STORM FEAR

Another story of fugitives seeking concealment, this concerns a farm family and their unwanted guests, who are snowbound in their hideaway. The coming of the charming Uncle Charlie and his two partners in crime, the perverted Benjie and the dubious Belle, who have botched up a bank job and murdered to boot, stirs sleeping hate in his sick brother and love in his sister-in-law. The youngster Davey responds to Charlie's warmth as his mother had before him, and when Charlie insists that he try to take the fugitives across the mountain to escape, he accepts, mindful of the power-hungry pervert who has already attacked his mother. Davey goes and sees Belle left to die in the cold, kills the pervert, and sets fire to a sap house to bring help -- a measure which deprives Charlie of his freedom but brings the hospital care which cannot save his life. The melodramatic elements of his first novel and the thought-speech which seem unrealistic for a twelve-year-old deplete the force of a story which has suspense and touches of realism.