Let's Go Play at the Adams

I liked his style of writing; it was detailed without being overly detailed, if you know what I mean. He described all the characters perfectly, and by the end of the book, you felt like you knew them well. If you're into torture horror books, you will probably like this book. It definitely left its mark on me though; couldn't get it out of my head for a while after I finished it. "A novel of lingering horror", is an apt way to describe this book!

Mendal W. Johnson, Let's Go Play at the Adams' (Thomas W. Crowell Books, 1974) The Sylvia Marie Likens case, colloquially known as the Indiana Torture Slaying, is still producing books over four decades after it happened. This is, in some way, understandable; it was a truly horrific event, the kind of thing that rips the veneer of civilization off a society in a way that your garden variety serial killer/mass murderer/war story doesn't. People became animals, there was a great deal of suffering, and to this day, no one has fully explained exactly what happened during the Summer of 1965 in Indianapolis. The first of these books, and the loosest in its connection to the case, was Mendal Johnson's shocking and powerful 1974 novel Let's Go Play at the Adams'. When reading it these days, remember that this book is over three decades old, before the idea of extreme horror (or, as we knew it back in the day, splatterpunk) even existed. The infamous film Snuff would not be released for another year and a half or so. Dean Koontz was still writing sci-fi novels and political thrillers, and a young writer whom very few people had ever heard of, mostly readers of the euphemistically named "mens' magazines", named Stephen King had sold his first novel, Carrie, which would be released later in the year. This is the scenario under which Mendal Johnson dropped the bomb that is Let's Go Play at the Adams'. And a bomb it surely is. One cannot read a Likens-based book without comparing it to the gold standard, Jack Ketchum's riveting The Girl Next Door, published eight years later. Ketchum and Johnson take opposite tacks when approaching the case; Ketchum adopts a tone of distracted horror and uses one of the participants in the events as his narrator. Johnson takes third-person omniscient, and his tone is best described as that of a doting father telling his kids a tale. It's a voice that makes absolutely no sense given the subject matter, and that does nothing but heighten the discomfort. And when Johnson gets going, in the book's climax, it becomes so inappropriate as to make the events even more horrible. Johnson does not waver from his tome for a single sentence. If you read reviews written by those who read the book (or were forbidden by their parents to read the book, and did so anyway) at the time it came out, there's almost a sense of evil about Mendal Johnson's words. This sounds silly and stupid in the cold, harsh light of day, but I finished this novel not two hours ago-- and I can see where these people are coming from. Now, anyone who follows my reviews knows that I'm a reader of hardcore horror. A big fan. I've read books widely advertised as the most brutal in the genre and come away from them without anything even close to this feeling. This, folks, is the real deal, a novel so far ahead of its time that when it came out, no one knew what to do with it. I'm surprised it actually found a publisher. (It is now long out of print, and this should be

It's difficult to describe the appeal of this book. It would be naive to deny that at some level, Johnson titillates by drawing heavily on the scenarios of bondage pornography. And yet he simultaneously undermines that titillation by deconstructing any fantasy elements in favour of the likely reality of the main character's growing discomfort and claustrophobia. The resultant impression is tense and highly unsettling. Further distanced from more lurid genres by Johnson's unsensational literate style, this detailed study of the character dynamics of collective evil is an under-rated classic of horror. (Mendal Johnson, incidentally, died in 1976 and never finished any other novels).

An extremely horrific novel about the absence of compassion given the proper set of circumstances. The tale concerns a pretty 20-yr-old baby-sitter who finds herself waking up one morning tied to her bed by the kids she is watching over. Only children, they have older friends who have ideas of their own as to what can and should be done to their playmate/captive and what starts as a simple prank ends in a nightmare from which there is no awakening. What makes it such a disturbing yarn is that the baby-sitter is such a friendly, trusting girl, and all readers--male as well as female--can easily identify with her. The climax to this book is one of the most heart-wrenching in American Literature. Brilliantly written, it has become a cult classic and the author has become something of a legend, having passed away some years ago without having another novel published.

Johnson relates an extremely disturbing view of human nature. He mingles perspectives of individual motivation and group psychology and chillingly portrays what could happen when individuals surrender themselves to a group. At the end of the book I felt immense sorrow, not only for Barbara, the innocent victim, but also for the author's view of the condition of humanity and his view of human motivation.I finished this book emotionally wrung-out, shaking and wondering if all the good has gone out of the world. How did the children's game get so out of hand? I did not want the book to end where it did, the way it did. I wanted retribution for the evil, justice for the victim. At least a review of how the children turned out. For me, that would have made the book cleaner, neater and possibly not have left me feeling as I did.I've failed to find any other books written by Johnson, which is a shame. In this book, he proves to be an excellent storyteller, a master of suspense and of manipulating the reader - never giving anything away too soon, always holding out the promise of hope, of rescue, of sanity. His ability to change perspective from the kids as a group, to the kids themselves and to their victim is very well done. The view of each character's thoughts and the way each action builds upon itself and leads to the next step, the next level of the children's game, is so well portrayed I wonder if Johnson had any background in psychology.I gave this book the highest rating because it delivers on what it promises. But, in all honesty, I could never recommend it to a friend to read. If a suspense/horror book could be described as too effective in achieving its end, too convincing in its abiltiy to portray terror and too upsetting in its outcome, then Mendal Johnson has written that book.