The Stinal Countdown: Fear Street: The Cheater

Cheaters never prosper, or so the saying goes. But what does continue to prosper is this blog's coverage of Fear Street. Will our next book be a winner, or will it's cheatin' heart tell on itself? Let's see just what goes down with The Cheater.

Cover is good and actually presents a frightening scenario with the boy staring through the window, ready for some sort of revenge all while the girl is on the phone, I assume to get someone to help. I will say the only thing that takes me out is the angle which feels a bit warped, but it's still very striking.

Carter Phillips is having problems with math. Not that she's bad at math or anything, it's just that her grades need to be much higher to appease her father, a highly successful criminal court judge. It doesn't matter that the score was still strong, or any of Carter's other achievements, she needs damn near perfect grades or else he believes she'll never end up in Princeton. So now she has to take the test again for Mr. Raub's class on a Saturday. And despite some encouragement from her boyfriend Dan Mason and her friend Jill Bancroft, she fears she'll never make the over 700 score her father expects of her. And she has to go to Princeton because that's where her father went. And I'd imagine he's the kind of guy who enjoys some Vassar bashing.

Dan and Carter go to the local coffee shop. It's here that they mention the Austin case. Henry Austin, a well known gang leader, was recently arrested for a murder. This case is being held by Judge Phillips, Carter's dad, so that also adds to his recent string of forcing his future on his daughter. After Dan leaves, another boy, Adam Messner, comes over to Carter and says that he'll do the test for her. All he asks for, of course, is a date. Unfortunately for Carter, he isn't referring to the fruit. 

Carter is of course worried that they'll get caught cheating, but Adam says he did the test the previous year. It's held in an auditorium with tons of students, and security is pretty lax, so this plan is foolproof. She agrees with Adam telling her to date him on a Saturday, despite her other plans with Dan, and the fact that Adam is seeing Sheila Coss, who wouldn't be too happy with this whole thing, but Adam thinks it'll go over fine. The Saturday comes and so far the lie is working fine. Carter answers a phone call saying that the number two man in the gang testified against Henry Austin, admitting to murder, fraud and bribery. 

Carter gets an answer from Adam not long after. He says that they did have to ID him, but that was just a joke. He managed to get the test in just fine. Now she has to fulfill her end of the agreement. So she gets into Adam's beat up Mustang and drive to a night club called The Underground. They dance for a bit before leaving. It goes pretty well, save for Adam suddenly kissing her. But he's not quite done wanting to spend time with her, saying he'll be at her tennis practice the next day. After Adam leaves, Carter heads home, only to be stopped by Sheila, who says that she knows that Adam Messner has been messner-ing behind her back and she'll make whoever the girl is suffer. 

The next day, Carter arrives at the country club with Adam waiting for her to bring him inside. She brings him in, which is surprising since while Adam's white, he's not exactly Rich and White. Someone who is Rich and White, emphasis on the Rich, is Richard Smith, an extremely snooty preppy who is also after the affections of Carter, but she doesn't like his stuck up style. But Adam and Carter easily best Richard and Jill, who is a bit surprised that Carter is being so nice to a normie like Adam. But she's not going to blurt anything about the cheating, both in terms of the test and technically on Dan. Adam then says that he'll be going out with Carter again that Friday. When she says she can't, he tells Carter that she's going to have to keep him happy. So, this was already going up blackmail road and now it's flying down the avenue.

Carter returns home and her father wants to know about her score so that she'll be able to attend Princeton. He calls and gets the answer. A 730. It excites him so much that he runs out of the house. When he returns, he gives Carter a gift of diamond earrings. But Carter is already starting to feel the guilt. The guilt that she, of course, earned none of this because she didn't actually do that math test. She tells Dan the news and he's so excited that he wants to do something with her that Friday, which Carter knows is tricky given Adam. She goes on the date with Adam who takes her to his home on, where else, Fear Street. 

When they arrive at Adam's house, he says that Carter should fix Jill up with Ray Owens, who is tattooed and has plenty of piercings. Then he kisses her again before trying to go further. She breaks free and tells him that this has to stop. That she has a boyfriend and that none of this is right. And, of course, this doesn't make Adam happy, but she ultimately agrees and manages to set up Jill and Ray on a double date with her and Adam. But now she has even more to worry about as she sees that Adam is carrying a gun. She makes a run for it and escapes Adam's house, but all the way home she sees a car following her, but not who is inside. She makes it home and heads to her room in a panic, wondering who was in the car. Was it Adam? Or was it Sheila?

The next day at tennis practice, Dan tells Carter that he heard that she was on a date with Adam the previous night, but she denies it, which is enough to work for now. She then meets up with Jill, who isn't happy about this double date. As Carter is finally about to tell her why, she reaches into her gym bag and pulls out a heart! Not a human's but definitely an cow or something similar. Along with that is a note saying that she wouldn't want daddy to know the truth. Jill shows back up, but just sees the blood on Carter's hands. She says it's just a cut and leaves, not telling the truth to Jill either.

The double date happens as Jill and Carter end up in another club called Benny's. A club filled with motorcycle gang members, including a pair named Manny and Curt who leer at the girls before leaving. As Ray get more forceful with Jill on the dance floor, Carter tries to get her free, but more of the gang members surround them and grab the two girls. Adam once again waves the fact that Carter's dad is a judge before the gang try to get forceful. Carter and Jill manage to break free and manage to drive away. But instead of, you know, telling the truth about why her friend was almost raped by a biker gang, she says that she had bet Adam that if they won the tennis match they'd set up the date and it went awry. You know, even though at this point we're pretty damn far from Princeton concerns. As Jill leaves, Carter gets a call from Sheila who says that she knows about her and Adam and she'll find a way to keep them apart for good.

