Billy

A heart-slamming story of abduction - only this time the kidnapper isn't one of Strieber's popular bug-eyed aliens (Communion, etc.) but a psychotic child-slayer - who snatches 12-year-old Billy Neary in the author's first-ever nonfantasy novel, one of the most gripping thrillers of the year. If villain Barton Royal is no spaceman, however, the profound terror and awe he induces in young Billy exactly duplicate the emotions Strieber claims to have suffered at alien hands. And like the aliens and their villainous prototypes in Strieber's earlier novels (The Wolfen, etc.), Barton - clearly modeled on real-life John Wayne Gacey - is an outsider, lonely and dangerous. Strieber tells his tale from three basic angles - Barton's, Billy's, and Billy's parents' - expertly shifting point-of-view to pour on suspense as the narrative hurtles through Barton's spotting Billy at an Iowa mall, "penetrating" the boy's house at night, knocking out Billy with ether and dragging him to a van, then driving him, handcuffed and bound, to Hollywood. There, in scenes of wrenching horror, Barton - revealed as a child-abused cross-dresser, and torn between a wish to adopt Billy as a son and a darker urge to rape and render him - alternately coddles, paws, and tortures the boy. In response, Billy ineffectually pits his boyish wiles against Barton - trying to escape, or to persuade the killer of his affection - then despairs, then reconciles to death; but, meanwhile, Billy's desperate parents, tapping into national missing-child networks, are hot on Barton's trail. . .leading to a ferocious climax in the killer's dungeon, and an elegiac, soul-salving conclusion. A gruesome but enthralling nightmare about the powers of evil and innocence, featuring the most chilling psycho-portrait since Thomas Harris' The Blood of the Lamb: Strieber's strongest novel. (Kirkus Reviews)