"...lived a twisted little man."
In a Crooked Little House is a horror/suspense novel published in 1994. It was written by Annette and Gina Cascone, under the collective pseudonym A.G. Cascone.
Huntington Prep is your typical elite private school, filled to the brim with nasty, classist, wealthy students. It's also the hunting grounds of Iggy Boy, a killer who takes pictures of his targets after they die and who has ties to the school's dark history. He also has an obsession with the beautiful Casey McCabe, a scholarship student who has the attention of multiple boys on campus — but she doesn't know how much danger she's in...
This book contains examples of the following:
- Abusive Parents: Chip has an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, which is part of the reason he pretends to be rich at Huntington.
- Accidental Misnaming: Jake keeps calling Slater "Sammy". It's because he reminds the custodian of a past victim of Iggy Boy's.
- Almighty Janitor: Jake takes a lot of abuse from the students of Bowdin House, but he's consistently nice to those who treat him nicely and he knows a lot about what goes on behind the scenes of the school. It gets deconstructed a bit; knowing everything means he also knows how and why Gilliard became Iggy Boy, and the stress of that and dealing with the murders at school drive him to drink.
- Ambiguous Situation: With how Iggy Boy refers to Mr. Gilliard as a different person, it's not made clear if Iggy Boy is using a Do Not Call Me "Paul" mentality or is an outright Split Personality.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: All the students celebrate after Mr. Spegman's death.
- Asshole Victim:
- Mr. Spegman is an elitist, sexist Sadist Teacher who viciously bullies his students, especially Casey. He ends up being the first of Iggy Boy's victims that the reader sees, and his class goes into celebration mode after his death.
- A past victim of Iggy Boy's was Cameron Wheeler, one of the biggest assholes at Huntington during his time. Jake found a bit of humor in the fact that the boy he considered the biggest piece of trash at Huntington was found hanging from the rope he used to take out the trash.
- Trevor Caldwell was much like Cameron, being a massive jerkass who tries to sexually assault Casey at one point. He ultimately gets cut off by his parents and killed by Iggy Boy.
- Attempted Rape: Trevor tries to sexually assault Casey at one point, but she hits him with a Groin Attack and runs off.
- The B Grade: One of the ways Mr. Spegman tormented Casey was by passing a B-grade paper of hers around the class and calling it abysmal work, as to him, a scholarship student getting anything less than an "A" is a capital crime.
- Big Jerk on Campus: Trevor Caldwell is one of the more popular students at Huntington, and a world-class asshole who terrorizes the campus with his friends and refuses to take no for an answer.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A bit of a running theme — everything about Huntington Prep and its students seems nice and perfect on the surface, but just below that is a nasty elitist, bullying attitude that's pervasive throughout the campus. Not to mention Iggy Boy turns out to be a teacher Casey thought she could trust.
- Blatant Lies: After Casey defends herself from him, Trevor heads back to his dorm and spins a tale to his pals about how Casey was the one that tried to seduce him before attacking him for no reason.
- Boarding School: The story takes place at the elite Huntington Prep, a boarding school for wealthy families. It used to be male-only as well; girls only started getting admitted in the past decade.
- Broken Pedestal: Both Chip and Slater lose respect for Mr. Gilliard after he covers up Trevor's assault of Casey, not knowing that Casey asked him to do so and that Gilliard was planning on killing Trevor for it.
- Camera Fiend: Slater is rarely seen without his camera, and he's often snapping photos when he can. Iggy Boy is one too, always snapping photos of his kills.
- Cool Teacher: Michael Gilliard, the teacher that takes Spegman's place. He manages to make his lessons fun, and every girl at school is head-over-heels for him. This ends up subverted with the reveal that he's Iggy Boy.
- Cut Himself Shaving: After Trevor decks her, Casey (not wanting to cause any trouble for herself) lies that she tripped and fell; during Parents' Day, when her dad notices the bruise, she tells him she got hurt playing field hockey. Not a lot of people buy it, especially since Trevor is going around claiming he hit her in self-defense.
- Damsel in Distress: During the climax, Casey finds herself having to hide away from Iggy Boy, while Slater and Jake go to rescue her.
- Dramatic Irony: Chip is infuriated by the fact that Mr. Gilliard doesn't seem to bother with looking into what Trevor did to Casey. Except Mr. Gilliard as Iggy Boy is already planning on killing Trevor for the slight.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Jake does this to cope with his Dark and Troubled Past. During the climax, he finally decides to confront it head-on instead of continuing to do so.
- Dude Magnet: Casey manages to attract the attention of quite a few boys at Huntington, including Iggy Boy.
- Fiction 500: Slater Laurence is the richest person at Huntington Prep; his family has donated so much to Huntington over the years that it's said you can't spit on a single thing in the school without it having the name "Laurence" on it.
- Foreshadowing:
- Upon meeting Mr. Gilliard, Slater's brother Adam notes that he seems familiar. It's because they attended Huntington together.
