Holly Lisle started out her writing career with fantasy novels. However, lately she’s turned her hand to paranormal suspense novels and become quite successful and quite well-known at them. She also manages her personal web site (www.hollylisle.com) regarding her career, a personal dialogue with fans and interested parties, and offers tip sheets and essays on the craft of writing. Fans wanting to know more about her and her work are encouraged to visit the site, as are budding writers.

Her first novel paranormal romance, Midnight Rain and her last, I’ll See You, had more violence inherent in the plot than the current book does, but her fourth book, Night Echoes, is more a southern gothic and ghost story. In all of her books, Lisle manages to present interesting characters in the interesting situations, all with an economy of language that keeps readers turning pages. Lisle has such an easy touch with prose that it’s hard not to just keep reading way past bedtime. The pages seem almost to turn themselves.

In Night Echoes, commercial artist Emma Beck buys an old Civil War-era house in South Carolina that she has ties to she has no explanation why. When she sees the house, she realizes that she’s dreamed about it and painted it several times in her artwork. The author works this story with a slow burn, layering in character and building tension at a steady pace. 

Emma was adopted by her parents. Before he died, her father gave her the name of her birth mother. Her father had hired a private detective to track the information down in case Emma ever needed to know. It was that search for the background on her mother and why she was given up for adoption that led Emma house that she buys almost on impulse. 

The story picks up after Emma has been living in the house for a few days and is still moving in. She’s also met Mike Ruhl, the contractor who did minor repairs on her house before she moved in. There are immediate sparks between Emma and Mike that leave no doubts about who the romance will concentrate on. 

Lisle presents her character and a very human fashion and gives her a detailed background that allows the reader to get to know her very well. But it isn’t long before Emma becomes embroiled in trying to find out more about her birth mother. The story she gets almost breaks her heart. Her mother was sixteen when she gave birth to Emma. The father betrayed her and left her alone and pregnant and at the mercy of her cruel father. 

However this isn’t the only story that Emma is told. The prevailing story is that the baby died, which means that she can’t be that baby. But everything she finds leads her to believe that she is, and she feels that she is. 

The book doesn’t really offer anything new to the experienced gothic/ghost story reader. Those who have read in the genre before will easily keep pace with Lisle’s twists and turns. Still, this is a well-crafted novel and the characters are pleasure to explore and journey with. The first three books Lisle wrote offered action and surprises. Night Echoes jogs along at a comfortable pace and delivers a satisfying ending that doesn’t really come as a shock or surprise. While the novel may not build on the momentum of the previous three, it offers a diversion into a different style of writing and an old style ghost story that most of today’s readers haven’t seen in some time. 

Readers who want something to take to the beach and vege out with will enjoy this novel a lot. And Holly Lisle’s growing fan base will enjoy yet another winner.

Longtime fans of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize all of the dragons included in this slim, elegant manual.Those of us who began playing back in the 1970s know these dragons by heart. However, we’ve never seen the material presented in this way.

My son and I read together all the time.We enjoy a lot of fantasy novels, including the Harry Potter books, and he gets totally captivated by imaginary creatures. Last night, while perusing the new releases, my son discovered this book. The first time I noticed that he had it was when I realized how quiet it had gotten. Though he enjoys reading books with me, he doesn’t necessarily enjoy watching me look through the racks. He’s nine, so he can fold up and sit on the floor anywhere.

Last night he was folded up reading this book. When I asked what he was looking at, I could see the excitement in his eyes when he showed me this book. I recognized that immediately as Dungeons and Dragons material, but the usual TSR and/or Wizards of the Coast logos were nowhere to be seen. I looked at the publisher and realized it was Mirrorstone, an offshoot of the Wizards of the Coast publishing arm that directs books at young readers.

My nine year old loves read about animals. I don’t know how many times he’s come home and told me about animals he’s read about and school. If he’s not a zoologist, then he’s going to be well-educated when it comes to animals.

Even imaginary ones!

The book is wonderful to look at. I flipped through the pages with him and talked about the times I had played Dungeons and Dragons and had to fight to the death against some of these creatures. Of course, he was mortified that I would even think about killing dragons. I tried to explain that some of them were evil and some of them had gold and treasure I wanted. He told me that dragons were entitled to their homes and that I was greedy. I didn’t even bother to explain about experience points. I could only imagine my son’s character getting charred and someone’s campaign while trying to save dragons.

The pictures in the book are colorful and vivid, and printed on what looks like parchment paper. The combination gives the book the look of an illustrated manuscript. It’s an oversized hardcover that looks like it can take years of love and punishment. (With children, love and punishment for favorite toys often cannot be separated.)

After we got home, my son continued to look at the book for over an hour, reading through the sections he got interested in. He came to me and asked questions about dragons, testing my knowledge. I surprised him by knowing most of them, their breath weapons as well as whether or not they were good or evil. He told me he would study the book for a while, then I could test him.

Finding a book that totally entertains a child and immerses their imagination in another world is hard to find. Especially one there willing to pursue on their own. The language in the book is suitable for an aggressive second grader to read independently. The pictures will also inspire the budding young artist.

If you’re looking for a unique gift for a birthday party, a book to take on long family trips, or something that won’t get read once and simply filed away, I think you’ll find A Practical Guide To Dragons is a great book to entertain a young imagination over and over.

At Amazon
I discovered Walter Mosley through his first Easy Rawlins novel, Devil In A Blue Dress, which was a lucky occurrence.  The Rawlins series tends to be chronologically driven.  The first novel is set in the late 1940s and is currently in the early 1960s.  A lot has happened in Easy’s life during those years.

A few years ago, Mosley wanted to take a break from his popular series character and a chance to create a different kind of hero.  Paris Minton and Fearless Jones actually come across as two halves of a whole.  Fearless is a decorated World War II veteran in his mid-30s.  He lives up to his name, totally fearless and good at heart.  Paris is the true brains of the outfit, the part that is inventive, deceitful, and selfish—to a degree.  Without Paris, Fearless would probably never get to the bottom of one of their investigations, but without Fearless Paris would never survive.  Fearless exists in the world doing tough-guy favors for people.  Body-guarding and bounty-hunting are two of his primary pursuits, but always within the black community of 1956 Los Angeles.  Paris runs a book store that he loves because it gives him the chance to read all the time.

They’ve appeared in two previous novels, Fearless Jones and Fear Itself.  In all of their “cases” they actually pursue small crimes that play out big before the adventures are over. In this book, Paris is haunted by family. His cousin Useless (Ulysses S. Grant IV) shows up at an inopportune moment and things go downhill quickly from there. Not long after Paris turns Useless from his door, Paris gets interrupted by his current girlfriend’s current boyfriend.  Paris flees for his life (his first rule of operation) and looks up Fearless for backup.

But by the time they return to Paris’s bookshop, there’s a dead man lying there. No sooner than Fearless and Parish have the body hidden away so no one will take the fall for murdering him than Paris’s aunt Three Hearts arrives and begins threatening Paris. Since her evil eye is known to kill, Paris aims to please.

Their investigation is hampered by the fact that Useless is a chronic liar and a man not afraid of committing criminal behavior.  His mother, Three Hearts, believes nothing but the best of her son.  She’s also one of the book’s best characters:  a gun-toting black woman totally unafraid of unloading on anyone stupid enough to take her on.

It doesn’t take Paris and Fearless long to realize that the dead man in Paris’s book shop and Useless’s disappearance are connected.  They seek out the trail and start getting deeper and deeper into trouble.  Fearless also has a recovery job he’s doing for one of the local bail bondsmen that occasionally gets in the way.

Fear of the Dark felt a lot like the other two books, but that’s good. The investigation proceeds at a nice clip and the characters are always fun. Mosley also writes the Easy Rawlins mysteries. Of late, those have been set in the early 1960s. Easy is a family man and at least twenty years older than Paris and Fearless.  Paris narrates, and his voice is at once young and aged, savvy and naive. Mosley’s pacing in this book will keep readers flipping pages late into the night. He seems more comfortable at this length than he has in previous novels. There’s also more back story and a better view of California at the time in this one. His dialogue seems dead-on and so do his characters.

At Amazon

Duane Swierczynski has, with the publication of The Blonde become one of the new next-gen crime writers I’m watching. He’s an editor-in-chief of a major Philadelphia newspaper, so his lean, muscular prose come to him naturally from a daily grind. The imagination is purely his, but it’s a new twist on a lot of the old noir-style books and movies that I love so much. I never know what to expect from his characters. In The Blonde I wasn’t even sure who the good guys were until the final pages of the book were sorted out. It was a great ride, and I couldn’t stop turning pages once I’d started. I’d read the warnings on the book posted by other writers and reviews, but they really meant it.

