George Smith

The Mystery of Guggenheim Hill George Smith

The story of The Mystery of Guggenheim Hill is an allegory that centers on the common human struggle between good and evil. Pure evil is personified in the character Klaus who seeks to invade the mind of Gordon, a teenage boy. Gordon is in a fight for his survival. Assisting in that struggle is David Stoner, a psychologist, who tries to find the solution to his client's extreme behavioral changes. At the same time, David is very ambivalent about his relationships to his wife and to his client. Stoner loses professional objectivity in treating Gordon whom he comes to view as the son he never had. Dr. Stoner is progressively pulled into the battle with Klaus in an effort to save Gordon and becomes obsessed with the boy's case to the exclusion of everything else, including his marriage. The solution to the entwined plot and subplot is not neat and the path to the climax is rocked with episodes of extreme danger for all the characters. The supernatural plays a huge role in the story and the climax is one that not every reader will accept. David Stoner had been a missionary to Haiti, but became an unwelcome irritation to the authorities for becoming too involved with protestations against the ill-treatment of the masses by an uncaring government. After being expelled from Haiti, Stoner married a nurse he had known from there. Jennifer supplied the income while David completed his advance studies to become a doctor of psychology. The story begins with Stoner in clinical practice and being drawn into a most difficult case. Three locations play prominent roles in the harrowing adventure. They are Guggenheim Hill where the mystery begins, the Austrian Alps where there are life and death struggles, and the mammoth Zeppelin hangar in Akron, Ohio where Klaus and Stoner have a climactic battle high among the catwalks and girders. The ending is not at all predictable.