- After he kills Mr. Spegman, Iggy Boy laments not waiting until he was back in Bowdin House, where he could have jumped the teacher, beaten him up, and then tied him to the hot pipes in the shower area. The same thing happened to Iggy Boy during his time as a Huntington Prep student, which is what finally caused him to snap.
- Freudian Excuse: Michael Gilliard was a scholarship student at Huntington Prep, heavily bullied for the crime of, well, being a scholarship student. Eventually, the bullies went so far that he snapped, became Iggy Boy, and set about murdering them out of a sense of "justice".
- He Knows Too Much: Iggy Boy wasn’t planning on killing Chip, but Chip discovering his hideout forced his hand.
- High-School Dance: The climax takes place during Bowdin House's annual Mischief Night dance, which Slater asks Casey to.
- High-School Sweethearts: Slater's brother Adam met and dated his wife while attending Huntington. It's implied that Casey and Slater will go down the same path at the end.
- Identical Stranger: Casey looks similar to a girl Gilliard/Iggy Boy used to have a crush on, which is why he's obsessed with her.
- In-Series Nickname: Mr. Spegman is derisively referred to as "Spenguin" by his students.
- Ivy League for Everyone: Whenever a character is mentioned to have gone to college or is planning on going to college, it's an Ivy League school. Mr. Gilliard graduated from Princeton, Trevor is expected to go to Yale, Slater's brother went to Brown, and Slater himself attends Brown with Casey at the end.
- Jerk Jock: Most of the boys on the football team are some of the biggest assholes Huntington Prep has to offer. Chip is the least jerkish of the group, and even then he can act insensitive sometimes.
- Karmic Death: Iggy Boy aims for these, trying to kill his victims in places and ways that feel thematically appropriate. He's disappointed in himself when he loses his patience and simply pushes Mr. Spegman down a random flight of stairs, instead of killing him in the dorm that Spegman ran.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Slater feels isolated from his peers because of how his family is practically royalty at Huntington.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Spegman dies when Iggy Boy pushes him down a flight of stairs; since no one sees him do it, it's assumed that Spegman tripped and fell accidentally.
- Make-Out Point: There's an island in the middle of an artificial lake on Huntington's campus nicknamed "Fantasy Island", due to the high number of couples that sneak out there to make out and/or have sex.
- Mock Millionaire: Chip is attending Huntington on a football scholarship, but he's constructed an elaborate lie about how rich he is in order to fit in. The only students who know the truth are Casey and Trevor (who figured it out because he funded a lot of Chip's lies).
- Never Found the Body: Justin Taylor, one of Iggy Boy's victims, was buried in an unmarked grave in the forest near campus. As far as everyone knows, he ran away.
- Never Suicide: At least two of Iggy Boy's victims, Cameron and Trevor, are assumed to have committed suicide.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: This is the main tactic Jake's adopted to deal with the bullying he endures from the Bowdin House boys.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During Parents Day, Trevor is surprised when his usually punctual father shows up late for the event. It's because he's planning on cutting Trevor off.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Chip buys an essay paper to turn in as his own for Gilliard's class, but panics when he hears Gilliard recite the first two lines of it as an example of a paper going around the market — it's later revealed that Gilliard himself wrote it. Chip later finds Iggy Boy's hideout when he tries to steal it back.
- Red Herring: There are various hints pointing to different people being Iggy Boy before the story reveals that it's Gilliard.
- Rich Bitch: Huntington Prep is populated with a number of these, including plenty of male examples.
- Room Full of Crazy: Iggy Boy has one where he hangs up all the photos he's taken.
- Rule of Symbolism: Casey compares the salad in the school lunchroom to Huntington Prep; the salad looks nice and tossed on top but underneath is only not-always-fresh lettuce, much like how Huntington looks nice and shiny on the surface but is filled to the brim with elitist snobs.
- Scholarship Student: Casey and Chip are both scholarship students; the latter pretends to be rich to fit in. Gilliard was one as well.
- Spoiled Brat: Trevor's family is rich and he has no problem throwing his parents' money around. His dad ends up realizing how much he spoiled Trevor and cuts him off from his non-tuition funds.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Pretty much every girl in school has a crush on Mr. Gilliard, including Casey. And Mr. Gilliard is obsessed with Casey as Iggy Boy.
- Token Good Teammate: Chip is the nicest member of Trevor's friend group, doing his best to keep him from getting too aggressive with Casey.
- Wham Line: When visiting his brother Adam before the Mischief Night dance, Slater discovers an old yearbook of his, leading to him discovering how a kid in Adam's class was ruthlessly bullied. Adam doesn't remember the name of the bullied kid until the end of the chapter: "Gilliard".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The final fate of Gilliard/Iggy Boy is never revealed, though it's implied he was arrested.
- Yandere: Iggy Boy is completely obsessed with Casey, and often hides away and secretly takes photos of her. At least one of his murders is at least partly motivated by the need to avenge her. He was one for another girl in the past, and murdered both her and her boyfriend because he felt they'd "betrayed" him.
