“‘I
don’t understand. I’m nobody. I’m not rich or famous or influential. I’m only a
teacher. I don’t even have tenure.’”
John and Merle Wright arrive home from a movie to find
the babysitter brutally murdered, and their 16-month old daughter missing. The
only clue is the babysitter. Paula Aherne. A student at the local college, well-liked
by the Wrights and wonderful with the baby. The investigation uncovers
everything Paula told the Wrights to be a lie. She wasn’t enrolled at the
school. Her childhood stories are false. And her name isn’t Paula.
The police investigation is empty, and two unscrupulous
feds manipulate it for their own ends. The Wrights take matters into their own
hands and start an amateurish investigation. An investigation that leads them
into Paula’s past, and a lineup of unsavory characters.
The
Babysitter is wholly original. Its setup is straight mystery—a murder,
a kidnapping, a police investigation—but it unravels in unexpected ways. It is
unsolvable by the reader and more suspense than mystery. The characters,
excepting the Wrights, are secretive and frightening in a recognizable and common
form. Everyone has a secret. It is nightmarishly real to a suburban audience in
a bleak and satisfying manner.
The
Babysitter was originally published in 1979, and it
has new life with its recent Stark House Press trade paperback edition.
Purchase a copy of The Babysitter at Amazon, or directly from Stark House.
It’s another busy week so I dusted off a review originally published November 3, 2015 of Stark House’s reprint of Andrew Coburn’s excellent The Babysitter.
It’s another busy week so I dusted off a review originally published November 3, 2015 of Stark House’s reprint of Andrew Coburn’s excellent The Babysitter.
