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The Sweetwater Point Motel
When his sister-in-law and her daughters disappear on a trip from New York to Charleston, Philip Barrows, an English physician, makes his first trip to the United States, in order to find them.
- GenresHorror
299 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 18, 2013
Deeply unpleasant, a sort of 'Last House on the Left' in novel form, and not unlike the work of Jack Ketchum: a touring mother-daughters trio from England runs afoul of a pair of amoral sociopaths and their dim-witted lackey and are subjected to their cruel, perverse games; meanwhile, the victims' frantically searching relative draws ever closing to them, but only after the worst has already occurred. Like 'Last House', this is full of atrocities, but just as that film cannot be dismissed as mere exploitation, this is also well-written and suspenseful enough to keep the reader turning pages and hoping that the vicious bastards will soon get what's coming to them.
June 15, 2020
The Sweetwater Point Motel doesn't actually advertise itself as horror. The spine classification is "novel", but I've seen it pop up enough on various lists of "horror fiction" over the years that I figure the classification has been made after-the-fact. It actually wasn't uncommon, especially in the early 80's, for horror books to be labeled as something else. Some publishers sub-imprinted their various lines to differentiate their genres, which is how red-headed stepchild publisher Zebra came into being as a throw-off from Kensington. Other publishers published horrible things under their main line but eschewed the 'Horror' label in the hopes of attracting a wider audience. Such is the case with Jove, who published mainly romance, crime fiction, and westerns.
"Crime Fiction" certainly describes The Sweetwater Point Motel, and I'm sure this is what the editors were thinking when they published this paperback edition in 1983. But if you're going to make "The most terrifying novel since Psycho!" the tagline of your novel, I'm sorry, but I'm going to assume it's horror and react accordingly. That's my story, I'm sticking to it, and if almost-certainly-pseudonymous author Peter Saab wants to set the record straight, then he, she, or they are more than welcome to speak. Given it's been thirty-five years and nobody's been willing to stand up and take the credit/blame for this anal expulsion, it's safe to say we'll never know the truth. Rumor has it this is Peter Straub phoning it in under a pseudonym, but I've read enough Straub to state confidently it's not him. The writer puts enough British turns of phrase into the mouths of his coastal Americans to reach two conclusions: first, whoever penned this resides across the Atlantic ocean; second, Jove's editors were laughably incompetent.
Premise-wise, The Sweetwater Point Motel starts out like a low-budget, thoroughly-80's version of Taken. Edith Burroughs and her two daughters (16-year old Abigail and 12-year old Katy) have flown to the United States to visit friends. Their plans were to arrive in New England, then drive down the coast to South Carolina. Overdue for their arrival, with no sign of them anywhere, Edith's brother-in-law Philip travels to the US to search them out and discover what happened.
Unlike Liam Neeson however, Philip is in possession of exactly zero special skills that make him a nightmare to potential kidnappers. He's an over-the-hill doctor who's never set foot in the US before. What he hopes to accomplish is anyone's guess, but since the police have found no evidence of foul play in their investigation, they're treating it like a typical missing persons' case and not a kidnapping or homicide. As far as US cops are concerned, Edith skipped town with her daughters and went incommunicado to begin a new life in a new country with a new beau. All Philip has is a feeling this wouldn't have happened without at least a telephone call or letter, but that's enough to get him on a plane and behind the wheel of a rental car.
The first seventy pages are from Philip's perspective as he encounters the culture shock of America's seedy obsession with pornography, apathy from the police assigned to the case, and a mounting fear something awful has happened to his sister-in-law and nieces. From there, the novel swaps to Edith's view to explain what happened to the trio as they made their way down the coast. On an unfamiliar road, Edith gets the car stuck in a ditch. At first she's pleased as punch when three teenagers, James, Candice, and Tommy, find them. James, it turns out, has family who own a nearby motel. Sweetwater Point Motel is currently closed for the season, but his relatives won't care if they go inside and help themselves to shelter from the wretched weather. Thankful for the rescue, Edith and the girls join the teens for what they assume will be one night, two at the most, of sheltering from the storm.
As you can guess from the cover image, things very quickly go downhill for Edith, Abby, and Katy.
Your book has to be a particularly special sort of awful for Kirkus Review to not only hit it with a low rating but also spoil the ending, and that's exactly what happened to The Sweetwater Point Motel. The unnamed reviewer really did not want people picking up this book, which is described as "Foul, dumb, and sick-o" in their short-but-brutal evisceration. I hadn't read the review prior to picking up The Sweetwater Point Motel, but if I was told I had to keep my review to 300 words or less, it's the same template I would use. This book isn't the worst thing ever committed to paper, and I honestly can't say I enjoyed reading it beyond the knowledge that my write-up afterwards might warn other potential thrillseekers to keep their distances. That said, some people also really like pizza with anchovies, so maybe you're the one for whom The Sweetwater Point Motel is perfect.
