Middle of the Night, by Riley Sager
Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I picked “Middle of the Night” up because a Goodreads friend recommended it. In hindsight, I really should have known better. Riley Sager has been wildly uneven for me, and this novel lands firmly on the wrong side of that divide.
At first, the setup works. A vanished boy, a suburban cul-de-sac, a traumatised adult returning to the scene of childhood horror, sleepless nights, uneasy neighbours, dark woods. That is exactly the sort of material from which a properly creepy thriller can be made. Sager knows how to build that initial itch of dread, and for a while I kept reading in the hope that the book would cash in on its atmosphere.
»The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle…«
The problem is that the novel gradually mistakes strangeness for depth. What begins as eerie and potentially poignant becomes weird in a way that feels more contrived than unsettling. The story grows increasingly complicated without becoming richer, and by the time the final reveals arrive, they are so hard to believe that the whole thing starts to wobble. Instead of sharpening the mystery, Sager piles on elements that make it feel overworked and oddly insubstantial.
That is especially disappointing because he has done this sort of thing better before. “Home Before Dark” (review) balanced ambiguity, atmosphere, and revelation with real finesse, while “The Last Time I Lied” (review) had a tauter grip on suspense and a much better sense of narrative control. Even “Lock Every Door” (review), which I found deeply flawed, at least had a strong central setting and a cleaner hook. “Middle of the Night” feels messier than all of them. It wants to be spooky, emotional, nostalgic, and twisty all at once, but never develops enough substance in any one direction to make the whole convincing.
What annoyed me most was not even the outlandishness itself, but the sense that Sager expected atmosphere and complication to do the heavy lifting for characters and meaning. They do not. In the end, this was weird, hollow, and capped by an ending I simply did not buy. After this and the even worse “Survive the Night” (review), my patience with Riley Sager has worn out.
Two stars out of five.
Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam
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