GHOST STORY - Peter Straub

There is just something so disturbing, so chilling, and so under-your-skin creepy about Peter Straub's Ghost Story, you can't help but also call it one of the best ghost stories ever written (and many have).  Telling the seemingly straightforward tale of four successful, wealthy older men who all share a common bond via a horrible secret from over fifty years ago, the weirdness begins when the bill comes due on that secret, and someone - or something - begins going after them one at a time to collect, their only even possible way out being to fess up to their past.  This is not a book to be read at night, or right before going to sleep (provided you can sleep, if reading it in bed in the first place); Straub's narrative is intricate and unsettling, slithering under your skin before you realize the creepy-crawlies are there rather than hitting you over the head with excessive blood and gore.  Instead, Ghost Story combines reality with fantasy so seamlessly and without effort, messing with your head, the reader will wonder what the heck is truly going on even as the pages fly by.  Chilling, and a genuine classic in the horror genre, worthy of comparison to Lovecraft or Poe.  ****1/2