Horowitz, fresh off his success with his Alex Rider series, ratchets things up a notch with the first in the Gatekeepers series about five young people who must save the world from evil. A master of edge-of-your-seat writing, Horowitz gives himself lots of opportunity to push the envelope here. He focuses on 14-year-old Matt, a troubled orphan who is in with the wrong crowd. As punishment for being present during an assault, Matt must choose between life with off-putting Mrs. Deverill in a remote Yorkshire village, or jail. As Matt soon learns, Lesser Malling is much worse than jail, because strange and dangerous things are occurring there. Raven's Gate, an ancient portal to the world of evil, is about to be opened, and Matt is to be the blood sacrifice. Novels about boys (and girls) facing dark forces are nothing new, and this one certainly contains elements of familiar stories (Hello, Harry Potter). But the real-world setting gives this an extra frisson of horror, and Horowitz's vivid descriptions are not for the fainthearted. It's what's inside all the thrills, however, that makes the book so strong: characters that readers will care about and root for. There will be an eager audience for the next in the series, to be titled Evil S