Peter Straub requires no introduction here. Suffice to say that Ghost Story, Shadowland, The Talisman (with Stephen King, one of the earliest novels co-written using a modem), and Floating Dragon helped shape some of my earliest horror interests. If you haven't read at least a couple of these, get thee to a bookstore!

With lost boy lost girl, Straub consciously moves to a crisper, tighter structure—better to capture today's shorter attention spans, and better to increase the rate of creation. But short does not mean "light." Every bit as cerebral as King is visceral, Straub's Stoker Award-winning novel is too subtle for some, and too brief (or vague) for others. These critics are short-sighted, missing the novel's economy, its surreal qualities, and its narrative experimentation. Straub's longer work is deep, yes, but this tightly-reined novel packs an awful lot between its lines. And one should not forget that the unreliable narrator is a long-loved convention and Straub flirts with the ambiguity of several narrators who sometimes know more than they should.

Recurring character Tim Underhill, the writer who stands in for the author, returns to hometown Millhaven (a thinly disguised Milwaukee) for his sister-in-law's funeral. A suicide, she leaves behind both a befuddled husband, Philip, whose jealousy of Tim and near-contempt for his wife speak volumes about his character, and her mature-for-his-years teenage son, Mark, who found the body. Shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become interested in a house across the alley that he had never noticed before. With skateboarding buddy Jimbo, Mark had circled the house warily but ever more closely, interest rapidly turning to obsession. What drew him to the strange house and its architectural incongruities? Shortly after his mother's funeral, Mark disappears and his uncle Tim is again drawn home to root out the truth while Philip masks his near-disgust at being abandoned by fretting about his son's apparent murder. Indeed, the Sherman Park killer has been murdering teenage boys, and both Mark and Jimbo may have come under his influence. Tim Underhill investigates with a little help from Tom Pasmore (a PI, also recurring), drawing out parts of Mark's story from Jimbo and an elderly neighbor, among others.

What happened to Mark is both predictable and completely unpredictable, and the secret of 3323 North Michigan Street lies in history and, perhaps, on another plane. Mark's mother was disturbed by her son's sudden interest in the house, but only Tim's delving into her family history explains why. Events in the distant and recent past converge in surprising ways, and the house takes on its own personality while exerting a spooky influence (as all possibly haunted houses should) on the sharply-drawn characters.

Much is related through journal entries and various points of view and told with an enviable authorial flair that breaks the bounds of we're often told should work. Straub's prose is scalpel-sharp, as are his observer's skills. The book is less outright horror than what some fans might want, but it is a deeply disturbing composition nonetheless. Rather than soaring at operatic heights, lost boy lost girl strikes one more as a stately but soft-spoken adagio. Relentless, it builds to a superbly surreal ending that nevertheless satisfies without resorting to fireworks or the literary equivalent of a movie's CGI climax. Knowing that Straub's next novel (stay tuned) will shed more light on the events in this one is an irresistible seduction, a lure worthy of a master such as Peter Straub.