Dark Summer

by Mark Upton, Lawrence Sanders

It was a summer just like any other in ritzy Penlow Park. Until the beautiful Diane Cheney arrived—the mysterious raven-haired widow who radiated sexuality... She spread her dark sexual spell on them all—and on their marriages.

On Paul Fayette, the contented, suburban banker and on his happy tomboy wife Laura. On the philandering Clint Stahl and his discontented, wanton wife Margaret. Mrs Cheney played all things to all lovers. Victim to the master. Aunt to the small boy. Taskmaster to the wanton. Romantic lover to the girl-child. And she corrupted goodness wherever she found it...

Her time at Penlow Park became the Dark Summer that changed their lives forever...

Genres: Horror, Fiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life in Penlow Park, a luxury enclave in upstate New York, is enjoying the late 70s with a mixture of money, sex and good living. Paul and Laura Fayette are middle-aged, empty-nesters - he works in a bank in Manhattan, she is a housewife - who love each other dearly, share everything and enjoy the physicality of their relationship. Their friends, Clint and Margaret Stahl, are not quite so lucky however - he works for Paul and chases anything in a skirt, not bothering to hide it from his wife who is seemingly resigned to this life. Into this - and the Penlow Park Country Club - come widowed Diane Cheney and her father, Colonel Benjamin Coulter. The widow Cheney turns everyone’s heads and, with Coulter’s seemingly unlimited funds and penchant for magic tricks, they soon have the town under their spell. As one of the blurbs reads, “[widow Cheney] materialises again and again, further enticing and ensaring Paul, Laura, Clint and Margaret, setting them forever outside the bounds of society as they once knew it. DARK SUMMER is a novel of ordinary, comfortable life going suddenly, fatally askew...” And I wouldn’t argue with that.
A book of two halves, the first is a fairly intimate portrayal of long-term marriage and a couple still in love (though the description of Laura is brutally honest, even if it does embrace her age) that works well - Paul worries about work, they both worry about their children (away at college) and their place in the world and I liked it a lot. Clint and Margaret are the opposite to this, narked and narky with each other, their relationship doomed from the moment we meet them. The introduction of Widow Cheney and the Colonel shifts the book into something else altogether, pushing the book into thriller and then supernatural territory in ways that are sometimes laboured, sometimes wonderfully subtle. Sex oozes through the pages, between the couples and their outside conquests, through fantasies and fears that aren’t expressed to loving partners but still acted out by others and Upton seems to relish this though it’s not explicit - there are lots of mentions of moistness and thatches, but nothing graphic. The pacing in the first half is good, as is the writing - a lot of short, clipped sentences (Lawrence Sanders - Upton was his pseudonym - is famous for writing crime novels) including a whole paragraph opening Chapter Two with no full stops - but it seems to lose its way in the centre (as if it’s struggling with the switch from reality to supernatural). It picks up again, especially after three people are vividly killed in a house fire and rattles towards the ending, which is abrupt and unexpected and ever-so-slightly odd. The main characters work, even if their thinking processes feel a bit alien to a modern reader and the elusiveness of Cheney and the Colonel (we never really find out who or what they are) is well done. I enjoyed this, it’s not great art and doesn’t pretend to be, but it’s competently put together and entertaining and if you like sleazy late 70s thrillers, you’ll probably enjoy this.

[Latoya Ndlovu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't usually write reviews on here but I just had to for this book (my first review was not posted so let me give it another go). This book could have been so much more but honestly it was a bit of a mess. I don't appreciate books that are left in the air or up for interpretation because we never learn what Diane and/or the Colonel really wanted (what was their motive for disrupting these people's lives and were they even really related?). The ending was really surprising because why would Paul and Laura do all of that for an apparition (or succubus or whatever she was)? Also, Margaret and the Colonel? We never really learn the truth and that was really really disappointing. Also, we can't not talk about the offensive terms that are all over this book. So I would recommend this book if you enjoy making up your own interpretations, sprinkled with some offensive language of course.

[Hugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly indebted to Peyton Place in its depiction of the hard-working idle rich, overburdened with ennui and gossip, and sliding gradually into darker, supernatural territory, before a shocking turn of events and then a rather rushed ending, leaving its antagonists unexplained and largely unexplored.