You'll know if you're the intended target by how you find yourself responding to phrases like "lesbian rape", "child seduction", and "seriously, just so much sexual assault, you guys".
Despite the cover's promises and the fact half the book takes place in a motel, The Sweetwater Point Motel has nothing at all in common with Psycho. Cinema-wise the best comparison I could come up with is a film like The Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes. It's a pessimistic downer of a story, where increasingly horrible things are inflicted on completely innocent victims--even if the cavalry show up (and the cavalry haven't even been dispatched), Humpty Dumpty ain't getting put back together.
Saab's a competent writer, wasting no time plunging into the depravity that is the human condition, but he's got zero eye for character development. Philip's arc has him talking nicely with prostitutes in New York, visiting seedy porno shops where he finds himself buying a dirty magazine, and eventually crawling into bed with an underage waitress he meets at a greasy spoon joint who tries her best to help him find his family.
All this is intercut with scenes of bad things about to happen to Edith and the girls, bad things happening to Edith and the girls, or bad things having just concluded happening to Edith and the girls. And by 'bad things', of course, I mean 'rape'. Each of the teenage villains has his or her own quirks and qualms: James thinks Edith's quite the looker for her age; Tommy's got the hots for Abigail big time; Candice has her bisexual tart eyes firmly set on the undeveloped chest of twelve year old Katy.
Yes, it's exactly as squicky as you imagine.
In the hands of a better writer, say Jack Ketchum or J.A. Konrath, this story could have promise. Ketchum, for all the delight he seemed to take in seizing the worst humanity had to offer and beating readers over the head with it, still understood there was more to a shock story than the shock. Characters have to come first--we have to care about fictional constructs before we care what happens to them in anything more than a tut-tut and shake of the head fashion. Sadly, Saab (whoever he is) doesn't possess the stones to pull this off. He can deliver the awful settings, but he just can't make the reader care. As such, the book ends pretty much the way you would imagine a book like this ends. I won't spoil it like Kirkus Review, but suffice it to say you've read this one before and there's no point in rehashing old downers unless, as I said earlier, those phrases hold some magical appeal to you.
Two stomach-churning depictions of child molestation out of five.
"Crime Fiction" certainly describes The Sweetwater Point Motel, and I'm sure this is what the editors were thinking when they published this paperback edition in 1983. But if you're going to make "The most terrifying novel since Psycho!" the tagline of your novel, I'm sorry, but I'm going to assume it's horror and react accordingly. That's my story, I'm sticking to it, and if almost-certainly-pseudonymous author Peter Saab wants to set the record straight, then he, she, or they are more than welcome to speak. Given it's been thirty-five years and nobody's been willing to stand up and take the credit/blame for this anal expulsion, it's safe to say we'll never know the truth. Rumor has it this is Peter Straub phoning it in under a pseudonym, but I've read enough Straub to state confidently it's not him. The writer puts enough British turns of phrase into the mouths of his coastal Americans to reach two conclusions: first, whoever penned this resides across the Atlantic ocean; second, Jove's editors were laughably incompetent.
Premise-wise, The Sweetwater Point Motel starts out like a low-budget, thoroughly-80's version of Taken. Edith Burroughs and her two daughters (16-year old Abigail and 12-year old Katy) have flown to the United States to visit friends. Their plans were to arrive in New England, then drive down the coast to South Carolina. Overdue for their arrival, with no sign of them anywhere, Edith's brother-in-law Philip travels to the US to search them out and discover what happened.
Unlike Liam Neeson however, Philip is in possession of exactly zero special skills that make him a nightmare to potential kidnappers. He's an over-the-hill doctor who's never set foot in the US before. What he hopes to accomplish is anyone's guess, but since the police have found no evidence of foul play in their investigation, they're treating it like a typical missing persons' case and not a kidnapping or homicide. As far as US cops are concerned, Edith skipped town with her daughters and went incommunicado to begin a new life in a new country with a new beau. All Philip has is a feeling this wouldn't have happened without at least a telephone call or letter, but that's enough to get him on a plane and behind the wheel of a rental car.
The first seventy pages are from Philip's perspective as he encounters the culture shock of America's seedy obsession with pornography, apathy from the police assigned to the case, and a mounting fear something awful has happened to his sister-in-law and nieces. From there, the novel swaps to Edith's view to explain what happened to the trio as they made their way down the coast. On an unfamiliar road, Edith gets the car stuck in a ditch. At first she's pleased as punch when three teenagers, James, Candice, and Tommy, find them. James, it turns out, has family who own a nearby motel. Sweetwater Point Motel is currently closed for the season, but his relatives won't care if they go inside and help themselves to shelter from the wretched weather. Thankful for the rescue, Edith and the girls join the teens for what they assume will be one night, two at the most, of sheltering from the storm.
