John Bellairs's Lewis Barnavelt in The Beast under the Wizard's Bridge

Brad Strickland

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2000
$16.99 hardcover
151 pages

The old bridge across Wilder Creek is being torn down in the name of progress. Thirteen-year-old Lewis Barnavelt is worried, because he knows that when the bridge was built back in the 1890s it was also intended to stop the wicked ghost Jebediah Clabbernong.

Lewis's uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman, both wizards themselves (good ones, not wicked) are also worried, more than they let on. But it is Lewis and his friend Rose Rita who discover an old journal while exploring the abandoned Clabbernong farm. The journal describes Jebediah's plans to live forever and destroy humanity by summoning "the Great Old Ones" from outer space -- and it makes no difference that Jebediah has been dead for sixty years!

Brad Strickland has written yet another tensely thrilling adventure starring Lewis Barnavelt. John Bellairs first introduced Lewis in 1971 in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, followed by two sequels. After Bellairs's death in 1991, Strickland completed three more from Bellairs's notes. The Beast under the Wizard's Bridge is Strickland's second original novel based on these characters, and it is easily as scary as any of Lewis's previous adventures, whether by Strickland or Bellairs himself.

Strickland pulls several details for his plot from that first Lewis book, where Bellairs had once mentioned in passing the Wilder Creek bridge and its unusual history; in a nice touch, Strickland also introduces Lewis's interest in astronomy -- or re-introduces, since Bellairs had said that Lewis would be an astronomer when he grows up.

Many of the best Bellairs trademarks are here: Uncle Jonathan's parlor illusions, the insults he and Mrs. Zimmerman trade, the small details -- like radio jingles -- of life in the early 1950s, and pure chill. The gray and crumbling Clabbernong farm could have been described by Bellairs himself, and indeed recalls a burnt forest from one of Bellairs's best works, The Face in the Frost. Yet Wizard's Bridge is one of Strickland's weaker contributions to the series. A sense of Bellairs humor, which Strickland caught successfully in earlier books (the whistling cat in The Doom of the Haunted Opera brings to mind a chuckle even now), is sadly absent. It is also difficult to reconcile the emphasis Strickland puts on Lewis's great fear of disappointing Jonathan with doing precisely what he thought Jonathan did not want him to do.

Even so, Lewis is less of a coward than he used to be and he faces his fears differently. He is more confident, more competent. Lewis may not even recognize it, but Strickland definitely does: Lewis is growing up.

Finally, take a moment to notice the cover illustration of The Beast under the Wizard's Bridge. Artist Edward Gorey, who did covers for most of the Bellairs titles over the years, has always been an important element of their creepy atmosphere. Gorey died last year (April 15, 2000) so this cover is one of his last. Some of us will miss him.

Also starring Lewis and Rose Rita, by John Bellairs:

• The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Dial Books, 1973
• The Figure in the Shadows. Dial Books, 1975
• The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring. Dial Books, 1976

And completed by Brad Strickland:

• The Ghost in the Mirror. Dial Books, 1993
• The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder. Dial Books, 1993
• The Doom of the Haunted Opera. Dial Books, 1995

And written by Brad Strickland:

• The Specter from the Magician's Musuem. Dial Books, 1998
• The Beast from the Wizard's Bridge. Dial Books, 2000.

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2000 by Wendy Morris.

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