Ah, those twisted little darlings

Eventually, Calvin and Molly turn their sights on the sheriff. There is a grim physical humor in the thought of two 8-year-olds trip-tripping over the ice to lay murderous hands on the "false Santa" himself, but it's quite difficult to kill a grown person -- as Adrian, a pediatrician, should know.

It's not that children cannot be seriously murderous. Take Roald Dahl's "The Swan," in which two boys torment a third, going so far as to lay him on train tracks, which he survives, before requiring him to fly, which he presumably does not. Dahl achieves quite credible terrors through the accumulation of small, discrete details, which build to an unbearable conclusion. Calvin too cheats death by lying under a train, but his survival owes a bit more to Camille. ("I want to live!" he cries.)

You can't deny that Adrian's prose is lovely, and if his characters' consciousness rarely fits the role he's chosen for them, a real heart lies beneath. That's the stuff Adrian needs to find pumping -- in stories where they can live as themselves, not as jerky zombies rattling around the haunted houses of the soul.

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Lizzie Skurnick has reviewed for the New York Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and other publications. Her book on vintage young adult literature will be published next year.