As you can guess from the cover image, things very quickly go downhill for Edith, Abby, and Katy.
Your book has to be a particularly special sort of awful for Kirkus Review to not only hit it with a low rating but also spoil the ending, and that's exactly what happened to The Sweetwater Point Motel. The unnamed reviewer really did not want people picking up this book, which is described as "Foul, dumb, and sick-o" in their short-but-brutal evisceration. I hadn't read the review prior to picking up The Sweetwater Point Motel, but if I was told I had to keep my review to 300 words or less, it's the same template I would use. This book isn't the worst thing ever committed to paper, and I honestly can't say I enjoyed reading it beyond the knowledge that my write-up afterwards might warn other potential thrillseekers to keep their distances. That said, some people also really like pizza with anchovies, so maybe you're the one for whom The Sweetwater Point Motel is perfect.
You'll know if you're the intended target by how you find yourself responding to phrases like "lesbian rape", "child seduction", and "seriously, just so much sexual assault, you guys".
Despite the cover's promises and the fact half the book takes place in a motel, The Sweetwater Point Motel has nothing at all in common with Psycho. Cinema-wise the best comparison I could come up with is a film like The Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes. It's a pessimistic downer of a story, where increasingly horrible things are inflicted on completely innocent victims--even if the cavalry show up (and the cavalry haven't even been dispatched), Humpty Dumpty ain't getting put back together.
Saab's a competent writer, wasting no time plunging into the depravity that is the human condition, but he's got zero eye for character development. Philip's arc has him talking nicely with prostitutes in New York, visiting seedy porno shops where he finds himself buying a dirty magazine, and eventually crawling into bed with an underage waitress he meets at a greasy spoon joint who tries her best to help him find his family.
All this is intercut with scenes of bad things about to happen to Edith and the girls, bad things happening to Edith and the girls, or bad things having just concluded happening to Edith and the girls. And by 'bad things', of course, I mean 'rape'. Each of the teenage villains has his or her own quirks and qualms: James thinks Edith's quite the looker for her age; Tommy's got the hots for Abigail big time; Candice has her bisexual tart eyes firmly set on the undeveloped chest of twelve year old Katy.
Yes, it's exactly as squicky as you imagine.
In the hands of a better writer, say Jack Ketchum or J.A. Konrath, this story could have promise. Ketchum, for all the delight he seemed to take in seizing the worst humanity had to offer and beating readers over the head with it, still understood there was more to a shock story than the shock. Characters have to come first--we have to care about fictional constructs before we care what happens to them in anything more than a tut-tut and shake of the head fashion. Sadly, Saab (whoever he is) doesn't possess the stones to pull this off. He can deliver the awful settings, but he just can't make the reader care. As such, the book ends pretty much the way you would imagine a book like this ends. I won't spoil it like Kirkus Review, but suffice it to say you've read this one before and there's no point in rehashing old downers unless, as I said earlier, those phrases hold some magical appeal to you.
Two stomach-churning depictions of child molestation out of five.
February 2, 2024
I fully bought this book because I loved the cover. The story itself was solid and enjoyable but some parts from the women's perspective just seemed perverse and unnecessary. Choosing a horror book is kind of a crap shoot, sometimes it's really good and other times its just someone's freak fantasy of violence against women. I can't recommend this book but I don't regret reading it since I did enjoy the detective aspect from Dr. Burrow's perspective.
Also this book is riddled with typos, I came across at least seven.
Also this book is riddled with typos, I came across at least seven.
April 4, 2026
The writing and the way the story initially unfolded was very good. However, I had no idea that the sexual assault on the mother and her two daughters was going to be so detailed. Thus, I could not continue to read it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 12, 2020
A mother and her 2 daughters from England visit America but get sidetracked by a team of killers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2020
too dirty
November 15, 2013
I found this for a buck and figured i try it out. I was a little disappointed. The writing was okay and the pace of the story dragged. The Dr Burrows parts were boring and too descriptive. The parts with the 3 women were good and interesting. The ending was not how i pictured it, but in the end justice was served. Don't think I'd reccommend or read this again.
March 26, 2014
This was a very hard-to-forget novel to read. The horrific events of rape, abuse, and molestation which a loving family are forced to endure is so heartrending and atrocious. Such a superb written novel because the terrible violence within was almost too much for me to continue reading. But, I did it.
October 12, 2022
Last Motel On The Left
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews