MIRA Books / March 2008
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Thriller writer Amanda Stevens - who branched out from a successful line of Harlequin Intrigue romantic suspense novels with last year’s creepy The Dollmaker - makes a welcome return to bookshelves with The Devil’s Footprints.

Sarah DeLaune is a New Orleans tattoo artist haunted by the unsolved murder of her sister, Rachel, fourteen years ago. Although she has always believed the murderer to be one Ashe Cain, a secret childhood friend who appeared only to the troubled teenaged Sarah and who conveniently disappeared on the night of the gruesome murder, a string of present-day homicides has the past (literally) bleeding into the present. Reluctantly, Sarah agrees to examine the crime scenes at the bequest of her ex-boyfriend, Lieutenant Sean Kelton, since the bodies are mysteriously tattooed post-mortem. But when a telltale sign from the past is found at the murder scenes, the similarities to Rachel’s killing make Sarah quickly realize that the murderer has returned to finish some unfinished business.

Stevens imbues Footprints with the same tight plotting that made Dollmaker so suspenseful a read, and adds an ensemble cast chock full of red herrings to skillfully up the mystery quotient. She ably takes on a flawed heroine in Sarah, who is so paralyzed by the uncertainties of her past that she finds herself sleepwalking through life - reliant on prescription medication and unable to maintain a serious relationship. Indeed, deft characterization is one of Stevens’ strong suits, as she ably proves in even the most peripheral of characters. Take, for example, this concise character sketch of Dr. Frank Canard, Orleans Parish coroner:

He was tall, wiry and grizzled, a once ruggedly handsome man with the nose and dogged determination of a prize fighter and the dignified demeanor of old Southern gentry. Even up to his elbows in blood and gore, he never lost that air of elegance and refinement that made him at home in some of the most fashionable salons in the state.

Stevens also adds a bit of the supernatural to the proceedings, with an urban legend dating back to 1922 when greedy oil drillers allegedly punched a hole (literally) straight down to hell and unleashed the devil himself who made his presence known with cloven footprints tattooed across the Arkansas farm near where the ill-fated DeLaune family would settle seventy years later. The author wisely keeps this element in check, more background music used to set a mood than an actual plot device, and the reader is never led to believe that the murders are the devil’s work in any literal sense.

With a narrative that’s gradually pulled tighter and tighter like a rubber band stretched to its limits, The Devil’s Footprints will thrill with its breakneck pacing, chill with its bloodcurdling undertones, and surprise with its finale twist.

Purchase Amanda Stevens’ The Devil’s Footprints.

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Touchstone (Simon & Schuster) / March 2008
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina

Calumet City harbors secrets that Officer Patti Black has spent the last twenty odd years of her life trying to forget. Officer Black is the most decorated cop in Chicago and that’s what she’d like to focus on. While she is still haunted by her past, that doesn’t mean she’s looking for a reason to go dredging things up.

Unfortunately, life has a way of making you deal with the things you’d rather hide from. A series of crimes occur, all seemingly unrelated. How could an attempt on the mayor’s life, a drug bust gone bad, a murder and the discovery of a long-dead corpse all have something to do with one of the most respected cops in the Chicago Police Department’s history?

Patti Black knows. All the roads lead back to Calumet City, a place she thought she’d never have to go again. She can’t hide from her past any longer. But will the people who know, love and respect Officer Black still feel the same way once they learn the truth?

Calumet City is Charlie Newton’s debut novel. Newton packs nonstop action into a modern noir setting. Officer Black’s reaction to the obstacles she faces makes the suspense character-driven. The reader is often left feeling raw and scared as Officer Black is forced to confront her demons.

Part of Newton’s research included riding along with the real-life street cop Patti Black. While Newton maintains that this is a work of fiction, he also states “the true story of her life is both better and worse. And someday, she’ll tell it.” If the fictional version is any indication of what’s to come, then that’s one memoir this reviewer is looking forward to reading.

Purchase Charlie Newton’s Calumet City.

