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Frank Peretti Image by W Publishing

Nearly 20 years ago, Frank Peretti helped revive religious fiction with his supernatural thriller This Present Darkness. He solidified his reputation as a master of suspense with The Oath, The Visitation, and the new Monster (see review). With more than 10 million copies of his novels in print, Peretti is evangelical Christianity's version of Stephen King. You won't hear such comparisons from Peretti, however. He's more likely to joke about his banjo playing.

But one factor he clearly shares with King, and that he'll discuss readily, is the presence of fear.

"The fear factor in my novels is a way to grab the reader," he says. "You have to create dramatic tension, and fear is one way to do that. Your hero has to be in trouble one way or another. If nobody is in trouble, it is a pretty boring book."

Rather than cash in on the mad-slasher motif so popular in general market fiction, Peretti chooses to engage his readers' childhood fears of ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasts and things that go bump in the night.

"Maybe it is the kid in me, still appealing to that basic fear that hangs on even after we grow up, though we don't want to admit it," he says. "Why do we like stories that scare us? What is their appeal? What is the appeal of, say, Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? I think the appeal is that it is unknown. We are fascinated with the unknown, and of course the unknown has a certain scary element to it.

"Some of the best monster movies are the ones where you don't see what it is you're dealing with. For instance, in the movie Jaws you saw what the shark was doing, but you didn't see the shark until late in the movie. That made it really cool. The Oath was that way. I kept the dragon hidden for a long time. There is something titillating about the unknown; titillating and very scary at the same time."

Peretti is quick to point out that the scary or violent elements in his fiction are never gratuitous, but always a device that points toward spiritual redemption. And unlike his secular counterpart King, Peretti proudly declares, "In my stories, the good guys always win."

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