Dear readers,
I’ve thought and thought and my thinker’s thunked out.
A reader sent us a question asking for our help in identifying a book she read when she was younger and none of the reviewers have had any luck identifying it. Can you please help?
Lizza writes:
Twenty years ago(!) I read a book which scared me so much I left it behind on holiday and have been searching ever since for it. I cannot remember the title (though it might have been something like ‘the Keepers’) or the author(!), but wondered if any of you might have read it. Essentially a brother and sister were in charge of an ancient egyptian treasure and monster which they controlled through wearing special pendants which also kept them young. Skip forward 100ish years and our hero (some sort of private eye?) is introduced trying to get ‘a special necklace’ returned for an ‘old man’ who was mugged. The mugger is dragged out of the window by a mystery creature and the old man is replaced by a young man when his pendant is returned. The hero falls in love with the sister, there’s something about a whole load of dragon-like monsters in an abandoned vessel on the Manhattan river. I realise this is a long shot and I may be mixing up more than one book, but I thought I’d try! Any help appreciated. Thanks a lot.
So, dear readers, any ideas? The first person to identify the book for Lizza (in the comments) gets to choose a book from our stacks as a reward. And if you would like the FanLit readers’ help identifying a fantasy book in the future, please use our form to contact me and I’ll put your request in a future Thoughtful Thursday column.
The Tomb (A Repairman Jack Novel) by F. Paul Wilson.
We got an email at 1:51 (8 min after Diane’s comment above) from Craig Stilabower which says this:
Lizza, is this your book?
Thank you, FanLit Readers, for coming up with the answer. I can’t believe I’ve finally tracked it down after all this time – and I have now realised there are loads of other Repairman Jack books to read. I have actually read The Keep as well, all that time ago, and can now rediscover them both.
Thanks again
Well, that was fast! Diane, email us with which book from the stacks you want and your address and we’ll get in the mail to you.
And readers, let us know if we can help you rediscover a lost favorite.
Holy cow that was quick. I had a similar experience when looking for the Bradbury short story “There Will Come Soft Rains”. I looked off and on for what felt like years before breaking down and making a forum post about it. 15 minutes after posting someone gave me the name of the story and the collection it appeared in. I <3 the internet.