Point by Numbers: I Saw You That Night!

Summer's coming up and I think it's time we talked about a bunch of summer themed horror books for the next little while. More in July, but for now I think we can start off with a book from R.L. Stine. A point book. And one with one hell of a cover. Though, given these books almost always disappoint me in some level, perhaps I'm walking into a trap I could easily avoid. But, man, this cover though. It's time to talk about I Saw You That Night!

Look at this cover. LOOK AT IT! It may honestly be the greatest cover ever made. At least in terms of Point and almost likely in terms of Stine. You have a beach setting which looks nice, and then you have a skeleton lifeguard with a whistle in one hand and sunglasses giving off a hot pink reflection. This is why cavemen painted on walls! And yes, this one would have scared me like skeleton picnic did. But oh man this is just the epitome of perfectly corny and yet just as perfectly intriguing. And that worries me a whole bunch.

And we get brought down from the wacky cover with our prologue as we see that a girl named Roxie Nelson is listening to a girl being attacked by some guy. She hears enough and, worried about her own fate, makes a run for it, just as afraid that whoever the guy was who did it will come after her next and that she may have just witnessed a murder. We then flash back a few days prior to Roxie playing a round of tennis with her friend Ursula Nordquist. Roxie finds herself to be too average and super short, while Ursula, according to Roxie, looks like a tall Afghan hound. So she's a big bitch is what you're getting at?

We also learn that Ursula is super competitive. She also has a summer job transferring files to office computers. Roxie has a boyfriend named Terry who is working at the fish market. She's also taking summer school for French and mentions she's... NOPE! Not saying that R slur here. Look, this is a book from 1994 but, and I mean this wholeheartedly, WHAT THE HELL, STINE!? Ah, this is what I get for liking the cover I suppose. She's... erm... in need of improving her French. But they turn their attention to Treasure Beach, which is actually a sound on a place called Rocky Shores. Normally a hangout for teens, especially in the summer.

Roxie bets Ursula to go swimming, but Ursula is against that idea since it's still just June. As they talk, another of their friends show up named Shawna Cohn, covered in blood. She just got dumped by her boyfriend Lee Blume and when she tried to hit him over it, she sliced her hand on his boat's motor. I mean, that's what happened and not that Lee's known for a bad temper. Oh god please don't tell me... So while they patch up Shawna, we then have Roxie start to fantasize about Lee and his toned body, mysterious scar and bad temper. But he was new in town and before Roxie could really ask him out, he ended up with Shawna while she got fish store Terry. 

A couple days pass and Ursula and Roxie meet with Lee in his boat, wearing his Sharks cap. Guessing San Jose Sharks, but not outwardly mentioned. He invites the girls out on his boat and they sail for a bit before suddenly Lee's motor breaks and they're trapped! Of course, that's just a joke from Ol' Lee. See he's a "real mean dude". Oh god, Stine's not... The next day, Ursula gets Lee's file which contains his address on Sea-Breeze in Pine Woods. All of these places sound they should have the words "Zone: Act 1" at the end of them. Ursula is interested in Lee, as is Roxie. So the girls decide to make a game out of it to see which one lands Lee first, I guess Terry be damned. Fifty bucks and Lee for the winner. And they have to bring Lee's Sharks cap and wear it for a day. So just a fun bet. A fun, silly bet. Oh god I am dreading where this is headed. 

While with Terry the next day at the beach, Roxie runs off and finds Ursula with Lee, just as the two head off in Lee's boat. So far advantage: Ursula. But Roxie has a plan that she knows should work perfectly. The perfect plan? Break into Lee's house while he's out at his parent's charity function and steal the Sharks cap. If she has the cap, then Ursula will think she won. What could possibly go wrong? She sneaks inside and thinks she sees a dead body, but it's just a mop. She heads to Lee's room to find the cap, but no such luck. Suddenly she hears voices downstairs, which takes us to where we were at the beginning of the book. A girl reacting in pain and an angry male voice yelling at her. Roxie is scared, but unsure if it's Lee or someone else. But she isn't sticking around to find out and runs for the door. A flash of Roxie's camera light shows a girl with ringlets and a boy that looks like Lee, but Roxie can't tell.

She floors it for home and at several occasions is about to dial someone, but stops, feeling that #1. This isn't her business and #2. She's pretty much about to implicate herself for breaking and entering. She's screwed over in both ways. The next day, she finds out that a teenage girl's body was found dead at the nearby dunes, her body showing signs of physical abuse. Oh god, Stine IS. Roxie realizes that this must mean that this was the girl that she saw the other night. And it must have been Lee that did it. Roxie's dad is a lawyer and she might have the photo for proof, even though this might mean that she puts herself in jeopardy. She drops the film at the photo store because 1994 book and leaves to see Ursula who apparently hurt her back the other day. But she soon learns that Ursula is way too out of it on painkillers to be of any help. When she gets her photos back, no sign of any with Lee and the victim, just a photo of the ceiling light, so that's a bust. 

As Roxie heads home, she ends up at the crime scene as the body is being placed in the body bag. Sure enough, it's the girl she saw the other night. Roxie then tells her dad, who is a lawyer about witnessing the crime, though saying she was headed to Lee's and saw the door wide open  then was privy to the murder, so hands are clean for the break and enter part. Mr. Nelson suggests that they should talk to the police about everything. They go to the police station where Chief Harms cuffs Roxie and says she's under arrest for murder. But that was just a joke. My god can Stine write characters who aren't really awful pranksters? 

