For Fear of the Night

The ability to discover terror in unexpected contexts may not be unique after years of Hitchcock and Stephen King, but Grant's horror novels are distinguished by their sense of place and their fluid, rhythmic prose. The setting this time is a New Jersey resort town at summer's end. Photographer Devin Graham and a group of teenagers about to leave for college are just getting over the death of their mutual friend Julie Etlerin a fire at an amusement park on the pierwhen Julie starts reappearing among them, a shadowy figure, a voice on the answering machine. This story doesn't jell as well as some of Grant's previous work. While the interior monologues are evocative, it is often difficult to designate one character's stream of consciousness from another's. What's more, the chills that are so effective when they seem to indicate an inexplicable source are dissipated in a rather disappointing moralistic ending. (March)