Different Seasons - Part 2: Apt Pupil

The second offering in Different Seasons is 'Apt Pupil'.

This story is set in the fictional suburb of 'Santo Donato', in San Diego. The main character is thirteen year old Todd Bowden. After discovering an old World War II magazine in his friend's garage Todd becomes interested in Nazi Germany, in particular concentration camps. He is really taken by this one photo of a German camp officer and realizes that the reason why he is captured by it is that it is actually a photo of one of his neighbours.

The rest of the story takes place over a period of 4 years and follows the relationship that develops between him and his 'wanted for war crimes' neighbour.

Everyone can talk all they want about how scary Stephen King books with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and the like are, but nothing is more scary than the human capacity for inhumane acts on humanity. I found this story disturbing when I read it - I actually lost sleep over it with nightmares. Give me a good vampire story any time.

With that being said, I still enjoyed the story (even though I did lose sleep over it).

This story was also made into a movie by the same name. I found the movie to be alright, and it stuck to the original story fairly well, but I found it less disturbing than the print story.

'Summer of Corruption'