After implicating Lee as the killer, the cops assure Roxie that they won't reveal that she was a witness. She then relays all of this to Shawna and then mentions how Ursula is going to have quite the shock when she's lucid enough to realize she may have been about to date a murderer. After telling Ursula the next day, Roxie then runs into Lee, who says that he saw her... going to school earlier and not, you know, thinking you saw me kill a girl. He then makes himself look so much more innocent by grabbing her throat. More so the locket on her throat which he really likes. So he either does know and is messing with Roxie's head, or he really is a creepy, violent dude. 

So why isn't Lee arrested? Well, the Blumes had a good enough alibi by saying that Lee would have been at the benefit so there's no way the timelines could match. Oh, and no doubt rich and white. But Mr. Nelson gives the best possible advice to Roxie. Stay away from the beach and definitely away from Lee Blume. She talks with Terry about the murder, to which Terry says he actually knew the victim. She went by Maddy Andrews. He knew her from camp. That's a tight enough alibi, isn't it? But, you know that whole "Don't go to the beach" part? Roxie ends up at the beach with Terry anyway. She notices something on the lifeguard station. It's our cover with a skeleton sitting there. Only she then sees it's just a bunch of rocks. A bunch of rocks just placed there to look like a person for some reason? Hell if I know. Look, I didn't even expect the cover to be mentioned, so it's far less of a letdown, I guess.

Oh, but Lee is there. So that second part of the warning didn't last. Also, Terry just vanishes. Turns out he found a turtle. Oh Stine, please don't do it. He decides to keep it. OH STINE, PLEASE DON'T DO IT. Roxie says she'll keep it at her house. OOOHHHH STINE, PLEASE DON'T DO IT. She talks with Shawna some more and we learn that Lee got in some serious trouble at his old home of Springdale and is trying to make a new life here. Though he never mentioned any Maddy to Shawna. Then, suddenly, someone knocks at her door. When Roxie answers, she gets grabbed by Lee... who was just coming over to give her the sweater she forgot at the beach. Nothing absolutely twisted about that, I assure you. After French class, Roxie runs into Ursula as she heads home... to which she finds the turtle crushed under a mallet. OHHHHHHHHH STINE YOU DID DO IT. Also a threatening note saying that Roxie will be next. 

After a gruesome Mario-esque incident, Roxie, Terry and Ursula head to the roller rink. Things go well until Roxie hears a blood curdling scream from Ursula. She had a back spasm that caused her to fall awkwardly on her ankle. As Terry takes Ursula home, Roxie walks by herself, which means she's yet again spotted by Lee who says that he saw her... at the roller rink and definitely not at any possible murder. He offers to take her over to his place, which is the last place she wants to be. And as they arrive she soon realizes that "oh crap, she wasn't even in Lee's house that night. She was at someone else's. You see that house belongs to the family of Ray Metzger, Terry's best friend. And Terry always goes there too. As she heads home, she runs into Terry again who isn't too happy, but not in a "I'll murder you way". Though later that night, she gets a call from Terry saying he knows she was there that night.

So now Roxie's let her guard down enough to start going out with Lee, even going to the movies with him while believing Terry's the culprit. So, she's also gullible enough to end up at the dock while Lee is fixing his boat. And she still has the envelope with the photos of Lee's bedroom that night. His actual bedroom. As in he was lying to her about it being the wrong house. He killed Maddy that night and now he has to do the same to Roxie. He grabs her and points a screwdriver at her neck. Turns out that the bad things at Springdale were so bad that Maddy knew about them and followed Lee to his new home to try to reveal the truth, which was what caused him to murder her that night.

As he's about to take Roxie out to the middle of the ocean and drown her, Terry comes to the rescue in time. See, he knew that Roxie was at the movies with Lee that night, so he knew she was cheating on him. Lee then stabs Terry in the throat with the screwdriver and starts to speed the boat. Roxie manages to escape the boat and swim back to the dock, but Lee begins to back it up, intent on shredding her to pieces. She manages to evade in time, just as she sees cops arrive and tend to Terry. They also arrest Lee as well. Ursula is there as well. Since she was doing her files, she saw that Ray Metzger doesn't live anywhere near Lee, so yeah, we kind of got that now. But she is at least happy about one thing. She won the bet. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA shut the fuck up Ursula.

So the great cover, mediocre story curse rears its ugly head once more. Though I will say that I Saw You That Night! was at least okay. A serviceable book that tries its best at some twists and turns by the end, which for Stine is a surprise. Of course it was Lee, he's described as being an abusive monster. And while we don't get an answer as to what he did before, we can believe that he must have done something truly heinous. But, credit to Stine, I did think they were going to pin this on Terry being the real villain, though once we get to the whole "wrong house" situation it becomes glaringly obvious that it's Lee. Also, we never get any confirmation if Lee was abusing Shawna or not. I mean, he might not have, but there's no answer if he didn't either so that's a concerning thing for Stine to add. 

Roxie is an okay protagonist, but doesn't really feel unique. She's dime a dozen for these protagonists. Ursula and Shawna exist for the most part, though Ursula and the whole bet stuff just vanishes after the mystery starts, only to be reminded at the end. I do wish we got more of it, but I'm also glad this wasn't just a whole book about trying to compete for the title of girlfriend to an abuser. So, that just leaves the mystery and the horror itself and it really just feels like any Fear Street or Stine standalone we've read at this point. Horror coming from close calls, phone threats and the tried and true, animal murder. Maybe R.L. Stine was a Battletoads fan instead. 

So, in the end, this book is just okay. An amazing cover that I love to pieces, but a book that just doesn't have anything to it to make it stand out from so many other Stine mysteries with the same setup and pacing. So, I'd normally give this maybe a B, but then I remembered the R slur just casually thrown in there. Like, these books rarely use ass or damn, or bitch or anything bluer than that, but he just throws r******d out of the blue? Not cool, Bob. And yes, that is way more than enough for a major demerit. So, with that in mind, I Saw You That Night! gets a C.