His previous release from a mainstream publisher came in 2005. The Wheelman was a blistering read that kept you glued to the story in a merciless grip. See, Swiercynski has this take-no-prisoners mentality that just grabs the reader by the throat on page one, introduces a problem the protagonist has to handle just to survive, then turns the tables on him (and the reader!) before another 15 or 20 pages have gone by.

Reading the twists and turns of his plots is like constantly getting surprised by an opposing boxer’s hooks and jabs slipping right through your defenses. No matter how ready you think you are, you keep getting smashed and broken up, and get left wondering how it’s all going to shake out.

The Blonde has one of the best opening sequences I’ve seen in a long time. A woman in the Philly airport tells Jack Eisley, the main character, that she’s poisoned his drink and he’s going to be dead in eight hours. He blows her off, thinking she’s just weird. And the reader watches as Jack gives her the slip and walks away. Normally there would be something that would prevent him from doing that.

Not in Swierrcynski’s world. He finds a reason to make the protagonist give in and go back to the airport hoping to find the woman, Kelly White. Jack’s nausea and vomiting convinces him he has been poisoned, so he returns for the antidote. Only the woman fesses up to him and tells him she actually needs him because she’s infested with nanobots that will kill her if she’s left alone.

Okay, we’ve suddenly entered the Twilight Zone as our crime thriller goes into Michael Crichton overdrive.

Then we pick up the next main character. His name is Kowalski. He’s an operative for a super-secret government organization. A close reader will remember him from The Wheelman, and I thought it was great that Swierczynski rewards his fans like that. The author’s building quite a little violent family out in Philly. But he’s not afraid to kill them off, either.  This is the same territory comics legend Frank Miller carved out for himself with Sin City.

Kowalski has been killing Mafia guys off the clock on his own time as revenge for the death of his girlfriend and their child. That plotline goes back to the previous novel, but it isn’t necessary to have read it first. It does add to things, though.

Now Kowalski’s been given a new assignment: Find a professor and bring back his head. Kowalski never even flinches at the prospect. It’s all business to him. But his business goes south in a hurry as events go awry.

Swierczynski’s characters are all interesting people, but I wouldn’t want to meet any of them. None of them care for much outside their own skins. But, man, they are an absolute blast to read about.

The Blonde is a white-hot bullet of a story that hits the reader right between the eyes. Taking place in less than nine hours, the story will leave you breathless with anxiety and brimming with anticipation of what’s going to happen next. It’s a race to the finish as Swierczynski wheels this high-octane, V-8 thriller for the checkered flag.

At Amazon

Charlie Bone, whose life has never been easy, gets slammed with a whole new problem in Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors. He’s entering his second year at Bloor’s Academy, the school for the specially endowed children of the Red King, who disappeared a thousand years ago.All his familiar enemies are there, including the Bloors, the Yewbeam aunts, and Grandma Bone. Thankfully, Charlie still has all his friends, him mom, Grandma Maisie, Uncle Paton, and Miss Ingledew. In this novel, series readers get to find out new secrets that have been staring them right in the face, and get a peek as some potential new twists and enemies that Charlie is going to have to deal with in successive books.

Old Ezekial Bloor and Charlie’s aunts, the Yewbeam sisters, have managed to resurrect a ghostly horse creature that they believe has the heart of an old, fierce warrior named Borlath. They indend to use the creature against Charlie and his other endowed friends at Bloor’s Academy. However, something has gone drastically wrong. As it turns out, they’ve put the wrong heart in the creature and Manfred causes a mistake in the spell that will have dire consequences.

In the meantime, Charlie has to deal with a weird new teacher named Tauntalus Ebony and Manfred’s new position at the school as more or less a teacher role. Now Manfred doesn’t even need his endowed powers of hypnotism to make Charlie’s life terrible. He can just put Charlie in detention and take away his weekends. Just as with the previous Charlie Bone books, author Jenny Nimmo keeps a lot of balls in the air. A lot of possibilities and threats dangle in front of the reader as they cruise through this tale. It seems as though disaster and defeat lurk around every corner.

