Punish the Sinners: A Novel

by John Saul

Overview

Italy 1252. Inquisition. Accusation. Fear.  Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins real  and imagined in the flames of the burning stake.  Neilsville, 1978. Peter Blasam has come to this  sleepy desert town to teach its youth, and finds a  mystery of mounting horror. Something is happening  to the young girls of St. Francis Xavier High  School -- something evil. In bloodlet and terror a  suicide contagion has swept the two... while a dark  order of its holy men enacts a secret medieval  ritual. Is hysteria manipulating these innocent children  into violent self-destruction? Or has supernatural  force, a thirteenth-century madness, returned  to... Punish The Sinners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780440170846
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/02/1990
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	728,736
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

John Saul’s first novel, Suffer the Children, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, and The Presence. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii.

Read an Excerpt

BOOK ONE
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Punish the Sinners"
by .
Copyright © 1990 John Saul.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

These two works continue Saul's penchant for the eerie and creepy. In Cry for the Strangers, a seemingly beautiful small coastal town turns into a death trap for strangers. Somehow the storms and sea share a connection with the deaths of new residents, but what exactly is that connection? Punish the Sinners explores the Catholic Church and intertwines the 1252 Inquisition in Italy with the hiring of a teacher of Latin and psychology at a Catholic school in 1978. A spate of suicides among female students occurs shortly after the teacher's arrival, leaving the town frightened and watchful. At the same time, a group of priests participate in a secret medieval ritual. Both readers are well suited to their respective stories. Mel Foster (Cry) conveys the whiney and tattletale tones frequently heard from children while also displaying sufficient variation of voices to differentiate among the numerous adult characters. David Daoust's delivery in Punish is calm and quiet yet ably displays fear, bewilderment, confusion, and anger. In both books, the final thought expressed at the end of one side is repeated at the beginning of the next side, and background music adds to the atmosphere. Essential for those libraries with Saul fans; recommended for all public libraries.-Laurie Selwyn, Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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