Hide and Seek was published by Ballantine Books in 1984. Dan, Casey, and their friends are young adults spending the summer in Dead River, Maine — Ketchum’s fictional coastal town, which serves as the setting for several of his novels. Boredom leads them to play an elaborate game of hide-and-seek in an abandoned Victorian hotel, a game that starts as fun and escalates, through a series of revelations about the players’ true natures, into genuine danger.
Ketchum’s method is to begin with the conventions of a summer-vacation thriller and gradually peel them away, revealing the darker dynamics beneath the surface of the group. The friendships are not what they appear; the loyalties are conditional; and one member of the group is harboring impulses that the others sense but cannot name. The hide-and-seek game provides the structural metaphor: everyone is hiding something, and the act of seeking is not always innocent.
The novel is leaner and more controlled than Off Season — Ketchum had learned to manage his effects — and its violence, when it comes, is more disturbing for being psychologically motivated rather than arising from external threat. The cannibals of Off Season were Other; the danger in Hide and Seek comes from within the group.
Collecting Hide and Seek
First edition (Ballantine Books, New York, 1984): Mass market paperback.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $20–$60
- Very good: $8–$25