Charlie is still looking for his father Lyle, whom everyone believe is dead but Charlie is certain is still alive. Poor Billy Raven still hasn’t been adopted, but he gets adopted in this one–by the most evil people in the world. The bit about the Oaths and how they get free and are eventually dealt with is awesome. Nimmo’s imagination summons up some great action.

Charlie and Billy’s travel on the white horse, who turns out to be much more than anyone would guess, to the island containing the Castle of Mirrors is exciting. The whole history of the castle if fantastic, and this deep history is one of the things that Nimmo has come to excel at.

More of the Yewbeam family lineage is discovered, as well as what happened to many of the Red King’s children. The things that bind Charlie and his friends, family ties as well as personal stakes, grow even stronger in this novel.

I read these books to my nine-year-old, who enjoys them immensely and takes the tests on the Accelerated Reader program at his school. I enjoy how easy they are to read aloud, and the degree of history that Nimmo has put in each of her novels, building on what has gone on before. The plots do tend to be somewhat repetitive, but they are Charlie Bone books. They tell a certain kind of story with certain elements that the young readers require.

The Charlie Bone books are great escapist fiction for the Harry Potter crowd while they’re waiting on the final book in that series. And Charlie Bone hasn’t quite progressed to the level of darkness that the Potter books have. Charlie Bone still guarantees excitement and laughs.

At Amazon

Robert B. Parker’s second Western novel, Appaloosa is being made into a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. I’d previously passed Parker’s novel by, though I love his writing, because he’s Bostonian to the bone and I figured if I wanted to read Westerns (which I grew up on), I’d go back and pick up Louis L’Amour, Elmer Kelton, or the occasional Max Brand.

I read all of Parker’s Spenser novels, and every book in his Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall series, and even the recent YA novel he’s done, Edenville Owls. All of those are set in Boston or Massachusetts, which is Parker’s stomping grounds. I just didn’t want my favorite “Easterner” writer mixing it up with Westerns.

But with the movie coming out, I got curious. The book had been released in paperback, so I picked up that edition and tucked in. Before I knew it, like with every other Parker book I’ve ever read, the pages started flying by and I was having a great time.

The plot essentially boils down to the town tamer plot line. A ruthless rancher, Bragg, and his boys are shooting up the town of Appaloosa whenever they get the urge. In fact, when three of the hired hands kill a man and rape his wife, the local marshal goes out to Bragg’s ranch and gets gunned down in cold blood.

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have been taming towns for a long time. The city aldermen hire them to bring Bragg to heel. Cole agrees to the job, if they’ll allow him to write out the laws they need to pass, and the war begins.

Parker writes some of the best dialogue out there. It’s short, punchy, and says a lot in a few words. In a short time, Cole and Hitch put Bragg and his boys on notice and they discover really quick that the two new marshals don’t have any hesitation about killing anyone who goes up against them.

The action sequences at this point are great. The scenery and the sets are barely described, but I’ve seen so many Westerns that as soon as the bar’s batwing doors were mentioned, I had the rest of the saloon in mind. So it wouldn’t have mattered how much Parker tried to build the Western world he was writing in, I already had my view of it. He’s a skillful enough writer that I think he was banking on that and didn’t want to get in the way of his readers who love Westerns.

The plot takes a turn, for the worse in my opinion, with the introduction of Allie French. She says she’s married but that her husband ran off. Arriving in Appaloosa (though what she was planning on doing because she only had a dollar to her name) is anybody’s guess. Cole is smitten with her and sets her up playing piano at the hotel. Every long-time reader of Parker’s work feels the familiar groove drop into place. It’s not quite a death knell on the novel, but it sure took some of the wind out of the sails for me.

One of Parker’s most used (debatably over-used) themes is that of a good man loving a bad/weak woman. While juggling that theme with the war against Bragg, something does get lost. A little disinterest kicks in, as well as wariness.

However, readers not overly familiar with Parker’s work, may see this them as something new. Especially Western readers. And I’m pretty certain the movie crowd won’t have seen something this blatant.

But, since no one can move a story along the way Parker can, I kept my horse turned in the same direction as our heroes and galloped through to the end. I enjoyed the book a lot. Loved the dialogue and sarcasm. And I was glad I spent my free time with it.

I can’t wait for the movie to come out.

