Books: Killer in Cresap's Landing

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (273 pp.]—Davis Grubb—Harper ($3).

Hing, hang, hung!

See what the hangman done;

Hung, hang, king!

See the robber swing . . .

All the kids in the Ohio River town of Cresap's Landing sing that song except John and Pearl Harper. And they have reason: their bank-robbing father is in Moundsville Prison waiting to be hanged. Before The Night of the Hunter has gone many pages, Ben Harper lives out the doggerel and swings for his crimes. The secret and, eventually, the terror around which Author Grubb's skin-prickling first novel unfolds is: What did Ben Harper do with the $10,000 in...