Allison's Baby

by Mike Stone

Returning to her hometown in the Catskills after inheriting her aunt's house, Allison finds herself trapped in a nightmare when she falls prey to a crazed doctor planning to use her and her unborn child in a deadly experiment

Genres: Horror

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Congratulations, Allison! I know you thought a xylophone was falling down the stairs, but it was just me, your friendly skeleton doctor, bringing you a baby." - Things you never want to hear from your physician. Learn more about the shortcoming of skeleton doctors. It's a real problem!

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a little more, but alas, Stone served up a slice of tropey pulp here with a 'paint by the numbers' feel. Our main protagonist, Allison, has not had an easy life to date. This starts off with a brief prologue of poor Allison wandering around her grand aunt's 'estate' where she was warned not to go, where she finds a little cottage... Flash forward 15 years and Allison is now married and living in Brooklyn and hoping to get pregnant.

Stone dishes out Allison's back story in dribs and drabs. At age 13, her parents were killed in an accident and she had to go live with her great aunt, who has an old farmhouse and some land in the Catskills. The aunt has a 'rep', however, among the people in town as her son is retarded and rumored to be crazy; poor Allison is tared with the same brush and makes no friends. After some event (not telling to avoid spoilers!), her aunt ships her off to some Catholic boarding school and refuses any further contact whatsoever. Allison eventually gets a degree in library science and after some pushing, a job in NYC.

Stone presents Allison as an object of pity, one wronged by life in general, but I found her pretty hard to sympathize with. Her husband is a cad and an asshole who she married to finally have a man. Overall, she comes off as a huge flake so it is hard to root for her. Stone also tosses in the proverbial mad scientists-- neurosurgeons who work in town closest to Allison's aunt's property-- who seem to love carving off bits of people's brains while they are still alive to see how memories are impacted. Total cliché city here. Finally, toss in a lawyer who specializes in medial malpractice who Allison meets at the NYC library (and of course they fall in love with one another) and pound out the predictable plot piece by piece. This was not horrible, but not very good either. 2 weak stars.

Finally, what is with the cover? It seems like Dell tried to sell this by making it look like a Zebra novel, complete with the skeleton and kid (baby in this case) that has nothing to do with the story, but Zebra's cover art was so much better that this looks like a cheap knockoff. Meh.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Allison. Her parents died at a young age. She moved in with an emotionally distant Aunt. She grew up sexually repressed. Married a man who was a selfish gambler that is in debt. She has a job in a library that she likes, but one day she is raped by the janitor. She moves back, with her husband to her aunt's house, who has passed away, where she grew up and where strange things happen. Now she's pregnant. Who's the father? What's to become of the baby?

When I saw this book in the discount bin I could of swore it was one of those crazy, fun Zebra horror books of the 80's. It turns out it was published by Dell. The characters were pretty thin. There really was no twists. The author tried, but you can see them coming if you pay attention. Things turn out like you would expect after you are into this a bit. Still, not a bad time waster if your not to picky.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good easy read to start the Halloween/October season. Nostalgic atmosphere, easy conversation, not much thinking involved, creepy in parts.