Mr. X

Peter Straub's Mr. X is an enthralling, complex tale ofa decent young man troubled since childhood by barely understoodflashes of precognition and an awareness of a shadowy "other."

NedDunstan returns home to Edgerton, Illinois, a raffish and atmosphericMississippi River city, as his mother, Star Dunstan, liesdying. Impelled to trace his tangled paternal lineage after Star'sdeath, Ned finds himself caught up in a web of murder and otherheinous crimes, not only in the present but also in a past that hiselderly great aunts Nettie, May, and Joy would prefer remainedundisturbed. The aunts, whose remarkable gifts include teleportationand telekinesis, frustrate his search for knowledge, partly to protecttheir own secrets and also to shield Ned from the mysterious andomnipresent force that seems to dodge his every step. He is aided inhis efforts to discover the mysteries of his birth by a dopplegangerwho may or may not be his twin, and also by a lovely young woman,Laurie Hatch. She is the estranged wife of Stewart Hatch, an Edgertonscion whose own history is inexorably linked with Ned's and with theentire Dunstan family.

The secondary characters, from the elderlyaunts to a lawyer named Creech who is the essence of the small-town"fixer," are deftly drawn. --Jane Adams