I love the whole premise behind Hawaiian Dick, the ongoing 1950s private eye comics set in Hawaii. The noir feel of the storytelling and characters is dead-on. The ex-pat main character, Byrd, is well-drawn and has a lot of emotional baggage he’s carrying that only gets opened up in this first graphic novel.

Byrd of Paradise gathers the first three issues of the comics written by B. Clay Moore and drawn by Steven Griffin. The story immediately seized a lot of attention when it first came out because of the mixture of old and new.

Moore has a great grasp of the story and noir must run in his veins. The set-up for the story and the execution hits all the cornerstones of the venue, and Byrd’s backstory comes as a natural progression of the case he’s on. Moore’s development of the story “reads” like a movie. He stays off the page and out of panels unless narration or dialogue is really needed. Action tells this story as well as anything, and readers often forget how much a good writer can do with a few panels of delineated action. Moore has a fantastic grasp of the concept.

As good as Moore’s story is, though, Griffin’s art emphasizes everything about it. Griffin’s use of color – bright and vibrant, then dark and moody – sets the tone for the scenes, the characters, and the atmosphere. Through color alone, Griffin could have brought home every emotion that he needed to in order to convey the story.

However, he doesn’t stop there. He gives us well imagined characters and body posture. Byrd just wouldn’t have been the cocky, worldly private eye without the five o’clock shadow and Hawaiian shirt. Mo wouldn’t have been the homicide cop without the immense stature, the clean-shaven appearance, and the immaculate black suit.

The artwork is loose and tight as needed. Sometimes panels only feature characters in action. Then there are other times that the background is developed in depth. All of it looks painted, with lots of contrast and rounded shapes that flow naturally to the eye. After you read the graphic novel, don’t be surprised to find yourself leafing back through the pages just to see the artwork again.

The story is pedestrian by all outward appearances. Byrd gets handed a case to find a car, but he’s getting paid more for the recovery than the car is worth. Immediately suspicious, Byrd confronts the man hiring him and finds out the car has a cargo that belongs to drug kingpin, Bishop Masaki. This is the kind of story a noir fan would expect to find laid at the feet of Marlowe, Spade, or Hammer. Moore throws in an extra wrinkle by including Hawaiian voodoo and zombies. The horror aspect never overshadows the private eye story, though. Rather, it complements it and gives the reader a little extra zest that gives the appearance of being something brand new.

I love this story. I’ve read it a few times now and enjoy it each time. It’s simple and structure, and delivers everything I’d want in a noir adventure. Plus the zombie creep factor and a few twists and turns I didn’t see coming. The 1950s feel makes a big difference too, like our heroes are just a little more exposed than they would be in the present day and age.

The graphic novel contains about 50 pages of extras, including sketches, notes, and script. Hawaiian Dick: Byrd of Paradise is a great entertainment and behind-the-scenes bargain. The property has also been licensed for movie development and you can see how a film would flow from these pages. This is a crackerjack read.

The popularity of zombies is on the rise. In fact, the fans of the walking dead may be soon encroaching on the number one spot held by vampires. I don’t know why this is happening, it’s as mysterious as the reasons for the zombies climbing from their graves to start searching for a brain buffet in all the movies (and yeah, yeah, I get that some kind of gas was released in the Living Dead movies and in Raccoon City, but come on. Really?).

Zombies moved back into horror fiction with a much more sure step than they’ve had in a long time. But now they’re launching into teen romance fiction. In a way. Generation Dead by Daniel Waters is a mixed bag, and I’m going to be all over the place while describing my reading experience for you. It just refuses to lie down and die to be reborn into a familiar zombie novel of movie tradition.

The cover of the dead cheerleader with blackened eyes seized me at once. I mean, once you get that image in your head, it’s not going to easily go away. Neither will the romantic triangle between Phoebe, Adam, and Tommy, the “differently biotic” boy Phoebe falls for.

Phoebe was one of the Goth girls at school. She enjoyed being different, and the dressed-in-black thing really worked for her. Looking like the living dead really worked for her. It even earned her the name Scarypants from Pete, the novel’s villain of sorts. Of course, the look really lost its appeal when dead kids started showing up and coming back to school. The author does an excellent job of catching a teen girl’s feelings and confusion throughout the novel. Phoebe comes to life on the pages almost at once.

Adam is the football jock and Phoebe’s next door friend. As it happens, he’s just discovering that the friendship he’s always had with Phoebe runs much deeper. That realization is stymied by his own shyness, the fact that he is a member of the Pain Crew on the football team and he shouldn’t go for Goth girls, and Phoebe’s sudden crush on Tommy Williams.

