Pranks

by Dennis J. Higman

It was Halloween night and the kids were dressed to kill. All they wanted was a little harmless fun on that foggy October evening -- a little revenge against the uptight, solid citizens of Puget Sound who looked down on them. — A few overturned garbage cans, a couple of smashed pumpkins, a cherry bomb or two, that was their plan. But as it grew darker and windier, their pranks turned meaner and nastier. Pets died, so did some livestock. And as the storm moved in, the kids were seized by an overpowering force of evil, compelling them to commit fearful acts of violence.

Driven by mindless bloodlust, tormented by forbidden urges, the children of Puget Sound went on a rampage of death and destruction; murder became their favorite trick and their victims' only treat was to die quickly....

Genres: Horror, Halloween, Fiction

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

So many people in this book deserve to die, and so few of them do.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pranks, published in 1983 by Leisure Horror is mislabeled as 'occult' on the cover, but still a surprisingly good read for what it is. Set around Halloween on a small island by Seattle, the story revolves around 'Bucky', a 13 year old teenager, along with two of his friends. Bucky is basically a 'bad seed' to be sure-- at least a sociopath, but perhaps a psychopath. The entire story takes place in two days-- Halloween eve and the next day-- but along the way we get introduced to just about the entire island population. Bucky and friends decide to play some 'pranks' on Halloween, starting small like spray painting phallic symbols on the bridge to the island and then proceeding to terrorize an old woman's sheep with spray paint; that prank ends with Bucky kicking a sheep to death. A little later, some of the pranks involve death...

What made this a fun read involves all the colorful characters who live on the island and we have multiple POVs driving them around so to speak. Bucky's parents include a pedophile and a ex-hooker for example. The characters come alive on the page, even if we are only with them for a little while. How this got labeled 'occult' is beyond me and must have been simply a bizarre marketing ploy, but 80s horror was its own thing. Probably not worth finding out a copy, but if you come across one, you could do much worse! 3 solid pulpy stars!!

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book cover really pulls a prank on it's readers. There was some hell raising, but no damned vomited up from hell. All we get is a rotten 13 year old kid who is a raving schizoid. He kills a few locals and terrorizes others. All the while we look in to the lives of various people who may or may not come in contact with him. The book runs around in too many circles to be more than a slight entertaining pot boiler.

[Ken Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

BAD SEED in PEYTON PLACE gives a better description of this fast, funny read than the one suggested by the misleadingly lurid cover. That crazy cover pitch made this one of the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, and you have to love it for promising that "Hell vomits up the damned" in its pages even though the closest to vomiting anything comes late in the book's anticlimactic second half, when the petulant heroine's parents force her to eat her peas:
"her mother had insisted she have at least one spoonful with every meal when she was living at home. Jan obediently gulped them down with a glass of milk. They made her feel as if she were about to gag."
The author does a good job juggling the large cast and writes a few exciting action scenes. However, the ending falls flat and the whole thing is marred by an awful character so stereotyped that it's no surprise to eventually learn he was just waiting to serve as a lazy plot device all along. Which is not to suggest this book is at all plot-driven. The bulk of this story, of adults so caught up pursuing politics and sexy feelings that they barely notice the killer kid's poky rampage, is more interested in cartoonish but entertaining social satire like the standout Halloween party scene. Here, banker Dave keeps an eye on the kids:
"Out on the tiny sawdust floor, Carrie, his eight year old daughter, enthusiastically danced. Carrie had all the moves, Dave noted, including the come-hither glances. She threw her tiny hips around and snapped her fingers smoothly.
"Come on, silly," she called to her partner.
She was too young to act that way, wasn't she? Dave didn't know; he'd have to ask Kathy. Where would Carrie have learned all that?"

[Zack Long · Rating 1 out of 5]

The back of this book is a fucking lie.
Nothing really happens for 400 pages. Nothing that is set up actually pays off. It doesn't even have a proper ending, it just stops.

[Arin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cover made it sound like the kids get possessed and start terrorizing the town. This is not the case. It is one boy, and he is just a psychopath.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

An entirely overly-padded soap opera version of The Bad Seed meets The Good Son that has none of the dreaded or suspense of either.

[Russell Holbrook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even though it wasn't quite what I expected, I still enjoyed reading this. I liked the gloomy, dreary atmosphere. I also liked the element of the kids in peril without the aid of the unbelieving adults. There wasn't much violence, though, but there was an unintentionally hilarious old man who was the patriarch of an unintentionally hilarious family. Or, maybe the characters are all meant to satirize small town families and their society? I'm not sure. Anyway, I had a good time reading this even though it doesn't deliver the promises made on the cover.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read on plane trip to Hawaii, quick great read.

[Jeff Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone curious about Dennis J. Higman’s 1983 novel “Pranks,” probably wants to know: how is it as a ‘Paperback from Hell’?

The answer: rather mediocre. First off, the packaging—such as the back-cover synopsis—is misleading. SPOILERS…
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That synopsis leads us to believe that the novel takes place over a Halloween night, and features multiple kids becoming murderous, possibly spurred by a supernatural element. In fact, Halloween is over before the book’s halfway point, there’s really only one kid who’s murderous, and there’s no supernatural element.

Really, being curious about “Pranks” and then reading it is mostly frustrating, i.e., there are glimpses of what could’ve been a great ‘Paperback from Hell’ and an essential Halloween novel, but it falls short, instead getting bogged down by too many characters.

And that’s another thing: for a book that’s overlong, the frustration compounds in that it ends too abruptly, leaving multiple plot threads unresolved. Examples: why is so much emphasis put on the relationships between the main characters, then never revisited? Like, we don’t know if the young couple are still mad at each other, and whatever happened to Bucky’s stepfather [something set-up as a major plot point, then quietly abandoned]?).

Guess the author had a deadline.

2.5/5

[Conal Cochran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decently written, and with some icky and sleazy set-ups, but the murderous hordes of kids implied on the back cover is really just a generic 'evil kid' and his half-hearted cronies, and the stormy Halloween night is over a third of the way through. The raw material is here for something truly nasty but it just fizzles.

[Kristi Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This definitely kept me interested. The ending stopped so quickly I thought there should be something after it. Good read though.

[Adam Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a lot of book for what it is, and very readable and coherent and detailed, but there’s not a lot of there, there.