The Night Strangers

WHEN Chip Linton, plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder and the ghosts of a fatal accident, decides to make a fresh start, he picks the one house with a sealed basement.

SCIENTISTS - or whoever gets paid to calculate this kind of thing - put the odds of a plane being hit by a bird at roughly one in 10,000. So it's fair to say that when Chip Linton's CRJ700 transforms itself into a gigantic avian killing machine, taking out halfof Vermont's goose population in one hit, the pilot himself isn't exactly having a lucky day.

But there aren't enough scientists - or indeed, enough zeroes - in the world to accurately reflect the odds of what happens next.

For when poor old Chip, plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder and pursued by the ghosts of three of the 39 victims of the accident, decides to make a fresh start in a whole new state, he and his family manage to pick the one house in all of America whose basement is sealed by 39 bolts.

Rip them away as Chip does after they arrive (let's face it, he's really on a hiding to nothing at this point) and he finds a child's skeleton interred behind them.

If only poor old Chip could catch a break. Under ordinary circumstances, one might have come in the form of his friendly neighbours who, notwithstanding their weird names, are more than happy to roll out the welcome mat.

Too happy, in fact. A more alert father would have sniffed trouble along with the hypnobium-flavoured casserole that arrived with the welcome wagon and backed up the removal truck post-haste, but Chip Linton has just gone 10 rounds with an angry karma fairy, so you can forgive him for emerging a bloody, dazed mess.

While the story contains its fair share of axes, murder plots and pulverised geese, it never quite gets there as a bona-fide thriller. The premise is so far-fetched and the narrative so ambitious that the odds of carrying it off are slim to none.

VERDICT: Imaginative but unlikely.

The Night Strangers, Chris Bohjalian, Simon & Schuster, $19.99