Tommy is a pioneering wonder among the zombies. He’s articulate and he writes, blogs even. He also goes out for the football team and causes all kinds of tension in the school and the city.

The story revolves around these three characters and how they sort out their lives. However, the author throws in great support characters like Margi, Phoebe’s best friend, and others.

Teens these days seem to be almost shockproof to so many changes in their lives. If the living dead did claw their way from their graves and decide to go to school instead of the brain buffet, I would be very surprised if teens didn’t act exactly as Waters portrays them in this novel. They split almost immediately into groups that supported the zombies and those that stood against. But mostly they were curious.

I could make a lot of comparisons to cultural differences being played out in the pages, of Waters building his zombies up to comment on race, religion, and economics – the usual dividers among populations, but I won’t. I don’t think he wants the book to go that deeply into global problems. I believe he just wants to talk about the teen world, get into their heads, and tell a story they’ll have a ball with wondering “what-if”?

I also have to admit that you’re going to have to push yourself to get through the first fifty pages or so. The book progresses slowly but that’s so the characters and all their complications can be set into place. Once that’s done, Waters engages fully with the story and keeps things moving.

This is a book for the teens. Some parents of teens or those who want a trip back through the teenage years will enjoy it as well, but the junior high and high school readers should eat this one up. There’s no real explanation for why the zombies came back to life, or why only American teens were affected, and I was disappointed slightly in that. But the characters are real, facing situations with genuine emotion, and I believe that the target audience is going to feel that and enjoy the read.

 Joe Hill switches points of view again in Locke & Key #3. This time the focus is on Kinsey, the middle child of the three Locke children. She’s fifteen years old and noticeably troubled by the savage murder of her father. That death precipitated the family’s move back to the ancestral home, Key House in Lovecraft, Massachusetts.

The story so far as been dark and eerie, and I’m totally loving the macabre nature of the events. Moreover, I’m actually enjoying waiting each month to see what’s going to happen next. Usually on a limited series, I wait to pick up the graphic novel collection, but I’ve discovered that I like playing with all the various encounters and resolutions I can come up with on my own. I love matching wits with Hill to see if I can predict which way he’s going to turn.

Fans who have followed the comic series since its inception might be troubled by the first couple pages’ of replay to introduce potential new readers to the book. However, the voice over Kinsey provides also gave me a chance to sink into her character and remember all that she’d been through. No one could go through what she survived and be unscathed. Kinsey’s carrying her scars, and Gabriel Rodriguez’s art brings all that horror to the reader.

Since her father’s murder, Kinsey has worked hard to disappear. That’s what she did while the killers hunted for the family, and that’s become her motto. I knew she was struggling with her own mortality, and Hill really pounds that in well.

After the soul-searching opening, I wasn’t quite prepared for the bloodthirsty escape in the next couple pages. Hill laid out the plans for the visuals, but Rodriguez brought the image home with scarlet-laced savagery. Furthermore, the reader gets to see exactly what Sam Lesser (one of the murderers of Rendell Locke) does with the mirror and scissors he got from the apparition at the bottom of the well in the wellhouse.

I laughed as I read and saw Kinsey’s relationship with her little brother Bode. The second issue revealed that he’s able to become a ghost when he goes through one of the house’s many doors. Unfortunately, he can’t get anyone to believe him. The author and artist’s handling of the comedic within the parameters of the chilling horror and grueling anticipation is awesome.

The reaction Kinsey has to the smell of fresh paint is great. Her father was painting their house when he was killed, so the smell was everywhere. I’d forgotten that, but Hill had it planned in. This is just another of those reasons I like the book so well. Hill has a fantastic eye for detail and how to use it. Even the heart-to-heart conversation Kinsey has with her coach, though serious, poses some comedic moments that are perfectly natural under the circumstances. I love how these characters are portrayed, and if the movie comes out, it should be a treat.

However, the bracelet Kinsey is wearing sends the coach into a search that lets us know that she knows something we don’t. The mysteries Hill has in play all the time make me re-read the book after I finish it the first time, and guarantee a later re-reading as I try to put everything together. The puzzle-lover in me feels challenged.

I’m halfway home after this issue, but I’m enjoying the trip. Even after months of waiting, I know I’m going to be sad to see this twisting jaunt into terror come to an end.

Joe Hill kicked off his comic-writing career with IDW Publishing with an imaginative and compelling story. Locke & Key flew off the shelves in comics stories, required another printing, and was snapped up almost immediately by movie production companies.

