Cover

Rating:
Summary: Not His Best but Not His Worst Either
Review: A trend I'm noticing in Jack's books is that his characters aren't always very believable, especially the women...he just doesn't write women very well. But at least the women in this book have a little more depth than some of his other books.

I enjoyed "Cover". My favorites by Jack are still "The Girl Next Door" and "Off Season" though. I'm about to try "Hide and Seek" and hope it lives up to it's reviews!

This is a good little quick story.

Rating:
Summary: Actually a pretty good read!
Review: I have recently become quite a Ketchum fan and would highly recommend this book. It's actually easy to get this one at a somewhat reasonable price and it's worth it. Sure, it's not his best but still very good. Ketchum knows how to get your attention and reel you in. I only give it four stars because Off Season, Offspring, Hide and Seek and maybe The Crossings are all five star Ketchum books. Good luck finding the first three though for less than forty bucks a pop. Will someone please keep this guys books in print?

Rating:
Summary: Not Ketchum's Best
Review: Jack Ketchum has written some of the best horror/suspense titles of the '80's and '90's--check out OFF SEASON, JOYRIDE, HIDE AND SEEK, and (if you've got the nerve for it), THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. He can probably be compared in some ways with Richard Laymon or Joe R. Lansdale in that he usually tells a very stripped-down, bare bones story. None of the self-indulgent bloat and needless flashbacks that mar most of the horror genres bestselling writers. COVER has a very exciting premise: A group of people on a weekend outing in the woods are hunted down by a psychotic Vietnam vet. And had Ketchum used his usual bare-knuckled formula of throwing you right into the story, right into the action, this would have been very good. Unfortunately, it takes a good hundred pages before ANYTHING happens. His characters don't work here, either. The Viet vet is very good, a very comendable portrayal of the suffering and needless horror of war. But the others characters, particularly the egotistic has-been writer Kelsey, are not believable nor exactly likeable. As an example of how ridiculous this gets, Kelsey has a beautiful, rich and powerful wife who is friends with Kelsey's ultra-beautiful, rich and powerful supermodel mistress. They both go on the weekend campout, happily. Yeah, right! (...) As it is, this one just doesn't work. You almost get the feeling that Ketchum was trying to write a mainstream literary work here, but at the last moment knew it wouldn't sell, so he through in some horror elements. Read his other books, though, you won't be disappointed.