SOURCE: "Death Dealers," in New Statesman, Vol. 91, No. 2345, February 27, 1976, pp. 264-65.

In the following excerpt, Cunningham praises Straub's Julia.

Most weeks Peter Straub's Julia would be a certain pieceleader, granted 'generous space to send its spine-freezing frissons lasering down the column. This week, a bit regrettably, since quality chillers like this come the reader's way so rarely, it must look comparatively out-punched. Don't be put off: matched at its own weight it's a champ. It begins plainly enough, with an American lady, Julia Lofting, impulse-buying a house near Holland Park. But the foreboding sense of yet another American novelist abroad having his characters acquire a place, and a new sense of place, in London just because that's what he's done ('writes full time and lives in London' is often the signpost to the predictably drear), lasts only minutes, and rapidly gives way to an altogether more startling sort...