Along Came a Spider
Author: Andrew Neiderman
When a mysterious and distinguished man appears in the run-down nowhere town of Centerville to live in the abandoned Queen Anne that has fallen into disarray, tongues start to wag. Neighbors watch behind shuttered windows as the enigmatic Mr. Lucy emerges and later becomes known as a very specialized tutor for trouble children. In the way of “horror” novels and B-list specials, desperate and incompetent parents have no problem slinging their unruly spawn into the lap of a stranger with no past and a creepy, serial-killer murder mansion of a house. The plot begins and readers expect full cheese along the way (I mean, the distinctly 80s art cover photo just says it all). What we get, however, is less than the diet version, leading us to wonder just who wrote that cover blurb that has nothing, let me repeat nothing, to do with the “story.”
When dumpster diving for some low brow horror with a hint of the late-late show, readers are only looking for entertainment. Logic, good writing, characterization – whatever. We’re here to laugh at the overdone and unreliable and as long as our monsters, human or otherwise, are suitably over the top, then all is good. A novel such as Teacher’s Pet, which makes no bones about how serious we should take it from the cover image onward, doesn’t have much to live up to. The fact that it utterly failed then is more surprising than the long-hinted ritualistic killing that is given away in the overdone yet bland preface. Yes folks, this one is sadly a snooze.
I came to Neiderman’s book from, you guessed it, another of my long time eBay grab-bag book lots. This one was for horror books and I’ve started as I mean to go on, picking the silliest names and most flamboyant covers and working my way down into the more serious stuff. Expectations were low and I figured most items would get an ambivalent “it’s so bad, some of its good” review. Imagine my surprise when I HATED this novel, spending several slow months plodding through dense text and unrelated dialogues without getting one good laugh or being able to shout out a sardonic comment to the requisite dim-witted parents and easily swayed “teacher’s pets.”
The story is essentially a non-starter. Mostly it centers around Johnny Masterton who, when tutored by Mr. Lucy, develops an obsession to become like his tutor. Slowly, the Lucy kids split away from the others, becoming more secretive. Eventually, other teachers notice and begin to bad mouth Mr. Lucy, leading to an ambivalent and unbelievable set-up where the loudest anti-Lucy teacher is framed for homosexual misconduct with a student. This is after over a 100+ pages of nothing happening other than people feeling “creepy” about Mr. Lucy and his kids.
Eventually, Teacher’s Pet ends with a murder (the one it began with), a betrayal, and a disappearance, all of which happen in quick, non-detailed succession. After 200 plus pages of waiting for something to bloody well occur, readers are not pleased that the grand finale is more of a cliff-notes aside with characters who have remained too one dimensional to even cause the usual stereotype jokes.
And – one of my pet peeves – why Mr. Lucy? Was there ever a worse name for a supposedly old world villain? One reviewer on Goodreads suggested it was short for Lucifer, hinting that the lame Lucy is some devil in disguise (going from town to town, boring everyone.) If so – worst and lamest idea ever. It’s so bad that it’s just bad. Lucy is not a scary villain name. Just, no.
Of course, I’ve completely glossed over the pointless sub-plot that makes the vapid cardboard cutout kids seem fantastic. Mr. Lucy has captivated Ellen, the lady next door, and apparently there is some sexual tension (where, why, how is this related to anything?) Eventually, the novel ends with some “maybe something bad will come through Ellen in the future vibe” and readers just have to wonder – really, all that build-up just to hint that someday some big scheme may materialize?
In the end, the cheesy promise was nothing but a desperate ghost writer’s fictional back cover blurb. For fans of the absurdly outlandish B-movie style – Teacher’s Pet has nothing to tantalize or even jokingly mimic. For adamant horror readers, consider this one mislabeled – a 200 page genre-less rambling with no coherence and zero substance.
Frances Carden
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