The next day, Adam once again approaches Carter. He says that he'll call off the whole romantic stuff, but he still has her little secret. And since we're still in blackmail territory, it'll cost about a thousand dollars to maybe keep him quiet. She agrees to pay him, though the only way to get a thousand on her would be to pawn the earrings, which she does. However, when she gets home, her father asks about the earrings, to which she quadruples down on the lies, saying that she had to take them to a jeweler. She gives Adam the money, and it seems like everything's fine. She doesn't see him for a few days. She even manages to set up a date with Dan to watch Batman Returns and Wayne's World. Funny story, I remember seeing both movies on the same night when I was a kid after they were rented. Great movies. 

Anyway, when Carter heads home, there's a car behind her trying to run her off the road and into the lake. She manages to stop her car in time and the other car speeds off. When she gets home, she sees Adam in the driveway. She blames him for the hit and run, but he says that he had nothing to do with that. He's just here for more money. When she says she has no more money, he suggests stealing from her parents lest his secret slip. The next day, Dan arrives. He knows about everything from Jill. The bloody hand. The incident with Ray Owens and Adam. But he also reveals that he knows why. Because she had Adam cheat for her. Despite his concerns, she says she can't just stop now that she's in too far. She then grabs a gun and says that she really would like to kill Adam though.

Carter steals some stuff from her house and sells it, only ending up getting two hundred dollars. She heads to Adam's house only to see cops and Dan on the scene. They tell her that somebody had killed Adam Messner. The cops mention that Carter's car was seen on the premises earlier in the day, but she says she had nothing to do with it. When she gets home, the phone rings and the person on the other end whispers at her, saying they knows what Carter did. When she goes to school, everyone is afraid of her, including Jill and Dan, believing she really did murder Adam. 

That night, Carter's parents leave her home alone. Not long into the evening, the power goes out and the phone goes dead. Someone speaks to her, saying she'll break daddy's heart. She goes for the gun, but it's missing. It's not Sheila, nor Adam, but a muscular man who strangles her, causing her to pass out. When she awakens, she hears sirens as the cops grab the attacker. They pull of his mask to reveal... some guy she's never met before. Judge Phillips arrives and instantly recognizes who it is. It's someone who works for Henry Austin's gang. He believes that Henry Austin is targeting Carter to get at him. 

Things cool down for a while when Sheila calls again, saying she knows that it was Carter that killed Adam. That she has proof. All she wants is five hundred dollars. She pawns more stuff off and heads to Fear Street. Back to Adam's house. Sheila shows her the proof, a necklace that says "For Carter." Carter then calls Dan and says she's finally going to tell her father everything, but needs him to be with her when he does. The two enter Mr. Phillips' study. She tells him about Adam Messner, and about the cheating. She then tells him that she was the one who killed Adam Messner. But then Dan reveals the truth. It was Dan that killed Adam Messner.

Dan says that he couldn't stand what Adam was doing to Carter. He was there when Carter gave Adam the money. He waited until she left to confront Adam. Dan told Adam to leave her alone, but Adam continued to mock him. The two struggled a bit before Adam got his gun. The two wrestled a bit before Dan grabbed the gun and ended up shooting Adam in the chest, killing him. He had hoped that Carter not wanting to reveal the truth would have been the perfect alibi. Carter says that she knew that it was Dan who did it, because of the necklace that Sheila gave her. She had actually told her father the night before about everything. Judge Phillips says that he'll be able to say that the murder was accidental so Dan can get off. Judge Phillips apologizes to Carter for all the pressure he put on her. And the book ends with Carter and Dan playing chess with Dan winning, because he didn't have to cheat. Har har. 

You know, I had my worries for a moment. Thought maybe we were going to learn that Adam had a twin or something, but thankfully that wasn't the case. As for the story itself, The Cheater is fine. Nothing out and out incredible, but for this type of story, it does what it needs to. Be a story about blackmail and how lies can stack, putting you in a worse situation. Carter's a likable protagonist, one you can actually feel bad for. She never wanted to cheat, but ended up caught in Adam's web. Made no better by her father's pressure, going on nearly a Goosebumps parent level of just terrible parenting. 

Adam makes for a good villain. Cunning, calculating and very evil. Willing to do whatever it takes to continue to mess with Carter. But I do feel him being killed off mid-book was kind of lame. Something just feels off about that. Part of me felt they were setting things up to be that perhaps Adam was a part of Henry Austin's gang. That he was the one who committed the murder and blamed Austin for it. This would have been furthered by the whole side plot with one of Austin's gang members stalking Carter. Ultimately revealing that Adam faked his death. But I feel Stine didn't know how to make this all flow too well. What we do get with Dan being the real culprit is at least built up well, though him being at the scene of the crime makes it a bit too obvious. 

In the end, this was a decent book. Nothing too fresh to make it feel memorable, but everything works well enough. A solid enough story about the dangers of not telling the truth and how easily you can be blackmailed for making a poor decision. It paces itself well and works for a fine enough 150+ pages. I guess sometimes boilerplate is just fine enough. The Cheater gets a B+.