Book Review : Fear Street - Missing : why so-called protective lies can instead be endangering and getting into a circle with great purpose is sometimes deceiving
After their parents go missing, Mark and Cara Burroughs begin to notice strange happenings around them....and then the real terror begins.
Basically, the short summary exists right on the cover, but anyway this synopsis has succeeded on making readers' curiosity grows, truth to be told I wasn't really interested to read this book, it sounds like family matters and I'm not the kind of person who sees family that entertaining in horror entertainment documents including movies, except hereditary kind of stuff. but since on the digital library's search engine shows Fear Street's Missing available to read, I just got to it and gave it a try. At first it was boring, I read a gun involved at a brief climax description before starting at chapter 1 and I was discouraged already, I don't like gun showing up in thriller or horror, well so I thought there's no harm reading a bit of action in R.L Stine's works anyway.
It first started with Cara and Mark, siblings with Mark as the older one and he had a fight with his parents because they suggested him not to see his girlfriend anymore whose name is Gena, she is mentioned several time as "Neat" probably the similar slang for "Hot" these days, I love how polite their slangs were, anyway the fight started and ended by the morning before they went to school, and after school they had an unplanned party, then mark hooking up with Gena, Cara was just talking and have fun with Lisa, they knew their parents would come home late so they let the party goes on anyway, later a cop shows up called Captain Farraday who checked up on them and asked about their parents. As time goes by Cara and Mark started to worry about their parents, they found out about their cousin named Roger who lives in the attic has a gun and frequently seeing a guy named Dr. Murdoch in a white van standing by the front of their house on Fear Street. Suspicion goes on and on, worsened by the fact that the company where their parents work at did not recognize their names as one of their employees. Cara called captain Farraday and trusted this case on him, he suddenly killed Roger and Murdoch but blame it on Mark, later Mark found out that Farraday is a pretender cop, he finally confesses that he used to be a cop and planned on a revenge towards their parents because apparently their parents made him resigned or more like fired from his job and he also got in jail because of it, see here? we have no idea how in a world the parents (a computer engineer) get a cop imprisoned, well it's still possible of course. oh before that, Gena suddenly dumped Mark and that devastated him so much that he sneaked into her bedroom, her father caught him but was kind enough to escort him out politely. Cara and Mark also had founded a small white skull of a monkey in their parents' room, and in Mark's bedroom, Mark also found the monkey skull in the forest where he previously had fallen into a pit trap and attacked by a huge dog with a monkey skull on its collar. then Gena helped Cara and Mark to find their parents just to figure out apparently their parents are "traitors" to a cult named The Brotherhood of White Monkey. Marcus, the cult leader almost executed them when Mark distract him and the parents fought back. The point is, the parents are FBI agents and all this freaking time they've been lying to their own kids about their job and then suddenly went missing?. however everything goes well in the end, Roger and Murdoch are agents apparently.
What a horrible lie, maybe FBI parents in real life had done this to protect their kids, maybe but it's super risky especially when the company the parents work at has the CEO as the cult leader whom they were about to investigate and arrest, the kids did go to see the CEO aka Marcus, and he could've captured them and had them killed anyway, it's risky since the kids know nothing about their parents. Though I don't know the other alternative way to protect your kids from your secret case as an FBI, and Cara is a bit clumsy too, she should've called the direct police office instead of calling a cop who doesn't even ride a cop car. but I guess that's the point, that really is the point to intrigue us the readers, to feel like in horror movie where the victim runs to a dark alley while being chased by a serial killer, or calling out "is anyone here, it's not funny" when there are sounds inside their empty and dark house. Despite Cara's clumsiness, she is brave and skeptical, while Mark is at the verge of puberty being crazed about how "neat" Gena is. This book has lots of action going on and small informal investigations, the action isn't much however, it's more like running away, fighting off an aggressive dog, eavesdropping, searching somebody's room without their permission kind of stuff, the other action is Gena shooting at Farraday (indirectly though) just to frighten him and the fight between the parents and the cult leader. Also it's pretty interesting to see how Gena's dad joined the cult because he actually believe the cult is there for a good cause, to end crimes but instead was fooled and he was too scared to get out, afraid of something might happen to him and his daughter, now such thing like this I believe totally exists in real life when you are not an elite, you found something big that would let you contribute well for the society but instead was just a big fat lie, then you're just afraid to get out. I like how R.L Stine has taken up this issue, I'm sure this cult or mafia thing has been a big deal since the beginning of time.
The strength that I've seen through all this is a lot, this story is unpredictable, I thought the kids were just orphans and imagining their parents exist (stupid assumption I know) or they got kidnapped which is sort of true but I never had figured out that they were kidnapped by a cult!, also the cult was realistic, despite the weird name and costume, they were there for social purpose and to end crime, but apparently not until one of them was too afraid to get out, this is another strength that even though it's a fiction, it's still realistic and make us readers realize such thing exists, we can do lots of research about people getting out of a cult and how they seek shelter afterwards, not just a cult, also a mafia given the public knowledge that sometimes it's hard to get out than to get in.
However, I do seem to find a bit of weakness here, even though to be honest I barely find any if I'm a fan of family matters topic in entertainment and also action, this was boring at first, of course everything has to be started with an introduction, but I just thought it feels like a slow mystery movie where you get to the climax right at almost one hour into the movie. but this one is not that bad, it's just it takes a bit of time for you to get to the actual problem and started to do your inward speculations to make things spicy.
The language is easy to understand, probably a bit twisted for much younger audience or people who still started to learn their english as their second language, since the writing for one page is more crowded than other fear street books, I'm taking an example of Switched and The Runaway where they have bigger gaps for each paragraphs in one page, but this shouldn't be a big deal for younger audience who are used to read newspaper or tense novels. Also for further information, it may be a bit hard for people who prefers simple reading since every chapters it has had different point of views, sometimes is Cara's and sometimes it's Mark's, so bare with it to read a bit slowly when it comes to first paragraphs on every chapter if you are the kind of person who likely to get confused more often. Besides the language, the cover of the book is old, it's from the 90s, what do you expect? It has to match the vibe somehow, but there are also reprinted version with modern-looking covers which I actually dislike, I like old covers with obvious illustration on what the main characters and environment look like, imagination is a whole purpose for me to read books, and I need it to improvise my emotion deepened into the story well.
I guess this is it, pretty much the two points I've set up on the title which is the risky lies that the parents told are kind of failed to protect their children and an actual social issue of how it is a struggle to some people who wants to get out of a certain circle but was too afraid to do so. the strength of this book is bigger than the weakness and I'm glad to see the good ending with a bit of death, unfortunately. Good Day!
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