Mr. X
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Mr. X |
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| Author: | Peter Straub |
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| Publisher: | Random House Trade |
Ned has been drawn back to his hometown, Edgerton, Illinois, by a premonition that his mother, Star, is dying. Before she loosens her hold on life, she imparts to Ned the name of his father, never before disclosed, and warns him that he is in grave danger. Despite her foreboding, Ned’s determination to learn as much as possible about his absent father ignites a series of extraordinary adventures that gradually reveal the heart of both his own identity and that of his entirely fantastic family: He discovers that he is shadowed by an identical twin brother who can pass through doors and otherwise defy the laws of nature; he becomes the lead suspect in three violent deaths; he investigates the secret shadow-world within Edgerton; he learns to “eat time” and remembers the one occasion when he and his sinister brother united into a single being. Finally, at the moment of battle, he must call upon everything he has learned to save his own life.
Brimming with the author’s trademark wit, understated eloquence, vibrant characters, and brilliant sense of pace, Mr. X displays Peter Straub at the top of his form.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Peter Straub’s Mr. X is an enthralling, complex tale of a decent young man troubled since childhood by barely understood flashes of precognition and an awareness of a shadowy “other.”
Ned Dunstan returns home to Edgerton, Illinois, a raffish and atmospheric Mississippi River city, as his mother, Star Dunstan, lies dying. Impelled to trace his tangled paternal lineage after Star’s death, Ned finds himself caught up in a web of murder and other heinous crimes, not only in the present but also in a past that his elderly great aunts Nettie, May, and Joy would prefer remained undisturbed. The aunts, whose remarkable gifts include teleportation and telekinesis, frustrate his search for knowledge, partly to protect their own secrets and also to shield Ned from the mysterious and omnipresent force that seems to dodge his every step. He is aided in his efforts to discover the mysteries of his birth by a doppleganger who may or may not be his twin, and also by a lovely young woman, Laurie Hatch. She is the estranged wife of Stewart Hatch, an Edgerton scion whose own history is inexorably linked with Ned’s and with the entire Dunstan family.
The secondary characters, from the elderly aunts to a lawyer named Creech who is the essence of the small-town “fixer,” are deftly drawn. —Jane Adams
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Ned Dunstan’s shadow has always been up-front:”You won’t even be able to go out by yourself at night for another six or seven years. When do we have our first cigarette? Our first drink? When do we get to have actual sex?…I want darkness, I want night”. “Without me, you can’t get them at all”, replies Ned. Coming home years later Ned begins to uncover the strange history of Edgerton, and the even stranger secrets of his bizarre family. Meanwhile Mr X, bad novelist, crimelord, seducer, serial-killer, self-appointed harbinger of the apocalypse of HP Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, plans one very special murder before bringing the Cuthulu mythos to earth. Witty, shocking, beautifully written and completely absorbing, Mr X is an intricately plotted puzzle-box of sex, death, music, teleportation, and eccentric aunts.
With a large red X on the jet black cover the marketing department are targeting X Files fans and Peter Straub’s book is certainly inventively weird enough to appeal to followers of foxy scullyduggery; the author penned such modern horror classics as Ghost Story and Shadowland while the FBI duo were still in grade school. There is a subtle homage to Stephen King’s The Dark Half—the two writers collaborated on The Talisman—while aficionados of Christopher Priest’s ingenious contortions of reality, particularly The Prestige, will be intrigued by this mystery. If you are looking for page-turning horror novel that’s not afraid to have some post-modern fun stretching its genre to the limits, vote for Mr X. —Gary S. Dalkin
