ABBOT POND

Young women are disappearing in a small Maine town, and the reason may be connected to a teenager who recently survived a drug overdose in Hobbs’ supernatural thriller.

As he has previously, the author sets his novel in Maine and openly references Stephen King. In the community of Abbot Pond—named after a good-sized body of water that’s taken its share of lives—Jack and Maureen Morgan are a bighearted couple whose shaky marriage hasn’t stopped them from successfully fostering troubled children, including young Freddie, who’s now their son. Their latest charge is Danny, a teen from a drug-ridden background; in fact, he was once clinically dead, due to an overdose, and revived. Ever since, he’s had memory problems, but he’s also shown considerably more empathy and altruism than he did before. Danny does volunteer work in a seedy local nursing home alongside a few other civic-minded youths, including a girl named Parker, who uses a wheelchair after a car accident that left her unable to walk. It turns out that Danny’s near-death experience has given him heightened intuition (“I see things better than most people”) and may also have provided him with healing powers. However, after Jack discovers the dead body of a high school basketball player and Parker becomes the latest in a series of young women to go missing, Danny’s powers and Freddie’s courage will be put to the test. Hobbs tells this story in fairly subdued, matter-of-fact prose that recalls King but trends closer to the lean, down-to-business, page-turning writing of that author’s Richard Bachman books rather than the wildly indulgent verbiage of Itand other cinder blocks. It nicely evokes the concerns of its young characters and visits common themes of YA horror-suspense novels, including the victimization and exploitation of juveniles. For the most part, though, the book conjures more unease than outright frights, and the gore quotient is nicely restrained for a horror tale. Overall, it’s a satisfying, small-scale paranormal drama that will particularly appeal to an adolescent-and-up demographic.

A subtle but sturdy novel that treads familiar ground but stands firmly on its own.