Strange Seed

Despite a puff by Stephen King (". . . Strange Seed is the best supernatural novel since Interview with a Vampire"), this is a gothic of hopeless amateurishness, in no way comparable to Anne Rice's lavender pages. Paul Griffin, a young salesman from Southeastern New York, and his innocent Manhattan wife Rachel, move from the city to his family house in the deep hills. His parents are dead. The couple find the farm obscenely vandalized. Warnings abound, especially when their aged neighbor Hank sees a naked boy racing through the rain. When the couple capture the wild child and lock him in their bedroom, they find he's an adolescent sprite. Hank tries to strangle the boy but soon dies himself. Is there a wolf biting people and attacking hunters and lovers? The boy dies, then a dead girl of the same age is found naked on the muddy road. We never see them but a whole band of wild sprites lives in the woods, eating humans. . . . Story connections are obscure and elliptical, and the dialogue sounds as if the author enjoys chewing large bunches of rubber bands to find the flavor of human speech. (Kirkus Reviews)