cover image The Land of Nod

The Land of Nod

Mark A. Clements. Dutton Books, $21.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-1-55611-442-7

Supernatural horror novels featuring adults confronting fears and mysteries from their childhood have been made common by King and others, so elements of Clements's latest seem too familiar. Yet in exploring-via a peculiar haunting-the powers of belief and imagination, the author of Lorelei and Children of the End turns in an involving yarn, pitching some new twists into an old formula. Nightmares about his youth drive 40-something attorney Jeff Dittimore to return to his childhood town, where further apparitions and uncanny conversations with friends from his past lead him to understand what happened many years earlier, when his two school chums disappeared. Finally, Dittimore joins the apparitions and childhood friends in ``the land of Nod,'' a realm that is both real and not-real, to fight for himself and others against monstrous forces. Through strong characters and atmospheric settings, and by varying Dittimore's present-day, first-person narrative with a few third-person excursions into his protagonist's childhood, Clements delivers yet another soundly told and entertaining, if rather traditional, horror tale. (Aug.)