Tag Archives: thriller

Fear Street: The Wrong Number

Posted on

The Wrong Number (1990) is not a horror novel so much as it is a thriller. It’s definitely a product of its time with the central conceit being about making crank phone calls on landlines.

One refreshing thing about this Fear Street book in particular is that there is no big twist. For the most part, what you see is what you get. That seems a far cry from the author who made his bones writing quick snappy middle-grade horror stories with a twist at the end.

Fear Street is definitely still for older kids, although to be frank, they are so dated at this point that younger kids might well enjoy them. (This is now officially “historical fiction.”) Then again, I don’t know if the stories are engaging enough for younger readers. As always it depends on the reader.

The Wrong Number is no more or less fun than any of the other Fear Street novels, which earns it three stars. It’s serviceable as a good YA thriller, and my biggest complaint is that while the main characters do show agency, which is nice to see, ultimately, they are not saved by any action that they take. I think if we were to see a rewrite set in modern times, the main characters would definitely save themselves.

Or, given the cynicism of our time, maybe they would just fail outright. That fear is what makes reading these old paperbacks so great, though: they take us back to a time when being scared was fun instead of a low-grade factor of everyday life. The Fear Street series still serves to give us an escape, and for that, I salute it.

 

Want to build up your catalogue of nostalgic pulp fiction?

Grab a copy of The Wrong Number here! This is an affiliate link.

The Wrong Number

Omnihumans

Posted on

He’ll sacrifice anything to save them . . . except being human.

The world became aware of them sixty years ago: people with remarkable physical and sometimes psychic power, often with terrifying deformities. Most folks call them deviants or use slurs like “deev.” They call themselves omnihumans.

Manic is a federal officer whose job is to take down allegedly dangerous deevs. He loves it, and he’s damn good at it. He’d wipe ’em all off the face of the earth if he could, because every deev out there is a threat to mankind, including his only child—even if she is a naïve college girl devoted to protecting the civil rights of the very deviants he arrests.

When his daughter’s tuition funds suddenly run out, Manic accepts a high-paying, off-the-books gig assassinating individual deevs. But after learning a deviant he’s killed was hunting down gangsters trafficking in the bodies and minds of children, Manic inherits his quest.

But Manic’s identity and clarity of purpose are thrown into chaos when he uncovers the concrete labyrinth where the gangsters are doing their dirty work and finds a vigilante deviant who’s also trying to destroy the organization. Humans, he’ll learn, can be far worse than any deev. And protecting those most innocent may not only cost his life . . . but his humanity . . .

Bram Stoker Award finalist Tom Leveen introduces you to a world far too much like our own in this gritty, supernatural noir novel.