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Tom Piccirilli

The Night Class Kindle Edition

by Tom Piccirilli (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The college winter break is over, and Cal Prentiss faces yet another semester of boring classes. But Cal's boredom is shattered when he discovers evidence of an unspeakable murder that occurred in his dorm room over the break. Obsessed with finding the truth about this gruesome crime, Cal travels further and further down the twisting halls of a university suddenly gone mad. As he gets closer to the heart of the mystery, Cal is surrounded by the supernatural and the grotesque – like the blood that appears on his hands whenever someone close to him dies.

Print length

247 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 24, 2011
File size

491 KB
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Richard Laymon
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Piccirilli's predilection for emotionally scarred protagonists embarking on soul-searching quests (The Deceased; Hexes) runs amok in this hyperventilating horror mystery. Caleb Prentiss, upperclassman at an unnamed northern college, returns from Christmas break to discover that Sylvia Campbell, an 18-year-old student with falsified transcripts, was slaughtered in his room during the school break. In his mind, Sylvia becomes linked with his beloved older sister, whose suicide has left him tortured with guilt since childhood. Cal's obsession with investigating a murder that the school has inexplicably hushed up drives him to break into the library basement where Sylvia's effects are stored and to rifle registrar files in search of a clue to her demise. As dark secrets implicating the school's exploitative faculty come to light, Cal finds his life and those of his closest friends in jeopardy. The novel draws on the venerable tradition of stories that plumb the unbridgeable gulf between school learning and life lessons, but Piccirilli goes overboard in his efforts to give events philosophic weight. The text is freighted with unmerited allusions to faith and forgiveness and with snips of brooding song lyrics that are more pretentious than profound. Most of the major characters are prone to martyrlike behavior: a perfectionist premed student gives her body to keep her grades; a voluptuous ethics student works at a strip joint; and Cal himself's hands develop stigmata every time a murder occurs. All but Piccirilli's most devoted fans will find their interest in this tortuous tale out of school to be purely academic. (Dec.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"...draws on the venerable tradition of stories that plumb the unbridgeable gulf between school learning and life lessons..." -- Publishers Weekly “All serious students of dark literature are urged to enroll in The Night Class. This is one course you won’t want to drop.” -- Cemetery Dance Magazine “In THE NIGHT CLASS, Tom Piccirilli – America’s Fellini of horror fiction – stirs up a surreal stew of ambitions gone astray, romance, sex, madness and murder" -- Richard Layman, author of ONE RAINY NIGHT and BITE “Loaded with grim characters, an unusual plot, and a murky, almost surreal atmosphere, THE NIGHT CLASS is a must-read for fans of the macabre.” --Masters of Terror --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005PR5VLG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital; Crossroad Press Digital Edition (September 24, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 24, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 491 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 247 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,729,376 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9,516 in Occult Horror
- #16,492 in Occult Fiction
- #166,077 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
30 ratings

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Tom Piccirilli

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Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty-five novels including A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN, SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, and THE LAST KIND WORDS. He's a four-time winner of the Stoker Award, two-time winner of the International Thriller Award, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and twice for the Edgar Award. Marilyn Stasio of The New York Tims Book Review called THE LAST KIND WORDS, “A caustic thriller...the characters have strong voices and bristle with funny quirks.” New York Times bestselling thriller writer Lee Child said of Tom’s work, “Perfect crime fiction...a convincing world, a cast of compelling characters, and above all a great story” And Publishers Weekly extols, "Piccirilli’s mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel.” Keir Graff of Booklist wrote, “There's more life in Piccirilli's THE LAST KIND WORDS (and more heartache, action, and deliverance) than any other novel I've read in the past couple of years." And Kirkus states, "Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli (The Fever Kill, 2007, etc.) to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that’s assuredly unhappy in its own special way.”

Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5

30 global ratings

5 star		21%
4 star		36%
3 star		24%
2 star		15%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Benoit Lelievre

Creates its own paradigm of horror.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 6, 2015

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Well, that was...different! THE NIGHT CLASS didn't have any of that dark, introspective moments that is Tom Piccrilli's calling card in crime fiction, but it was different in a good way. Think of it as 1980s horror movies meet the old school White Wolf role playing games. It's quite a unique atmosphere Piccirilli created for that novel, which I believe more than compensated for one of his weakest protagonists.