At AmazonKate Collins’s new mystery sleuth Abby Knight has found her way onto my shelves. My wife and I love watching BBC movies (FOYLE’S WAR, MURDER IN SUBURBIA, and the new MYSTERY WOMAN series) together and trying to figure out whodunit. My wife doesn’t care for all the blood and violence, though I can occasionally take her to something with fistfights and car chases.

The Abby Knight series gives us a whole new bunch of books to read and talk about. The characters are thin, but they’re supposed to be. These are people that you know enough about to guess the rest and they become real in that respect. There’s not a lot of history here, but there’s plenty of relationships that make a nice family to come home to from book to book.

Abby is in her late twenties and a law school dropout, which means she has the whole disappointment riff going on with Mom.  She ended up buying a flower shop, Bloomer’s Flower Shop, from her best friend, Lottie, who then proceeded to keep working there, so that’s kind of confusing in some ways.  And she’s got an enternally stiff upper lip Brit named Grace watching her back and in general acting as a nanny.  (Imagine Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred only dressed in really good shoes!  On second thought, maybe not.  But that’s how she behaves.)  For strong arm backup, she’s got Lottie’s kids, who thoughtfully turned out all boys of prodigious size. Together, these three form the chief unofficial investigative arm of the amateur sleuth series.  The chemistry they exhibit together is great and promises lots of entertaining adventures to come.

Of course, being a cozy mystery, Abby also has to have a romantic interest.  It’s a little confusing in this first book because Abby seems bound and determined to set her cap for the young district attorney.  But it’s local bar owner, Marco Salvare, an ex-cop turned private investigator, who really hits Abby’s romance radar screen.  They work well together and end up being a delight to watch in action.  Not quite Stephanie Plum and Ranger, but close.

Collins also got her heroine involved in the initial mystery well.  Her car was sideswiped by an escaping murderer.  Only no one believes the young man found dead in his apartment was murdered.  Naturally Abby has to track down the guy who hit her car, and if she ends up catching a murderer too, great.

One thing that Collins does really well is keep the story moving. Something is always happening. It strained credulity a little with the way Abby kept getting her Vette bashed, but I think it was a tip of the hat to Janet Evanovitch’s Stephanie Plum character who is notorious for the way she treats cars.

The mystery is almost a no-brainer as well, but you can feel smart for putting all the pieces together. That’s the true joy of a mystery: getting to solve it just a chapter or two ahead of the author.

Since this is Collins’s first book and she’s making some awfully good moves for a beginner, my wife and I are going to keep an eye on her and see where she goes with her series. This book is perfect for a day at the beach or a lazy stay-at-home Sunday afternoon when it’s raining. Also, the titles are really catchy!

The Geographer’s Library is a literary novel that borrows a lot of chops from the current suspense thriller field.  Or maybe it’s a thriller that has an easy, literary approach to character and plot.  As I was reading the book I couldn’t make up my mind.

As with a lot of novels coming out these days, the novel concerns a conspiracy and a lot of historical references.  It also touches on one of the most talked about mystical items in human history.  Even Harry Potter dealt with this object.

The book is Jon Fasman’s only novel so far, but from everything I’ve seen, he should have a long, comfortable career ahead of him.  His down-home voice, imagery, research, and attention to detail will bring fans to his writing.

The story is a first-person narrative by a young reporter on a
Connecticut paper.  Paul Tomm basically intends for the job he’s currently working to be merely a steppingstone to bigger and better things for himself.  His relationship with his editor and his wife is one of the highlights of the book.  The way they acted around each other, the way the editor took a mentoring role, and the easy, natural dialogue was truly effective.  It made me feel like I was peeking in at the newspaper that was probably put out in Mayberry.  And that’s a positive thing.

Paul has to “create” news to a degree in the small town, but he doesn’t want to sensationalize anything.  However, not everything in a small town is small, as Paul finds out.  He’s assigned to do the obituary on a one of the local college professor and finds much more than he bargained for.

Professor Jann Puhapaev has a whole other life that no one in town knew about.  When Paul goes to his house, he finds scores of books on all kinds of topics.  The collection easily pushes past passion into the field of dark obsession.  As Paul pokes around, he gets caught up in an obsession of his own.  Who was Professor Puhapaev?  And was someone out to kill him?

