Sam Ford, a disgraced middle school teacher wanders into the quaint Victorian sea town of Cape May, New Jersey where he is almost bribed into tutoring a troubled young teen with delusions of magical grandeur. Sam starts to make a connection to the boy, who is distanced from his wealthy parents. They, on the other hand, seem content to let Sam handle all decions regarding their son, and are solely focused on refurbishing a crumbling Victorian mansion that was once an inn. Here Sam discovers that he is a catalyst to sleeping ghosts and that he has a link to the inn's evil past.

I liked the setting of this book, the town of Cape May, as well as the fact that it took place in the seventies. I also liked that the protagonist was African-American, and the history of slavery that the book delved into and used as a way to build horror through events that could very well have actually happened.

What I didn't like was the way the book used a cheesy horror movie ending, and that it devolved into well-worn cliches and trite plot machinations. Too bad because the subject matter deserved a more dignified ending. ( )

This was a great book! It was just a bit slow in the beginning, but once Sam moved into the Abbadon Inn it started to pick up. This book was a bit different than the typical cookie cutter horror book, so I really enjoyed it.

An interesting note on this book is that it was actually written by Elizabeth Massie, but the other 2 Chris Blaine books that follow this one were written by 2 different authors. It appears that Chris Blaine was a house pseudonym used by the different authors who wrote the books in this series. ( )