Review of Leonardus G. Rougoor’s The Clock…
The Clock. Leonardus G. Rougoor, author (Black Opal Books, 2017). Siblings Elizabeth and Matthew Janssen, seventeen and eighteen, take a long summer vacation on Cape Cod with their parents. On their arrival, they start to explore their vacation cottage and discover a secret room containing an old grandfather clock with instructions inside on how to operate it as a time machine.
The time-travelers eventually discover two past murders and one suicide, the murders committed against Alice and John, kids living in the 1920s. Is Alice’s irascible uncle responsible and feeling so guilty he commits suicide? Are two evil strangers his accomplices?
In speculative fiction literature, a reader can find time-travel romances, fantasies, thrillers, and horror stories. This novel could be called a time-travel mystery for young adults. It reminded me a bit of The House with a Clock in Its Walls without the nightmarish and slimy stuff. The murders are treated in an antiseptic fashion without a lot of blood and gore—minimalist writing at its best because young readers with active imaginations can visualize them easily enough.
The author uses the present tense with an omniscient point of view, even to describe the past. That was a little bit quirky, but I quickly became accustomed to it; it works. The plot moves along from its idyllic beginnings to its harried climax. There were a few missing things in the denouement that left me dissatisfied (I won’t go into them—no spoilers here). The characters aren’t very complex, though, and the Janssen family is a bit too perfect. Alice’s uncle is the most complex character and therefore the most interesting, but we don’t see enough of him.
The novel is very enjoyable and almost seemed to transport me to that simpler 1920s life from the present of Elizabeth and Matthew—tranquil horror, if you will. Well worth the read for any young adult or adult who is young at heart. It made this old curmudgeon feel young again…and brought back fond memories I’ve had with rentals on Cape Cod!
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Comments are always welcome.
“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” the National and International Novels. In Angels Need Not Apply, the two NYPD homicide detectives join a national task force to go after a drug cartel leader who has an insidious plan. In Aristocrats and Assassins, the detectives are in Europe, fighting a terrorist who is kidnapping European aristocrats. In Gaia and the Goliaths, they learn about a plot conjured up by a US energy company and a Russian oligarch and set out to stop it. All these ebooks are available on Amazon and Smashwords and the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.). Current, pithy, and exciting, this is great summer reading!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
