Wait and See by Ruby Jean Jensen

It happened again. While browsing online through various horror book websites and forums I came across several Zebra Horror covers for an author who I had heard about in the past but never read, one who seemed a paperback staple of the eighties and early nineties when horror was hot, but never had any titles in the horror sections of the bookstores I visited during that last decade or so. Her name: Ruby Jean Jensen. Her status according to the sites I visited: above average horror writer of the eighties who published dozens of titles with Zebra and other paperback publishers. Intrigued, I hopped onto Amazon, which is my standard operating procedure when faced with such a discovery, and quickly ordered one of her books. Nothing but cover art and book description was used in the decision making process -- well, availability was a factor too -- not because I wanted to go in without any preconceived notions of which titles were good and which ones weren’t, but because there really wasn’t anything out there I could find on the individual works. Instead the websites just talked about her as an author in general, the written pieces usually giving a display of her covers, but not a critique of each (at least on the sites I visited). The result: I ordered a book titled Wait and See.

In 1959 Charlene Childress is a spoiled teenage tease who enjoys controlling her peers. She also is intrigued by the occult and performs animal sacrifices in the playroom of the barn on the family property, sacrifices that she brings her peers too and then threatens them with death should they ever tell anyone. Eventually Charlene decides she has had enough with her earthly life and wants to sacrifice herself to Satan so she can live forever. It is a journey she doesn’t want to take alone, however, so she lures her cousin and lover Daniel to the side of a river and orders him to take part in a suicide pack. Willing to do anything for his goddess Daniel agrees, but then chickens out at the last second. By then Charlene is dead so he tucks her body beneath the roots of a tree in the river, and then, in an attempt to make it so her body never slips free, adds some chains and a padlock. Twenty six years pass without the body ever being discovered until Daniel’s son Kevin goes into the river one day with a local boy he just met after moving into the Childress estate, and frees the remains. After that Charlene goes on a murderous rampage with the knife she used to kill herself with, her goal seemingly being to kill as many people as she can while seeking out Daniel to complete the lover’s suicide pack.

Initially excited by the book, both because I love finding new authors to collect for my shelf and the story sounded intriguing, I dove into Wait and See within moments of opening the package it came in and quickly found myself bogged down in a boring and poorly written tale. Everything that happened within this one just seemed really dull, almost as if the scenes were weighed down by the sentences that created them and every time I reached a chapters end I just had to set the book down for a while, mind and body too weary from the struggle of moving forward to continue. At one point I even took the book to the Naperville DMV while my brother got his new license and eventually just folded it over my finger to watch all the people around me because they were more interesting. Making it even worse the author had two stories going in this one, each of which could have been wonderful books on their own, but didn’t work well together because they were too similar. In one story the skeletal remains of Charlene was trying to kill everyone, in the other the mother of Charlene who was the owner of the Childress estate was enacting a revenge against Daniel’s children because she blamed him for her daughter’s death. Smashed together into one book neither story was given room to grow and therefore both felt weak and ultimately unappealing. Overall this book was a complete disappointment. I’m also now hesitant to order anything else by Ruby Jean Jensen, but in an effort to give her a fair chance will try another title if anyone can recommend one to me that is worth it. Are there any out there that really stand out? If so please share.