“Perfect Little Angels” by Andrew Neiderman

Didn’t deliver what it promised. -- 2-1/2 Stars

I decided to read “Perfect Little Angels” based on a glowing blurb by one of my favorite authors, Dean R. Koontz.  Koontz promised, “Scary from the first to the last page!”

Not for this reader, no.

According to the summary on the back of the book, not to mention its title, “Perfect Little Angels” is about strange teenagers living in a community called Elysian Fields.  The teenagers here do not rebel in any way, they do everything that is expected of them at all times, always, like good little boys and girls.  “Because in Elysian Fields,” the summary proclaims, “there are horribly effective ways to turn disobedient children into ...”  You get the idea.

Okay, this sounded sort of like “The Stepford Wives,” except that it’s the children, rather than the wives, who are the target.  I liked “The Stepford Wives,” and with an endorsement from Koontz, how could I go wrong?

My biggest problem with “Perfect Little Angels” was that I felt the summary, and even the title, were misleading.

The basics are there.  Elysian Fields has weirdly straight laced teenagers, but it’s not just them.  All the parents are weirdly uptight, too.  And then the protagonist, Justine, moves in, and ... she immediately starts falling right in line.  What?

Eventually, Justine does become the suspicious (but frustratingly helpless and unimaginative) hero, but only after one of the supporting characters, Lois, rattles her cage and tries to get her to stop taking the mysterious Doctor Lawrence’s vitamin (“The Good Pill”).  If we are to follow my comparison to “The Stepford Wives,” it would be as if Katharine Ross fell right in line with the uptight ladies in Stepford, and only started getting suspicious by following Paula Prentiss’ lead.

In short, Elysian Fields is a weird place all around, with even subdued wildlife.  From this reader’s perspective, this hardly warrants calling it “Perfect Little Angels,” since the kids are NOT the focus of the mystery.  It would be like calling “The Lord of the Rings” something like “Gollum.”

There is another plot line that was not even mentioned in the summary, and that is only connected to the Elysian Fields plot in that they are both overseen by Doctor Lawrence.  Something is wrong with the doctor’s son, Eugene, who has many different psychological/mental problems, and it’s even implied that he might be his father’s own Frankenstein monster.  On that last note, I will risk sharing a “spoiler” just enough to tell you that this implication never goes anywhere, not even in the exposition filled epilogue.

I could go on, about how Justine’s story takes forever to get going, while Eugene seems to just sit and wait for something to happen.  And then, when things finally come to a head ... it’s over.  Just like that.  The book manages to feel both too long and too short at the same time.

The prose itself is fine, which would prompt me to give it 2 stars rather than 1.  And the only thing that prompted me to nudge it up the extra half star is this:

In spite of one story line that felt misrepresented and another story line that barely goes anywhere, I did fine myself curious as to what would happen next, reading through the last 60 or so pages faster than my normal pace.

So the author had SOMETHING going for him, even if I still closed the book feeling dissatisfied overall.