M. Jay Livingstone – The Prodigy

[dem bones]

M. Jay Livingstone – The Prodigy (Sphere, 1981)

Blurb:

AFTER THE PRODIGY YOUR WORLD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!

Aaron Farrow was a legend in his home town. A boy genius with an eerie worldliness way beyond his years. Even the town children acknowledged him as leader, an angel of vengeance who would deliver them from the hell of being children.

THE PRODIGY

Then the accidents started. Only they weren’t accidents. Childish pranks that turned nasty. Like the mother who had a heart attack. And the father who lost an eye. Until suddenly the town woke up to the horror of the nightmare closing in around them, a nightmare it was powerless to stop.

THE PRODIGY

For Aaron knew the guilty secret which the town had carefully concealed. And now he, and the children who’d chosen him as their Saviour, were going to make the punishment fit the crime. One by one the parents were going to pay the price for their sins, a mind-searing, terrifying price, devised by children who wanted vengeance … IN BLOOD!

Cleveland. Matt Packer, film-producer turned teacher, is delighted with his class at Erieview Heights, a bright, friendly group of middle class eleven year olds with only the one disruptive pupil to deal with. Unfortunately, this happens to be Aaron Farrow, child genius, already a concert pianist with the local orchestra, and blessed with the lethal angelic looks - jackal's heart combo that allows him to twist adults around his finger. However, he comes to tolerate Packer, even possibly quite like him and, of course, he needs his expertise to make his proposed film, The Beginning. For Aaron has big plans for his classmates - indeed, he has big plans for every minor in the United States - and once he's coerced Mr. Packer into allowing him to form a secret club for he and his friends, 'The Home Of David'; he uses this as the basis to launch - The Childs Liberation movement!

With Packer acting unwittingly as his accomplice for much of the time, Aaron has soon established a network of covet chapters throughout the schools of America. All good harmless fun - until errant adults fall prey to a plague of hideous 'accidents', all of them, it transpires, orchestrated by Aaron and his pre-teen guerrillas (you'll never brush your teeth again ...). But, as we learn in the opening page, the Erieview pupils have good cause to adopt an offensive strategy - most have fallen foul of a trio of local big-wigs operating a child-porn racket - from out of the school.

That embossed, barely scan-able cover got me down so, it put me off reading Prodigy for ages. Don't make the same mistake 'cause it's a nasty little page-turner. There's even a cameo from a load of spiders although sadly they've not read any Richard Lewis so they don't know what to do beyond giving Peggy Kasco a heart attack while she's, uh, pleasuring herself in the bath.