For those who don’t know yet, Joe Hill is one of Stephen King’s sons. Joe wanted to become known as a horror writer in his own right rather than hanging onto his famous dad’s coattails, and Joe has succeeded in a lot of ways. His first novel, Heart-Shaped Box garnered a lot of literary attention as well as readers. His collection, 20th Century Ghosts, became well-known in short order.

Locke & Key is going to be at least a six-issue comic series, though Joe promises he’s got plots that would take the series out to nearly 70 issues if he gets to write them. The story’s focus is on the Locke family, which went through the horrible tragedy of losing there father, Rendell Locke, to psychotic students he once taught.

Issue #2 picks up the family’s story after they’ve moved to Lovecraft, Massachusetts. And doesn’t that name summon all kinds of wicked demons immediately to mind? As it turns out, Keyhouse, where the family moved, has got all kinds of dangerous secrets lurking within it.

I love Joe’s easy storytelling ability. He makes everything look simple as he tells the story through dialogue between the characters as well as Bode’s first-person narration. Bode Locke is in grade school and Joe portrays his voice convincingly throughout. Joe maintains the eye and focus of a child almost effortlessly, filled with excitement, the need to be the center of attention, and the disappointment and irritability that he displays when that doesn’t happen.

Joe also writes Bode intelligently, showing how he’s smarter than the monster he discovers in the wellhouse. But he also has fun with Bode, showing how Bode carries on while he’s bored, such as putting the mop bucket on his head while talking to the woman in the bottom of the well. Of course, the inherent danger of walking on the edge of the well that seems to miss Bode screams in the face of the reader. I found myself tensing up, waiting for Bode to inevitably fall into the well and meet his doom.

Gabriel Rodriguiz’s artwork is stupendous this time around again. His energy and understanding of the characters is on every page, and he works hard to play with different angles so readers aren’t looking at the same kind of picture or view each time. The environment is interesting, spooky, and foreboding all at once, and I love it. You can actually see how the movie should look in these pages.

Joe’s first page of the new comic is a riot. It’s a page taken from Bode’s homework, and it retells everything the family has been through up to this point. His mom believes the part about him becoming a ghost when he goes through one of the house’s doors is just a fabrication. We know better because we saw this happen to Bode in the last issue. In case you forgot, we see Bode in ghost-form watching his mom and his uncle talking about him while they’re sitting out on the veranda.

I love how Joe is slowly parsing out the information and background of the house. I don’t want to know everything all at once, and he’s not a storyteller that dumps everything on you and doesn’t keep surprises or twists to himself. Things are wild and weird in this series, and I’ve gotten totally wrapped up in the world and the characters.

The monster at the bottom of the wellhouse is going to mean a lot of trouble. I really enjoyed the subtle way Joe and Gabriel revealed her evil nature to the reader through the mirror sequence. That was a grabber once I saw it, and it doesn’t hit you between the eyes. If you’re not paying attention you’ll miss it.

I also like the way that Sam Lesser, one of the teens that killed Rendell, remains a threat to the family. Especially when the monstrous lady at the bottom of the well speaks to him and offers him a key to get out of the sanitarium where he’s being held.

With everything going on, I can’t wait till the next issue. I’m just glad it’s only a month away. If you haven’t picked up this great series, you’re missing out on some groundbreaking horror.

Ghost Whisperer is currently in its third season on television and has a few more new episodes that will air now that the writers’ strike in Hollywood has ended. Produces confirmed in February that the show is returning for a fourth season.

Created by John Gray and based on James Van Praagh’s own experiences as a psychic and medium, the series stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon. Melinda operates an antique store and has had to deal with ghosts that appear to her to get messages to their loved ones nearly her whole life.

With the success of the television franchise, IDW Publishing has started a comic book series base on Ghost Whisperer. The first issue is out now and is called “The Haunted.” It’s written by Carrie Smith and Becca Smith and illustrated by Elena Casagrande. The two writers have written scripts for the television show, so it’s no surprise that the issue parallels the movement of an episode perfectly. Elena Casagrande has worked on “Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Orions” so she’s no stranger to tie-in work coming from a television series. Her panels come to life with movement and angles deliberately staged to seduce the eye.

I really liked the opening montage in the coffee shop and appreciate the quick way the story got up and got moving. There’s no stopping to explain things. The writers assume the readers picked up the issue because they’re fans of the show, and that’s not a bad assumption to make.

