"The Ruins" = Horr(or)ific "Little Shops of Horrors"

It's probably not a good sign when you are waiting for Seymour Krelborn to appear and for the antagonist to break out in song to "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space," right? Such was the mindset when I was reading Scott Smith's "The Ruins."

I would call myself a fan of Smith's first novel, "A Simple Plan" (which shares some similarities with Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men") but to say I was underwhelmed with "The Ruins" is solid understatement. Although the novel starts off well, once the doomed end up on a hill they cannot escape -- on page 77, less than one-fifth of the way through -- it quickly runs out of steam. It's on the pile of books I am ready to trade back to the Strand.

Now I see that a movie adaptation is coming out in April. Ho hum, beware the plants.