Rocketgirl's Full Review: David Morrell - Creepers: Library Edition
I have read other novels by David Morrell in the past and enjoy their fast pace and their suspense. They don't fit neatly into a genre, such as crime or suspense novel though. They are hard to define because they usually have lots of twists and turns and excitement built over generally regular circumstances. This novel was no different as far as structure of the book, though I thought both sets of bad guys in this book were not fleshed out well enough to make them believable.
The main character Frank hires on with a urban exploring group, known in the community as creepers. What they do is not really legal, as far as exploring decayed and abandoned buildings. But what they do is not really harmful either other than perhaps trespassing. But in this case they are after a secret treasure, some gold coins supposedly left behind by the former eccentric owner.
However, the other members of the exploration team do not know about the secret deal between Frank and the professor. He passes himself off as a journalist writing a story on them. But he seems just a little too resourceful, though they are glad he came along when Vinnie nearly falls through a rotten floor and Frank saves him from falling several floors.
I liked the concept of this book. Explorers going after the unknown, with a historical aspect added by going after an eccentric's hidden treasure. It had elements of a suspense story, which is the type of book I generally like to read. The story was set in New Jersey, which isn't your typical novel setting. So I appreciated a different setting.
Some aspects of the story were weak though. The characters didn't have much background or backbone. There is more information given about the dead guy who owns the building they are exploring than about any of the characters. Since Frank ends up being the real main character and not the professor, some information is given about him, but not enough to make him into the greedy treasure hunter that he seemed to be. And for being "urban explorers" who have supposedly done this dozens of times, they turn out to have nerves of jelly. They have problems that I won't get into and all of a sudden its like Frank has the only brain. Even the bad guys don't seem to have much motivation.
The cover description leads you to believe that the problems they run into while exploring this old building are supernatural. They are not. Which is a better in a way, since I am often very disappointed in the explanatory endings of horror stories. On the other hand it was misleading when the danger turned out to be human, making it more of an ordinary story.
And after a point, the story seems to be very MacGyver-like. Frank keeps pulling solutions out of a hat. It almost got to be predictable, like something is about to happen to them again...oh never mind Frank's got it covered.
Bottom line, is the story line was suspenseful enough to keep reading, but the writing skill was not good enough to give this book a higher rating. I felt the writer took an interesting concept and made it into a rather ordinary story. David Morrell has certainly written better stories than this one.
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