Piper

by Brett Rutherford, John Robertson

The town of Elliot would have liked nothing better than to put up a billboard that reads NOTHING EVER HAPPENS IN OUR TOWN. But after the children's clinic burned to the ground, that was no longer true. Suddenly, for police officer Eddie Hecht, it seemed every night brought a bizarre new crime, another gruesome murder. And the crazy thing was, each case somehow involved a child...

Ten-year-old Timmy Hecht knew something big was happening because his dad was always on duty. And when he came home he was too grouchy and tired to hear about Timmy's new friend, the one who came to his window at night and asked him things. Things about school. Things about the other children. It must be lonely out there in the cold and dark. Maybe next time, Timmy would go out and play with him, and bring all his friends...

Genres: Horror, Pulp, Halloween, Fiction

463 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 4 out of 5]

463 pages may seem like overkill for a novel about a bunch of creepy possessed kids on the rampage in a small town, and it is, but I thought it was a blast. Like Rutherford’s The Lost Children, it’s extremely pulpy and over-the-top (and cliche-filled), so don’t go in expecting some overlooked masterpiece. But it’s pretty much the ideal campy Zebra novel, one that’s relatively well-written, absolutely ridiculous, and culminating in an epic night of death and destruction on Halloween.

It’s too bad Rutherford didn’t write more trashy horror, as this and The Lost Children are two of the better examples I’ve experienced in recent years. It’s pure mindless, tasteless fun, with more than a handful of outrageous and/or disturbing scenes of child vs adult carnage. It becomes totally unhinged in the latter portions, in a way that surprised me.

So, 4 stars for those like me who dig this sort of thing, but it’s probably a 1 star read for everyone else.

ETA: This book has been re-issued in digital form as The Halloween Game. I don’t believe it’s been updated or “modernized,” thankfully.

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are books that are good, and then there are books about thousands of children embarking on a murder spree on Halloween and getting machine gunned by their neighbors. This is the latter.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Rutherford's The Lost Children blew me away, Piper proved to be a much slower burn and creepier; also, while The Lost Children was OTT trashy and funny, Piper seemed much more serious. I really liked this, but it felt like a different author; maybe because he co-wrote this with John Robertson.

While largely set in the small town of Elliot, Pennsylvania, this started off with a couple of people plying the backwaters of Appalachia trying to track down someone. Obviously, something really bad happened in Elliot and these two survivors are trying to make sure that that something will not happen again. The main tale takes off a few months before the 'something bad' happened. Our two searchers are our main characters. Chris, a lovely dynamo how now runs the local paper after taking over from her uncle, and Hecht, the town sheriff.

What kicks the story off concerns a horrible fire at a local medical center, private, that essentially houses and teaches retarded children; the fire killed several kids and was obviously arson. Chris starts digging-- who would want to burn down such a place? Hecht is under orders from the mayor to keep a lid on it to maintain the town's image. Elliot is actually thriving, a vibrant small town in Pennsylvania, and these are few and far between in the 1980s. In any case, shortly after the fire, an old 'bag lady' is horribly murdered right in the town's main square. Are these events related?

Several other story arcs serve to flesh out the tale. We are introduced to the local Catholic priest and some other more sinister figures who wear the collar. We also soon learn that two children have not been accounted for at the clinic's fire and they come to play a central role in the story. We also have a sadistic gym teacher at the local elementary school who dies in a spectacular manner, as does an elderly nun at the church convent in town. All this before things start to get out of hand...

I mentioned this is a slow burn and it also had some pacing issues. Starting the novel with postscript rather than a prologue doesn't often work well, but it fits here. What the authors did do quite well consisted of building up a good creepy factor and tension as the novel unfolds. I loved The Lost Children due to it being so OTT and trashy. Piper? This seemed more like a go at a 'serious' horror novel and it does work as that, but I still missed the dark humor and camp in his other work. 3.5 stars, rounding up!!

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imagine if The Omen, Of Mice and Men, Children of the Corn and Deliverance had a psychic, albino baby and you've some idea of what to expect from Piper. Hack novelist Brett Rutherford conjures a tale of an idyllic small town in New York terrorized by a boy from deepest Appalachia who possesses psychic powers, that allow him to control the minds of other kids. Along with a hulking, simple-minded compatriot, they advance quickly from mischief to wholesale murder of the town's adults, seemingly for the hell of it. Some ineffectual grown-ups (a Sheriff whose son is enchanted by the villain, a perky TV reporter, a straight-laced Catholic priest) try to figure out what's happening as the body count rises, not suspecting the answer's right under their noses. Rutherford's book mishmashes every '80s horror cliché imaginable: evil kids, satanic cults, deranged hillbillies, cloistered small towns, abusive teachers, drugs (at one point, the murders are blamed on the kids smoking marijuana!), trick-or-treaters wearing Reagan masks. There are no surprises, just pedestrian prose and cardboard characters who are prodigies of bad taste (especially the framing chapters set in rural Pennsylvania, treated as a mixture of 19th Century Mississippi and Mars). The sub-Stephen King murder scenes are too dumb to scare, though I chuckled at the teacher murdered in a pool by demonically-possessed synchronized swimmers! Naturally, the plot climaxes with the whole town massacred by children on Halloween, except for a few hearty souls who pick up rifles to blow away their wayward offspring. Fairly representative of '80s pulp horror, with few real scares and only a surfeit of taste-free madness to commend it.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A baby is born in the Appalachia region of Pennsylvania, probably through incest. It seems that an ancient order of monks thinks he is the chosen one for their cause. The child is not able to talk. He communicates through thought. He winds up in an institution in Elliot New York where a giant fire breaks out and children escape. The kids in town soon turn strange. People start to die that the children hate. The Sherrif, a priest and a local reporter have to try and save the town from it's offspring. Then comes Halloween, and the mayhem really begins.

Another great Zebra horror book. Kind of like "Village Of The Damned". Pre-teens and teenagers cause all kinds of terror. The only thing that could have made this better, would have been an expanded Halloween night of horror.

[Lance Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I was rating the cover this would be a solid five stars. Unfortunately, the story doesn't live up to it. It's like Children of the Corn, but without the corn and less successful kids. That cover though. That is a thing of beauty.

[David Denoyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up PIPER years ago after reading about it in the immaculate PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, as the brief description intrigued me. Overall what you have is a mix of THE OMEN meets CHILDREN OF THE CORN and even a touch of THE FURY. When a fire claims the wing of Children’s Hospital in the small town of Elliot, the local sheriff, newspaper owner, and a priest come together to find out what is going on as a couple murders take place all with the children acting stranger & stranger as time goes. A fun read but at 463 pages, you really have to stick it out to make it to the infamous climax on Halloween, which happens in the last 60 pages. The characters are great but the story is all over the place, keeping the reader turning the pages as more & more backstory is presented with some gruesome murders & chilling scenes thrown in as well. Overall not a bad read, but for what this book is currently going for now on bookseller sites, you can probably find better reads honestly. That all said, if you can read the last 60 pages of carnage & chaos, you won’t be disappointed.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5

PUBLISHED AS “THE HALLOWEEN GAME” for kindle version.

Not nearly as bad as it could’ve been, but it’s still pretty bad. “Children of the Corn” and “Omen” are strained efforts at most, but “Piper”, which obviously rips off both those stories, just drags on and on…

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cliffhanger much?