Adams go to Paris on a summer vacation, young Bobby and Cindy Adams sneak inside their babysytter Barbara's bedroom in the dark of night to chloroform, tie and gag her. My point is that the innocence of children is coupled with a rage that makes them horrific, like little adults trapped in small cute elfen bodies not yet fully capable of the full destructive power of their older brethren. Each kid has their own horrid agenda and reasoning behind what they do and we are stuck in their heads for the majority of the time only leaving them to get sucked into Barbara's nightmarish vision as we are made to go through everything she goes through no matter how gruesome, humiliating and sickening.

The kids range in age from 10 to 17, and Barbara is tasked with babysitting the Adams children, Bobby who is 13 and Cindy, while their parents are in Europe for a week. Well, at least they did until Jack Ketchum blew up the literary world with "The Girl Next Door" which was based on the horrible Sylvia Likens murder in Indiana by a bunch of neighborhood delinquents. I found his descriptions to the point and some spots were breathtaking with its thought-provoking questions. A series of small victories inflicted on this woman who represents, in their minds, the entire unfeeling, egotistical adult world.

He was frequently described as having different ticks and spasms which at one point suggested maybe Tourette’s or schizophrenia.

The torture methods are too elaborate, the killer is a machete-wielding clown… there’s something there that makes it difficult to believe in, something that tells you “this is fiction. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged.

Barbara’s proper world turned seriously wrong when she woke up But Barbara wakes up to find herself tightly tied to a bed and gagged, with the faces of her charges—and three of their neighbor friends—grinning down at her. Because of this I wasn’t able to read physical books at all as we couldn’t leave a light on and I tried several book lights, but the act of trying to flip a page while reading with one hand just wasn’t possible. Dianne does, at one point, grab and twist one of Barbara’s breasts, but up until then, Johnson has downplayed those scenes to a degree. Light wear only to bright red boards with bright gilt titles on spine, edges tanned, light toning to end papers, pages are clean, binding is tight.

It's recently printed, but the cover work has that classic kitschy 80s styling with regard to font and cover image. The Third Reich isn't necessary; as far as I can reconstruct it, I figured I knew kids who would be torturing their babysitter to death if they were reasonably sure they could get away with it.Took a Level in Badass: Barbara almost manages to fight her way to freedom, all while still tied up. However, I have no tolerance for narrative that endorses victim blaming and other misconceptions surrounding rape culture. It stands as a strange and utterly true testament to the uniquely separate mind children have from adults and the dark nature we so quickly forget when we grow out of it.

Steve is the author of the novel Invisible, the novellas Wagon Buddy, Yuri and Jane: the 816 Chronicles and two collections of short stories; Frostbitten: 12 Hymns of Misery and Left Hand Path: 13 More Tales of Black Magick, the dark poetry collection Dim the Sun and his most recent release was the coming-of-age, urban legend tale The Girl Who Hid in the Trees. But it seems that after they frame a random dude who’s loitering in the grounds of the massive house of the murder, everyone just accepts this and asks no questions. Now they’re staying at the cabin at the end of season, in fact they’re the last campers before it closes for the winter. But these children are effluent and clever, and they soon become bored with the games they play with each other that can only go so far. If you are reading this review on Goodreads you’ll have already seen my star rating, but before I divulge it here, I wanted to go through a few things about my rating.They have been playing games together for years now, and those games have gradually become sadistic in nature.