Leisure / May 2008
Reviewed by: Shannon Riley

No monster is more devious or dangerous than the human monster, a fact author Jack Ketchum uses to good advantage in fiction that explores the dark side of the human psyche. His latest offering, Old Flames, is no exception. The book includes two long novellas, “Old Flames,” published here for the first time, and “Right to Life,” a horrifying tale of sexual depravity and murder that gives a completely new meaning to the phrase.

Ketchum pulls no punches. His fiction is gripping, chilling, edgy, and he never shies away from the controversial issues that have endeared him to countless readers. The works contained in this new volume are no exception.

We have all seen them advertised on the internet - companies offering their services for locating former classmates. “Old Flames” is the story of Dora Wells, a woman who, disappointed by her unfulfilling relationships with men, uses just such an agency when she goes searching for her high school sweetheart. She believes the reunion with Jim Weybourne will rekindle the perfect love that might have been.

When Jim is found, Dora wastes no time in going after him, disregarding the fact that he now has a wife and children.

Her efforts to win him back are calculated and chilling, and the story quickly escalates to become not so much about a woman seeking to recapture lost love but an account of the demented lengths that Dora, who is incapable of real love, goes to in order to gain what she wants.

“Right to Life” is at times reminiscent of Ketchum’s masterpiece The Girl Next Door. A couple loosely involved with abortion protesters kidnaps a woman at a clinic and holds her hostage under the pretence of saving her unborn child. Subjected to humiliation, sexual perversion and torture, she at last becomes aware of her captors’ ultimate goal.

Jack Ketchum is a multiple Bram Stoker Award winner and author of twelve novels and several short story collections. His short story collection Closing Time and Other Stories received the Readers Choice Award for Best Dark Genre Collection from DSM in its first annual Black Quill Awards, and the screen adaptation of his novel Red won high honors at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Ketchum’s stories are straightforward accounts of how common situations can take unexpected twists and turns that expose the inner darkness within his characters. Old Flames is a double barrel shot of terror that strikes right on target.

Purchase Jack Ketchum’s Old Flames.

Alfred A. Knopf / February 2008
Reviewed by: Martel Sardina

Special Agent Ana Grey is back for her third adventure in April Smith’s Judas Horse. Writing series mysteries requires the author to perform a juggling act. Each book in the series should stand on its own. Authors must provide enough backstory to give new readers context without going overboard on the details and boring those who have followed the series since its inception. In this case, April Smith succeeds on both counts.

Ana’s return to duty after a justified shooting incident leaves her reeling when she learns that a fellow agent has been murdered. The group responsible, FAN (Free Animals Now), are hard-core anarchists, who use the cause of animal rights as a cover for their acts of domestic terrorism. Ana must go undercover to infiltrate this group and bring the murderers to justice.

After undergoing grueling training at the FBI’s undercover school, Ana emerges as Darcy DeGuzman, an animal lover who is determined to help save the wild mustangs of the West. Darcy heads to Oregon determined to work her way into the good graces of Julius Emerson Phelps, one of the leaders of FAN.

As Ana immerses herself and becomes a member of Julius’s “family,” she discovers that Julius is a master of deception. He harbors a grudge against the FBI after being wronged in the past and now possesses scandalous information that could rock the Bureau to its core.

The plight of the wild mustang is not just a fictional problem. In Smith’s acknowledgements, she notes that Judas Horse grew out of a research trip to Oregon. Observing the mustangs in the wild was a “life-changing experience.” Smith is now a member of Return to Freedom, a non-profit horse sanctuary that provides safe haven to nearly two hundred wild horses and burros.

Smith does an outstanding job of showing the reader what it is like for a deep-cover agent to assume another identity. The physical challenges Ana faces are nothing compared to the psychological battle she endures. With each day that passes, Ana loses a little bit more of herself to her alter ego. She is often left wondering whose side she should really be on.

With each turn of the page, Smith finds a way to raise the stakes for all of the parties involved. The result is a fast-paced thrill ride, brilliantly executed, which should please Smith’s previously established fan base and newcomers alike.

Purchase April Smith's Judas Horse.