THE NIGHT CLASS created its own paradigm that operates within the margins of supernatural horror without fully committing to it, therefore truly exploring the fear of the unknown and the boundaries of human imagination. I've had more of a technical admiration than a visceral pleasure to read THE NIGHT CLASS, but it had a couple moments that kept me reading because I wouldn't have dared to go to bed right away.

3 people found this helpful

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woodwork man

Interesting...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2017

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This one is a bit experimental I would say as horror goes. There are constant literary references, especially to books with fragmented narratives. I would say a lot of it was intended to be comedic as opposed to really horrifying, especially the parts with the stigmata bleeding everywhere. It's a quick read, so maybe make up your mind for yourself. It's a bit more high-brow than you might expect

One person found this helpful

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Robert Hiles

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 22, 2017

it was ok

A bit disappointing overall

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 15, 2022

My third Audible outing with the late Tom Piccirilli in the merry month of May and this one was my only slightly disappointing read. The Night Class was sandwiched either side of two cracking novellas - You'd Better Watch Out and All You Despise. It was a bit of a surprise considering this one won a Bram Stoker Best Novel Award.

I found the story a bit plodding and less than captivating. I liked the backdrop of the college and the main character, Cal was sympathetic. I enjoyed some of the incidents in the book and the relationship dynamics between Cal and a few of the minor characters in the book, but I did continually wonder while listening, what was the actual point of it all?

I don't think it was the crossover of genres from a crime like feel with an unexplained murder of a student, into horror/supernatural with stigmata that bumped me out of the book either. There's a kind of cult feel to the book, as the college freaks, including the hierarchy try and indoctrinate Cal into joining them.

Decent writing, decent setting, interesting (for the most part) and developed characters, just not much else for me to get excited about. I've read far far worse in my time, and undoubtedly will do again. And it wasn't one that I ever considered giving up on as my ears never started bleeding. I just didn't vibe it.

2.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) May, 2022
Published - 2000
Page count - 247 (6 hrs 33 mins)
Source - Audible purchase
Format - Audible

Helpful

A strange little novel

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 21, 2014

I'll warn people ahead of time: this is a very, very surreal book. As such, there were several portions of the book that just came across as incoherent at times, which will probably turn off some readers. Overall, this is a fairly well done book and I can see why it won the Stoker Award in the early 2000s.

The book's initial plot line would have you believe that this is pretty much a supernatural-ish mystery, but the book goes a lot deeper than that. Cal's obsessed with the murder of the girl who lived in his room during intersession, but everything is pretty much a way to show his inevitable spiral into self-destructiveness and madness. The murder and the eponymous "night class" are just sort of things that bring it about and to me the implication is that Cal would likely have gone through something similar even if his school and dorm room had been completely normal. Cal is a man unhinged and as such, an extremely unreliable narrator.

I think that this unreliable narration aspect is why we have the scenes that are a little hard to figure out at times. Rather than tell us that Cal is going insane (or is already there), Piccirilli decides that he's going to let us glimpse Cal's inner workings and try to discern for ourselves what is real and what isn't. It really makes you wonder how much of this is actually happening and how much of it is really in Cal's mind. Since the ending leaves off fairly suddenly, you're left to figure this out on your own. It's kind of what I'd expect if I mixed a Bentley Little novel in with the movie Pi, I suppose. It's pretty much one guy's nightmare in literary form.

As such, I don't think that this book will really appeal to everyone. It's a strange little book and if I wasn't such a fan of similar-ish authors, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did. I do recommend this since the e-book admission price is fairly cheap, but with some reservations.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer

Strange story, oblique writing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Characters who have so much going on inside their minds while nothing much actually happens. Until closer to the end anyway. I'm still not even sure if I like this book. It was interesting, but I felt like I was still waiting for it to take off, like it was all setup, when I realized it was almost over. Plus the ending was so sudden, talk about a cliff-hanger, nothing really gets resolved, just knowledge, which maybe was the point. I don't know.

Rigby Taylor

Not a gripping read.

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on August 31, 2015

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The first chapter was amusing. Then we digressed. Then we went somewhere else where coincidences occurred, quasi cryptic comments and allusions were waved before my eyes...I meandered along waiting for something to happen, then fell asleep when his dead sister's voice spoke through a stinking patch of blood on the wall...at least I think that's what happened. I put it down and can't make myself pick up up again.

Matthew

Not really a horror novel.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 12, 2020

Verified Purchase

This comes highly recommended as a horror novel, but I would classify it as a mystery/thriller novel.

It's a lot like a Thomas Pynchon novel if his writing was a little more accessible.

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