drifted toward a medical thriller. A woman discov-
ers that her child is the subject of an unauthorized
and terrifying experiment and takes desperate
measures to unmask the plot. His next, Nathaniel
(1984), is a retreat to more familiar ground, with a
young boy falling under the influence of yet an-
other dead child planning vengeance against the
living.
The pattern continues with only a slight varia-
tion in Brain Child(1985). This time a boy who
temporarily dies in surgery has his personality sup-
planted by that of an angry wraith with the usual
agenda. Although Saul’s technical skills as a writer
were improving, the repetitious plots limited his
appeal. Hell Fire(1986), for example, is well writ-
ten and relentlessly suspenseful, but the angry
ghosts seeking revenge against those that allowed
them to die in a fire include a large number of chil-
dren, and many of the individual scenes feel as
though they were rewritten from previous novels.
The child protagonist of The Unwanted (1987)
similarly falls under the sway of an angry supernat-
ural evil.
The Unloved(1988) breaks the pattern slightly,
describing the descent of an entire family into mad-
ness and violence. The malevolent child in Crea-
ture(1989) is not a ghost, but he functions in much
the same fashion for dramatic purposes. Sleepwalk
(1990) is a conspiracy story in which a large corpo-
ration secretly experiments with the children in a
small community, causing the usual inevitable
death and destruction. The mystery unfolds in a
nicely paced manner, but the logic of the situation
does not hold up under scrutiny. Second Child
(1990), although another story of a child ghost, re-
verses his usual formula and casts the ghost in the
role of protector rather than nemesis.
Darkness(1991) and Shadows(1992) both in-
volve threats to children, and both seem well
below Saul’s usual standards. Guardian(1993), an-
other evil child story, is only marginally better. The
Homing(1994) is actively awful, the story of a se-
rial killer who meets his doom when genetically al-
tered bees invade the bodies of the local children
and begin to control their behavior. Black Lightning
(1995), which also involves a serial killer, is much
better, his most successful novel in more than a
decade.
In 1996 Stephen King published The Green
Mileas a series of six small paperbacks, although it
was one continuous story, similar to the Blackwa-
ter series by Michael McDOWELLpublished in the
middle of the 1980s. Saul and his publishers tried
to mimic this success with the Blackstone stories,
published in similar fashion in 1997. Each install-
ment of the Blackstone series is a separate story
with a separate cast of characters, which robs the
series of any dramatic impetus, and the stories
themselves are not memorable. Saul finally re-
turned to novel length with The Presence(1999),
probably his best novel to date, an intriguing mys-
tery involving unusual skeletons and something
hiding in the ocean.
His more recent novels have been inconsistent.
The Right Hand of Evil(1999) returns to the theme
of ghostly children, and there is another nasty ghost
in the unremarkable Nightshade(2000). Elderly peo-
ple use sorcery to steal life from the young in Mid-
night Voices(2002), and two teenagers find a book of
magical spells that really work and use them to get
even with their enemies in Black Creek Crossing
(2004). Saul has developed into a technically com-
petent and sometimes interesting writer who retards
his own development by constraining himself to a
limited number of themes and settings. At the same
time, it must be admitted that it has proven to be a
successful strategy for his career and has gained him
a solid corps of loyal readers.Saxon, Peter(1921–1983)
Peter Saxon was a frequently used pseudonym of
Wilfrid McNeilly, who also wrote horror fiction as
W. A. Ballinger and Errol Lecale, as well as
thrillers under other names, and who also shared
the Peter Saxon name with other writers, making it
impossible to determine with certainty who was re-
sponsible for some titles that appeared under that
name. The bulk of McNeilly’s horror fiction fell
into two series, the Guardians series as Peter Saxon
and the Specialist series as Errol Lecale.
The Guardians series consists of separate ad-
ventures of an organization that has dedicated it-
self to opposing evil occult powers, sometimes
using magic itself to turn the tide. In The Curse of
Rathlaw(1968) a family with a heritage of sorcery308 Saxon, Peter