MacAdam Cage / September 2007
Reviewed by: Blu Gilliand

Twilight opens with Kenneth and Corrie Tyler, brother and sister, as they sneak through a cemetery after dark digging up graves. That the two turn out to be the heroes of William Gay’s Southern Gothic tour-de-force is a good sign that the story getting ready to unfold will keep the reader continuously off-balance.

The Tylers are engaging in their unsavory nighttime excursions in an effort to prove that local undertaker Fenton Breece has been engaging in some unsavory practices of his own. And while here’s plenty wrong in the graves they unearth, it’s a briefcase full of photos, fortuitously lifted from the trunk of Breece’s own car, which shows just how depraved the man has become.

When Breece is confronted with what the Tylers have, and what they plan to do with it, he turns to one Granville Sutter, a relentless, remorseless engine fueled by greed and hate. Sutter’s lunacy is legend in and around the town – a legend that the convicted murderer has no trouble living up to.

What follow is a manic road trip set against a twisted Southern landscape full of warped and eccentric characters. Tyler’s literal run through the jungle brings him in contact with an assortment of tough, proud and stubborn people, most of who are living off their wits and the land and little else. Unfortunately for them, wherever Tyler goes, Sutter is not far behind.

As the novel progresses, Granville Sutter becomes less a man and more a force of nature, a wildfire burning through every obstacle between him and his quarry. Sutter is Gay’s smart, literary take on the classic horror film slasher – he’s Michael Myers’ single-minded pursuit given motivation and a cold, calculating intelligence.

Gay’s influences resonate on every page, especially in the stark prose and aversion to quotation marks he shares with Cormac McCarthy. But where McCarthy sometimes provides simple sketches of characters on which readers hang their own impressions, Gay’s people are fully-drawn, well-rounded portraits of love, obsession and madness.

Twilight moves at a lightning-quick pace, but it’s a richly satisfying book. It’s a horror novel of the most terrifying kind, one that is entrenched in the real madness that hides behind the eyes and doors of people we see every day. Highly recommended.

Purchase William Gay’s Twilight.

St. Martin’s Press / February 2008
Reviewed by: Vince A. Liaguno

Perhaps the only thing scarier than the horrors of hospitals is the Democratic debate over universal healthcare. But while Clinton and Obama square off against each other on the national political front, the characters that populate Alexandra Sokoloff’s sublime second novel, The Price, find themselves waged in war against the devil himself. With hints of the ghostly doings of Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital set against the larger political backdrop of The Omen films, The Price is a at once a supernatural medical chiller and deal-with-the-devil political thriller.

Will Sullivan is a product of privilege and wealth, a popular Boston District Attorney making a run for the Governor’s mansion. With strong familial ties to the state, a photogenic family by his side, and charisma to spare, he is considered by many to be the frontrunner in an ugly campaign against an archrival. But wealth and privilege can neither guarantee nor buy health as Will and wife Joanna soon learn when their cherubic five-year-old daughter, Sydney, is diagnosed with a malignant stomach tumor.

As the family settles in for an extended stay at the Briarwood Medical Center to combat Sydney’s cancer, Will finds himself drawn deeper into the labyrinthine maze of connecting hospitals. There he meets an enigmatic stranger named Salk whose shadowy presence slowly insinuates itself into the lives of the both the patients around them and the Sullivan family itself. Will suspects, too late, that Salk’s offer of counsel hides something far more ominous. When Sydney suddenly charts a miraculous recovery, Will fears that Joanna’s involvement with the mysterious Salk may mask a sinister connection.

Rest assured that Sokoloff will suffer none of the signs or symptoms of a sophomore slump with this confident follow-up to her Stoker-nominated debut - 2006’s The Harrowing. Written with the same strong sense of atmosphere and setting as Harrowing - especially in the book's first half where the action is set within the maze-like hospital system – The Price boasts a genuinely chilling, well-drawn set piece that includes creepy hidden hospital corridors and outdoor courtyards cast in the snow-covered shadows of looming marble statuaries. There’s nothing antiseptic about the horrors in Sokoloff’s hospital as her gooseflesh-inducing imagery jumps right off the pages, and her rich, graceful prose calls to mind names like King, Saul, and Levin:

Will looked out the glass wall into the shadowy garden. He moved grimly toward the doors and pushed through them into the icy night.