Following up on the story with his mentor’s blessing, Paul soon uncovers more than he can handle.  The editor also calls in larger papers to back the story as Paul find out more of the truth and realizes that it’s an international story, complete with internationally scaled villains.  The pathologist that the editor calls in to do a deeper autopsy on Puhapaev ends up dying in an accident.  And things get weirder and more dangerous from there.

The novel divides up into two novels.  One is Paul’s story of his investigation into the death, life, and passion of the professor.  But the other is a collection of interesting accounts regarding 15 different items.  These accounts are wonderfully written, filled with research and drawn in a deft narrative that is much different than Paul’s first-person account.

However, this division also works against the book.  Every time I settled in for Paul’s story and would get hooked on the investigation, the next chapter would be about one of the mystery items.  The writing style changed, as well as the focus of the story, and I’d become engrossed in that.  Then it would end abruptly without any real connective tissue to tie it to the next chapter or even Paul’s story.  It got frustrating to a degree because I constantly had to shift gears.  It got easy to read only a chapter at a time before moving on to the next.

In the end, there is a grand conspiracy, but it plays out almost as a denouement as the book closes down.  The book rewards the reader, but the reward is smaller than the reader would have hoped for.

Fasman has a lot of promise and undoubtedly a great career ahead of him.  The Geographer’s Library is rough in places and creaks with the jamming together of the two sides of the story, but it’s plain Fasman has a lot of talent.  When he gets his second book out, I’m going to pick up a copy.

At Amazon

One of the things I love about Max Allan Collins’s period-piece mysteries and suspense novels is the authenticity. If you read something in a Collins book, outside of the fictional spin he adds to and puts on things, you can bet it really existed at that time. He also delves deeply into the backgrounds of his historical “characters” and provides a good biography of them.

When I read that BLACK HATS was going to offer a confrontation between an elderly Wyatt Earp and a young, wet-behind-the-ears Al Capone, I was excited. I conjured up images of alley showdowns with six-guns and Thompson submachine guns. We almost got that here. The action was a little more downplayed that I would have wanted, but I was working off my own expectations. Collins stayed within the truth of what really happened in those days in 1920, with a little bit of what COULD have happened thrown in.

Collins gave us a fictional son of Doc Holliday and painted the Prohibition backdrop both eloquently and faithfully. His other “characters” like Texas Guinan, Jack Dempsey, and Damon Runyon were great and added a lot of color to the story.

But it’s Wyatt and Bat Masterson who really seize the spotlight. Their friendship comes across clearly and believably, and it was fun seeing them in action together.

The plot was especially well done too. John Holliday had won a warehouse full of liquor in a poker game at a time when the rest of the city (and the state) were dry and having to import their liquor from Canada. It was a treasure trove on par with one of the acheological finds that would have sent Indiana Jones scampering for his fedora.

I was a little disappointed with the ending because it wasn’t as BIG as I’d imagined. But it had neat little twists that made everything come together well.

BLACK HATS is a fast, fun read with plenty of history, atmosphere, and trivia to keep armchair historians and thrill-seekers turning the pages.

At Amazon

Joe R. Lansdale is a fantastic writer known for his rip-roaring East Texas noir, bizarre horror tales, and fiction that doesn’t comfortably fit on any niche known to publishing.  He’s also an accomplished martial artist and operates a dojo in Nacogdoches, Texas. Lansdale has penned several novels and short stories, and garnered awards in multiple fields, including six Bram Stoker Awards in horror and the Edgar Award in mystery for his novel, The Bottoms.  His on-going mystery series about Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, two blue collar amateur detectives, is a favorite on mystery shelves and with his fans.

Lately Lansdale has concentrated on movie projects and some of the strange fiction he’s known for.  His short story, “Bubba Ho-Tep” was produced as a movie with the same name and featured an ageing Elvis Presley and invalided John F. Kennedy whose skin tone had been changed to a black man to protect him.  Presley and Kennedy unite to track down an Egyptian monster on the loose in the senior citizen’s home where they live. Lansdale’s 1950s mystery, A Fine Dark Line will be coming to theaters soon. In addition, Lansdale has written several comic books and cartoon episodes starring Batman and Superman.  His two runs on perennial Western “hero” Jonah Hex were nominated for awards and can be found in the graphic novels, Two-Gun Mojo, Riders of the Worm and Such, and Shadows West.This year, Lansdale returned to mainstream fiction with Lost Echoes.  The plot revolves around Harry Wilkes, who develops the disconcerting ability of “hearing” trapped sounds that carry full-blown and bloody images of murders, rapes, vicious beatings, and traffic accidents.

