Camp Killer is the third book in the 'Sweet Valley Summer' trilogy, the first two books of which I have not read, because they were not titled "Camp Killer" and were not obvious homages to the murderous summer camp material of my youth (Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13th, The Burning, and so forth). Nevertheless, I--
Excuse me! What?!
Yes, I am a grown-ass man, and yes, I did just spend a couple hours consuming Young Adult content intended for high-school-aged girls in 1996. Thank you for your concern. Now, as I was saying, this book grabbed my attention because of the title, and also that spectacular cover art featuring a wild-haired, ax-wielding maniac menacing a bunch of camp counselors sitting around a fire, and--
Oh, for the love of Jason, will you stop laughing? This isn't a joke or something to inflate my reading goal numbers for the year. Ask my wife, she saw me reading it this morning, and for some reason didn't get at all jealous that I was choosing to spend part of my day off with two trouble-making blonde twins. But that's not the point!
The point is, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield (the aforementioned blonde twins), have been shipped off from their picture perfect California town of Sweet Valley into the badlands of Montana for that yearly ritual long-suffered by so many Gen X'ers like myself, the trip to Summer Camp. No malls, no Garfield telephones, no cable television, just the squeals of children with more energy than sense, and the sighs of teenaged Junior Counselors charged with keeping them in line. Add to that the lack of flushable toilets and a culinary lineup comprised of whatever can be boiled into semi-edibility in a giant pot, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
And that's before the ax-wielding maniac shows up!
Now, presuming both A) You're a dude, and B) You've not read this book before, I'm assuming both A) You have some questions for me and B) You've probably not stopped laughing yet. That's fine. I'll wait. This book came out the year I graduated high school, and it took me this long to learn it existed and sit down to read it, so I know a thing or two about patience.
All done with the chuckling? Want to make fun of my glasses while you're at it? Go right ahead. Been there, done that, and have the t-shirt but can no longer wear it because of this thing called a 'growth spurt' which, for me, happened roughly two years before this book was published.
Right. Now, as I was saying, Camp Killer purports to be about an ax-wielding maniac named Crazy Freddy, a man who obtained this dubious moniker after he and a young lady at Camp Crystal Lake Echo Mountain disappeared one evening. Long story short, there was an ax, there was a girl, there was a fire, there were some bits of clothing that turned up, and the girl ended up gorging herself on poisonous berries in order to be with her true love forever in the afterlife. Naturally this is a story so tragic and reminiscent of that movie by Billy the Shakes -- you know, the one with Jamie Kennedy, Dash Mihok, and Paul Rudd -- that Elizabeth uses it as the inspiration for writing and producing her own play, which wins the camp's drama competition, and sparks off a war with rival Junior Counselor Nicole Banes who, to date, has attempted to steal both Elizabeth's play and Elizabeth's summer squeeze, Joey Mason, for the sole reason that every teenage drama aimed at young women needs a colossally-bitchy Mean Girl(tm) antagonist.
Or, you know, so I'm given to understand. Look, this is literally book #125 of a series where I somehow overlooked the first hundred and twenty-four volumes because they weren't about a supernatural, wood-chopping, unstoppably-murderous revenant named "Crazy Freddy". I am who I am.
The book is only 197 wide-margined, double-spaced pages long. The first 126 of those pages are all about girls being girls, meant to be read by other girls who are fantasizing about having their own Joey Masons to reach first base with come summer time, and had likely just replaced the dog-earned New Kids on the Block posters on their wall with fresh ones featuring the Backstreet Boys. At one point, I thought I was getting a bait-and-switch, because Jessica and her summer fling Paul decided it would be funny to scare the kids and other counselors by pretending to be Crazy Freddy. But then, no lie, on page 127 we get the payoff: a real, live, ax-carrying, bloodthirsty psychopath shows up to grab both Jessica and Tanya (one of the young campers under Jessica's care), promising to sacrifice them, at dawn, to the forest.
This technically isn't Crazy Freddy (it's instead an escaped felon named Frank Cobra) , but still, a Sweet Valley High book promised a deranged ax murderer, then delivered a deranged ax murderer. I am here for it!
Now, obviously, this ain't Fear Street. Being one of the stars of her own series, we know Jessica has script immunity, and being entitled "Sweet Valley High" it's reasonable to conclude that nobody's actually going to wind up getting beheaded, impaled, or sacrificed to Mother Nature, and you would be correct. The worst that happens is one secondary character suffering a minor concussion, and another losing her baseball cap in a botched stream-crossing.
I don't care. I got the "Camp Killer" I was promised, and closed the covers feeling suitably entertained. And also a bit like a peeping tom, having just spent a few hours in the company and minds of teenage girls which, truth be told, was almost scarier than the ax dude. Fortunately, this review is unlikely to be seen by anyone who knows me, and thus I feel my secret is safe. Who knew the trick to getting guys to read YA chick lit was to include a psychopath with a branch-cutting fetish, and why did no one tell me about this back in 1996? What else have I missed out on?
Let me know in the comments. I'm off to delete my internet history. I don't want a repeat of the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen video game fiasco.
Any idea who ghost-wrote this one?
I haven't come across a source for this one specifically, but a likely candidate is Katherine Heiny, aka Katherine Applegate. She was one of the most prolific of the Sweet Valley ghostwriters at the time, and she wrote one book every two months over the course of a four-year period during the mid-90s. If I had to take a guess, I'd say there's a good chance this one was her.
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