The cold hit him like a shock. Snow swirled in flurries around the elf and gnome statues in the children’s section of the garden. Clouds scudded over the full moon; in the preternatural light, everything seemed alive. The wind whispered through bare branches like a chant.

Will ran forward, crunching snow like glass under his feet. Breathing plumes of frost…down the gravel path between the skeletal trees…through the line of looming statues, ice frozen and glistening on their faces. The last statue reached for him with outstretched arms. Condensation dripped from its eyes, like tears.

When Sokoloff changes direction in the novel’s second half, one isn’t quite certain at first how the dramatic shift in setting will bode for the sense of continuity in tone and mood. But Sokoloff proves herself a master storyteller here, and readers will find themselves easily swept up in the Sullivan’s post-hospital story. And whereas the first half is decidedly creepier, the mystery and suspense elements are stronger in the book’s second half. Even the blueblood political world setting of Boston seems as fitting here in the book’s second half as the hospital does in the first.

Like The Harrowing, The Price relies heavily on its supernatural elements - but never heavy-handedly. And while some scenes ably deliver their nightmarish goods, Sokoloff imbues the prose with just enough otherworldliness that permits the reader to experience some of Will’s disorientation without falling out of her narrative grasp.

A poised and accomplished follow-up to its promising predecessor, The Price takes all the elements that made The Harrowing so memorable – the well-drawn characters, the strong sense of atmosphere and mood, the delicate balance between paranormal and reality – and drops them into the more ambitious backdrop of a political campaign where deals are made with the devil everyday and true evil is never more than an election away.

Purchase Alexandra Sokoloff’s The Price.

Scribner / January 2008
Reviewed by: Blu Gilliand

One piece of advice most writers hear at some point in their career goes: “Write what you know.”

Stephen King knows art. He knows pain. And he knows how the two sometimes go hand-in-hand. It’s a relationship he’s explored numerous times, through many vivid characters: Mike Noonan, the haunted author of Bag of Bones; Paul Sheldon, the captive writer of Misery; even Stephen King, the author of the Dark Tower books as he appeared in later entries of that series.

Edgar Freemantle, the central figure in King’s latest novel, Duma Key, is not a writer. As the book begins, he’s not an artist at all – he’s a self-made millionaire who still brings a lunch pail to the construction sites bearing his company’s name. A horrific accident takes Edgar’s arm, a good chunk of his memory, and eventually his wife, leaving him with violent mood swings and a serious need to, as his doctor says, build some “hedges against the night.”

For Edgar, those hedges come in the form of relocation to an isolated Florida isle called Duma Key, and in the rediscovery of his nearly-forgotten talent for painting. Edgar takes residence in a house he soon dubs “Big Pink,” an ocean-side retreat that, according to local legend, has hosted writers, poets and painters from the obscure to the famous. Whether the island, and the malevolent forces that gather along its shores like thunderclouds, feeds creativity or feeds off of it is one of the many mysteries that soon overtake Edgar’s new life.

King’s greatest strength has always been his ability to create characters that seem to live and breathe independent of the page. In Freemantle, as well as his Florida neighbors Elizabeth Eastlake and Wireman, King has once again given readers characters to care about, root for and mourn. And while his plots sometimes stretch thin enough to see through, he retains the ability to invoke pure white-knuckle terror with set pieces as simple as a suspiciously unlocked door, or the quiet grinding of shells caught in the tide.

Just as Freemantle seeks a kind of healing through his art, Duma Key is another step in the healing process for King, who continues to use his work to filter the infamous roadside accident that almost killed him nearly a decade ago. This novel finds the master back at full strength, continuing to knit his more literary sensibilities to the chills and thrills that have made him a household name. For anyone who’s been missing “vintage” King, the word slinger who made rabid dogs and possessed cars the stuff of well-written nightmares, here he is. Like he never went away.

Purchase Stephen King’s Duma Key.