at Devil’s Rock.

This is a story that stays with the reader long after they are finished. As each chapter unfolds new details in the lives of the characters it brings to vivid life the nightmare of what a parent and family faces when a child disappears. The book also takes the reader on a roller coaster of a ride that is full of twists and turns and will have readers scrambling to figure out just what really happened the night Tommy vanished. The twist ending is one that readers will never see coming.

I give this one 4-1/2 red roses

LRH