AS NIGHT FALLS is not ponderous, heavy literature full of life lessons. Not every book should be. What it is, though, is one heck of a great story that is well-paced and told. Sure, there are a couple of plot holes that (momentarily) bothered me and a deus ex machina that pops up near the end of the story to play a brief but important role, which made me (momentarily, again) go “Hmmm…” But Jenny Milchman is such a fine storyteller that whatever shortcomings the book has are more than overcome by the suspense and terror she creates out of whole cloth in this tale of what occurs when past lies and secrets unexpectedly come a-calling one dark and stormy night.

"AS NIGHT FALLS is a nasty, fun read, one that will make you lock your doors from now on. Milchman didn’t kill my favorite character, which gets her extra points. Not that she needed any."

The novel is set in the rural environs of upstate New York and begins with twin plot lines. In the first, a convict work crew is laying down cones for a road construction project when two of them --- Nick and Harlan, a George and Lennie combination --- make a daring, well-planned escape. In the other, we meet the Tremonts. Sandy and Ben are living in their (well, Ben’s actually) dream house in the middle of nowhere. It’s a relative McMansion of a home, beautifully designed and planned by Ben, a take-charge guy with a clear vision. Sandy’s vision is somewhat muddled, but as we come to find out, there are reasons for that. She sometimes feels more successful as a counseling social worker than as a wife to Ben, and certainly as a mother to daughter Ivy, a willful adolescent who somehow makes it through the book without getting slapped (by her parents, anyway). Max, an aging rescue dog, rounds out the family, giving and receiving love in equal doses.

Ben and Sandy have just finished dinner when the two storylines violently converge with a home invasion by the escaped convicts. It quickly becomes clear that Nick and Harlan (well, Nick primarily) did not stumble upon the Tremonts’ home by design. Their intrusion of this particular house is deliberate. The reason is revealed soon enough, and perhaps a bit too soon, through a series of occasional historical vignettes that are scattered throughout the book. Reasons aside, things look quite bad for the Tremonts. Nick is as deranged, dangerous and evil as can be, and knows just how to control and direct Harlan, who is huge and monstrously strong, though not evil.

However, Nick and Harlan encounter problems practically from the moment of their uninvited crossing of the Tremonts’ threshold. The weather does not cooperate and neither do the Tremonts, who, over the course of a very claustrophobic few hours, never give up trying to get away from their captors. It is this constant shift of position between the parties that makes AS NIGHT FALLS such a joy to read. Milchman thinks of almost everything that can go wrong for both sides, and then adds a twist or two just to keep things even more interesting, even as she takes this or that player off the board, however temporarily. And don’t underestimate Sandy. There are depths to her that no one expects, not even those characters who know her best.

AS NIGHT FALLS is a nasty, fun read, one that will make you lock your doors from now on. Milchman didn’t kill my favorite character, which gets her extra points. Not that she needed any.