The Stinal Countdown: Fear Street: Ski Weekend

You know, we're still in the dog days of Summer. Not so much a WOO! PARTY SUMMER!, but more of a "ooo, climate change sucks the big one" Summer. So why don't we cool ourselves off with another trip to Fear Street. Get your skis shined up, grab a stick of Juicy Fruit. Because this Ski Weekend is gonna move ya!

This cover is decent. Again, the strengths are the coloring. The warmth inside the ski lodge compared to the dark and cold outside. Decent enough reactions on the teens looking concerns about the ski mask guy outside. Though the very Hasselhoff looking teen on the right is distracting. Like he's drawn a bit too older looking in my eyes at least. Still, solid as usual.

We open the book with Doug Mahr driving erratically in a snowstorm. He and his girlfriend Shannon Harper and their friend and narrator Ariel Munroe have just driven out of the ski lodge with "Red" Porter, another teen they met during their, as the title suggests, ski weekend up in Pineview Lodge. At first it was a weekend with Doug, Shannon, Ariel and her boyfriend Randy, but Randy had to leave early for a basketball game, which I mean poor scheduling on his part. And that's when Red showed up to pretty much cuck Randy out of the equation as now Ariel has feelings for Red now. And like, Randy left a note before, but Ariel's all pissed because he left early before the big snowstorm and is likely sitting home comfortably. I mean, who's really at fault here? If anything, Randy's the smartest character in the book so far.

The group continue their drive in the storm when the car skids off. Nobody gets hurt, but they're a bit shaken up. Though Ariel gives off a few science facts because that's her character trait. Though not scientific enough to realize driving in a snowstorm is usually a bad idea. Red tells Doug to drive down a country road. Before they get there, the car almost gets hit by a truck. But they avoid it. What they don't avoid is Doug's car completely dying. But that doesn't last too long either as the engine manages to turn and they're back on the road. All while Doug is getting annoyed by Red's car advice. Reader beware, you're in for banter.

As the teens head through the country road, it takes Red home to the place he belongs. Or at least a house in the middle of the road that he thinks they should stay at, saying that he used to live around here, not to mention the car's not going to make it all the way to Shadyside and they might be able to get some help. Ariel then thinks of Randy and how mad she is at him for, you know, being the only sensible person in this book so far. Maybe Red too, but I have a feeling that's going to change soon enough. They park the car and head towards the old house.

The couple inside answer the door and let them in. Their names are Lou and Eva Hitchcock. I hear their relative Alfred was pretty famous. They're rather scraggly looking and wear flannel shirts. I mean, this could make them farmers or getting in early on the grunge scene given this book was released in 1991. Meanwhile Lou continues to creepily hit on Shannon because she's a redhead in a very "this dude's on some registry" kind of way. Lou also mentions that their house was once a ski lodge itself, so the kids are lucky to at least have some shelter as the storm worsens, I guess. 

And to add a bit more tension, turns out Lou is a hunter, gloating on the deer he shot and mounted before mentioning his friend Harve Dawkins, who would hunt deer in the snow before he was accidentally killed by a hunter himself. I guess it's better to die ironically, I guess. Ariel goes to help Eva who is having a hard time finding the tea in the kitchen, which is weird given it's her kitchen... right? As Eva leaves, Ariel and Doug hear a loud sound like a gunshot, but it was just a mouse being caught in a mousetrap because Stine's never met an animal he didn't want to kill. 

A tree branch falls through the roof of the house, so the boys move it, while Ariel and Shannon begin to be a bit more concerned about Lou and Eva. Lou's super drunk, so that's part of the explanation, but Ariel then notices that Lou's jacket has tickets for a ski lift despite Lou claiming not to have gone skiing for years. Meanwhile, Eva is quiet and reserved, almost too quiet. Like she knows something and might be afraid of speaking out. That night is no better as while everyone else sleeps, Ariel hears someone entering the house. It's Red. He mentions he heard Lou and Eva arguing and decided to take a walk. He too is thinking something's up with those two. Then they make out for a bit as Ariel again digs into how much better Red is than Randy. My god, let it go already.

The next day, everyone has breakfast, except for Eva, who Lou says is still sleeping, which sets off some alarms. Doug suggests they leave before the next storm, but Lou says that the plows haven't shown up yet, so they're still trapped...err, "inconvenienced". Doug and the others go out to work on the car, but the car is gone! Actually, it's not gone, but fell down the nearby ravine and is totaled. So those suspicions of being trapped just got a lot worse. And I think I'm starting to guess what the twist to this mystery is already 56 pages in. Maybe Stine will surprise me, but let's see. Oh and the phone lines are also dead in the house, so pile that on as well. So no phone, no motorcar, but still lights. So a single luxury. So, not fully like Robinson Crusoe, slightly as primitive as can be.

The kids have a snowball fight for a bit before Ariel notices Lou's Jeep. It has an Alabama license plate despite this being in Vermont. When Lou comes to drive them off in the Jeep, wouldn't you know it, that's dead too. Red goes to work on the Jeep while Ariel mentions that there's a snowmobile on the grounds as well, but Lou says that's dead as well. He then talks about someone who froze to death. Gotta admit, for a possible murderer, the dude's got some wicked anecdotes. Ariel then remembers that Eva hasn't been around for a bit. When she arrives in Eva and Lou's room, she finds Eva dead! No, wait, she's just knocked out, literally. A massive bruise on her face to tell the story. She tells Ariel that they shouldn't be here. 