As a child, Harry suffered an ear infection that almost rendered him deaf.  When the infection finally cleared up, he started “hearing” the noises that rocket him back in time to the various violent episodes he experiences.  This section is actually a little quiet and tame for a Lansdale novel, but it builds up Harry’s character and makes him real to the readers.

During this time Harry becomes friends with Kayla and forges a relationship that will come back to, literally, haunt him.  Kayla’s dad, a policeman, supposedly committed suicide and she’s never been able to accept that.Kayla and Harry get separated while they’re kids.

In the meantime, Harry grows up and starts college.  He also starts drinking to dull the psychic impressions that he receives everywhere he goes.  Harry learns to keep his life small so he doesn’t have these unexpected, unpleasant, and unnerving surprises.  He lives in a house where he’s covered the walls with egg cartons to soundproof it as much as he can.  He’s made a map of the city that allows him to avoid streets with traffic accidents and buildings with murders or violence trapped within them. Lansdale excels at writing the common person, sharing that trait with Stephen King.  Both of them can take the ordinary and make it terrifying, unusual, and still keep it firmly rooted in the familiar.  Harry and Kayla are perfectly understandable throughout the novel.  They’re people that most readers have gotten to know.  Except for the whole psychic thing.The book takes a casual approach to the story until Harry meets, Tad Peters.  Tad is old enough to be Harry’s father and eventually takes on that role.  Like Harry, Tad has also become an alcoholic.  Tad is racked with grief and guilt over the death of his wife and son.  After watching Tad nearly get rolled outside a bar and seeing the man take out three would-be robbers, Harry gets fascinated by martial arts.

While taking Tad home, Harry learns more about the man and his misery.  The kindred souls are drawn together and soon decide to try to stay away from the alcohol.

It’s the scenes like these, where two people are talking and getting to know each other, where they’re finding out their commonalities, that Lansdale’s gifts as a writer really stand out. Lansdale knows people and likes them.  Watching Tad and Harry work through their reluctance to take on a friend is great stuff.  The dialogue totally rocks. Lansdale also throws in some martial arts philosophy along the way.

Watching them get cleaned up and resist temptation is good.  The dialogue crackles and the pages almost turn themselves.  Harry finally tells Tad about his “problem” and, even though Tad finds it hard to believe at first, Tad helps him try to find an explanation for it.

But it’s when Kayla Jones reappears in Harry’s life that things get really complicated and the plot’s testosterone level jets into the stratosphere.  Kayla has gone on to become a police officer, following in her father’s footsteps.  Her father may not have been a good men, but he was her daddy and she loved him and doesn’t want people to continue to think he committed suicide.

She asks Harry to use his gift to investigate her father’s death.  She was the one who found him hanging from a garage rafter and dressed in women’s underwear.  (Lansdale loves going for the bizarre and twisted.) 

Harry is reluctant at first, but knows he can’t refuse Kayla.  After a failed romantic interlude, Harry discovers that his feelings for Kayla have never gone away, and hers for him haven’t either.

Lansdale’s writing excels during these very human parts.  The dialogue moves the story smoothly along.  It’s easy to imagine the scenes playing out in a television show or movie.  Not only that, but the twisted sense of humor Lansdale brings to his characters makes them charming and sometimes offensive at the same time.  The dinner conversation between Tad and Harry’s leech of a friend, Joey, is absolutely hilarious.  Yet, once you meet Lansdale you realize that this is exactly how he would handle a similar situation. The cat-and-mouse chase that propels the last third of the novel is great.  The suspense builds with each passing scene, and there are enough twists and turns to keep seasoned readers with the story way past bedtime.If you haven’t read Lansdale before, I’d recommend any of the Hap and Leonard novels, preferably starting at the beginning with Savage Season, or the stand-alones, Cold In July, The Bottoms, or A Fine Dark Line to get a taste of his take on mystery/suspense.  One of my favorite novels he ever wrote is The Magic Wagon, which is something of a weird western/horror pulp with some real irony and soul-searching.