Another snowstorm hits and the kids are now double trapped. Ariel looks outside and sees someone in a ski mask, I guess mirroring the scene on the cover. The person vanishes, and when they tell Lou, he's confused. And then he wants to wrestle Doug. And because Doug is as much an egomaniac as he is a Hulkamaniac, he accepts Lou's challenge. Doug takes him down and wins, but Lou attacks him, spraining Doug's leg in the process. Now everyone's a bit more convinced that they have to get out of here and soon. And with the snowstorm calming, Red suggests that they get out now. See, Red overheard what Lou and Eva have been arguing about. He thinks they plan to rob the kids blind and leave them stuck in the middle of nowhere to die. 

Red also found something else in one of the dressers. A photo of a completely different couple. So his suspicions on Lou and Eva seem to be holding water. Red also mentions he fixed the Jeep so they have their means of escape. But they can't leave yet, they have to get Lou good and drunk to make sure he can't catch them. They manage to get Lou to bed and begin their escape, not before Red suggesting to take one of Lou's loaded rifles just in case. They make it to the barn, only to find what appears to be Lou there holding some sort of instrument. Suddenly, Doug shoots the man and sure enough, it's not Lou. And also, this guy's pretty damn dead. 

Ariel then soon realizes that the murdered man was the man in the photo Red found earlier. In the confusion, Lou shows up and discovers the body of Jake, Eva's brother, dead on the ground. Lou is pissed. He believes that they thought that Jake was the man in the ski mask and decided to kill him before fleeing the scene of the crime in Lou's Jeep. He tells the kids to go back into the house and he'll take them to the cops the next day, while also putting Jake's corpse in the cellar for now. So that plan blew up spectacularly. Now Doug may be facing jail time. But he might be rich and white enough that they'll believe it was an accident.

But Ariel is still confused as to why Jake was there, and that despite Jake being shot point blank in the chest, she never saw a trace of blood. So she goes down to the cellar early the next day to get her answers. And sure enough, there's only a small trace of blood, like from a completely different instrument, hardly what a shotgun could do. She tells the others that Jake was dead before Doug shot him. She then believes that this is part of whatever grift Lou is pulling. Not only to rob them blind, but he murdered Jake and left the body there for the kids to take the fall. They head to the Jeep to go to the police, but Red stops them. Because, shocker of shockers, Red was in on this scheme the whole time.

Red points a gun at them and reveals the whole scheme. How he targeted them at the ski lodge. How he lured them to Lou and Eva's. How he was the one who pushed their car in the ravine. How he was the one who was outside in the ski mask, sabotaging everything to keep the others trapped. We also learn that Eva isn't cooperating with their plan, obviously broken up over the death of her brother, who was also Red's brother. Eva then shows up and reveals why Jake was killed. Jake had possession of their inheritance and wasn't going to share, so the plan was to kill Jake, steal the inheritance and pin it all on whoever Red lured. But Eva screwed their plans over as she called the cops.

Ariel manages to grab some hard snowballs and hits one of them at Lou, causing the gun to fall over. The kids make a run for the jeep, only to realize that plan is kind of bad since Red has the keys. They try the snowmobile which actually works. Ariel climbs on it in hopes of distracting Lou and Red long enough until the cops arrive. She drives for a bit until the snowmobile falls over. Despite injured ribs, Ariel runs off further on to the frozen lake. Lou and Red catch up to her just as cops arrive. Ariel tries to escape, but Red leaps at her, only to miss and smash into the ice, breaking right through and drowning in the icy waters. Ariel manages to escape just in time as the ice collapses on the lake. The kids talk to the cops about everything, they manage to get their car fixed and they manage to return home where Randy must be really glad he didn't have to deal with any of that shit.

I've said it before and it still rings true, R.L. Stine's not very good at crafting mysteries. And this is one of the more egregious cases of that. You can tell where this is going almost immediately. How Red is introduced, how he's the one who lures them to the lodge among so many other little pieces. And that kind of hurts what is otherwise a decent enough book. Ski Weekend doesn't break the mold of these types of stories, but is fine for what it is. Ariel's just okay as a protagonist, while Doug is sometimes annoying and Shannon exists. I like the idea of Lou, how dangerous he comes off as. He could have worked well enough on his own without Red. As for Red, he's a decent enough villain reveal, even if, again, it's one of the most obvious villain reveals that I've covered so far.

I like some of the book's ideas, but feel they could have been more interesting than what they were. I'd have played up the cabin fever concept a bit more. Make things feel more claustrophobic and more frightening. We get some of that with Lou, but not enough before the book starts to get to its climax. I do like the whole mouse trap analogy the book uses, though I think Stine showing us the metaphor early kind of makes it feel a bit like he's hitting us over the head with it, but it's not the worst thing ever either. I probably should have done this one long after The Wrong Number, which too used a plot about someone murdering someone else for money then getting someone else framed. And, frankly, I feel that book did the concept a shade better.

In the end, Ski Weekend is a just okay book. Nothing that outright makes it unique, but nothing that makes it feel like a waste of time to read either. Could have done more with some of its concepts, but doesn't feel like a total waste of time and energy to process. Though don't go in expecting the most well crafted mystery either. This is as filler as you could possibly get. Ski Weekend gets a C+. 

It Was Acceptable in the 90s: Mr. Wizard references, "Hulkster"