Three girls, obviously well-to-do, are menaced by a girl ghost that’s about their age. The ghost, Alice Henderson, is angry at them and seeking revenge for her untimely death. Melinda steps in and attempts to intercede, but Alice’s rage knows no bounds. When Alice disappears, though, Melinda is left facing a bird-man dressed all in black.

The way the story progresses so quickly is fantastic. A mere flip of the page brings us to Professor Rick Payne, another regular from the show. Quickly, with great one-liners and snappy patter, Rick brings Melinda up to date on Osiris, the Egyptian God of the Underworld.

Back at the antiques shop, Melinda confers with Delia, her partner, and finds out the name of the dead girl as well as how she died after being hit by a car while crossing the street. Melinda goes back to high school and finds the three girls that had gotten menaced in the coffee shop. The scenes set there are great, and Casagrande’s pencils really showcase what she’s capable of when it comes to establishing an environment. I was impressed with her vision of the high school building.

Melinda goes to see the girls again when she finds out where they’re living, and gets there just as Alice sweeps in for her revenge again. The action scenes and the angles Casagrande takes are marvelous. You can almost shoot the episode from these panels, or at least know how the story would look on television. The writers’ dialogue is spare and lean, and keeps the tale moving at breakneck pace.

When the story is resolved in tried and true fashion that’s become familiar to the regular viewers of the television series, the mystery of Osiris deepens. He doesn’t go away as Melinda had thought. Instead he threatens Melinda directly.

This beginning arc hammers the reader with the same kind of seasonal epic usually carried in the series. I can’t wait till second issue to see what happens next.

In addition to being a bestselling novelist and a noted award-winning short story writer, Joe Hill also happens to be the son of novelist Stephen King. I lead with that and I feel guilty about it at the same time. Hill created his own name in order to create his own identity, and as soon as we found out, we start telling each other. As I said, I feel guilty, but I also know that letting the cat out of the bag, again, will draw more people to this review and hopefully pump up Hill’s sales. He deserves to be read. He has an intriguing mind and a unique way of looking at the dark corners in life.

Despite his paternity, Hill has crafted an existence for himself that’s just starting to take off. His novel, Heart-Shaped Box, leapt onto bestseller lists and latched hold of horror fans’ psyches in wild, delicious ways. His collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, has won the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award.

Now, along with artist Gabriel Rodriguez, Hill has staked out the comics medium with a new series called Locke & Key. The launch is a page-turning suspense story full of surprises. According to information that’s been released by IDW Publishing, this is going to be at least a six-issue monthly series. Hill has plans for at 68 issues of Keyhouse.

I really like the idea behind the house and the series. It focuses on kids, and the house has doors they can pass through that will change them. The power of the doors can change their age, their race, and their sex, and has a tendency to push people toward the evil we all carry around inside us.

The first issue is stunning. When I saw the blood-red cover with the old key so prominent, I didn’t at first see the house in the background. Then when I saw the house I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I just sat there for a moment, frozen, thinking about all the possibilities of that key and that house and all those doors. I think that’s what still consumes me about the story.

The story begins quietly, almost innocently, but it quickly turns mean and hard-edged, which is one of the qualities of Hill’s writing. The story picks up with Sam Lesser and Al Grubb, two high school students that were counseled by Tyler Locke’s father, turning up at the Locke house. A single page of simple conversation with Mrs. Locke turns chilling when we see the weapons they’re packing.

On the next page, we get a full-page shot of a man and a woman lying dead in the back of a pickup truck. A bloody tarp barely covers them.

Hill plays with time in this first comic. He leaves us hanging, wanting desperately to turn the pages, but afraid of what we’re going to see at the same time. In four quick panels, we’re introduced to Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke, who are evidently going to be our main characters throughout the comics.

Tyler is the brooding high school teen who resents his dad’s manipulation to get them out to help him paint the summerhouse. Kinsey is a pre-teen girl who seems to be the responsible one. Bode is the ever-curious and ever-daring kid who’s always getting into trouble and exploring. Rodriguez’s art is fantastic and really brings the characters and the environment around them to life while looking simple at the same time.

The panel of Mr. Locke coming home and surprising the teen killers is chilling. Then Hill cuts away to the funeral and we don’t know who’s dead. Afterwards, Tyler sits through unbearable visits from friends who are so disconnected from reality I wanted to scream at them. One guy can only talk about himself. Another can only talk about how famous Tyler is going to be. Writing about real people is one of Hill’s gifts. Apparently illustrating them is one of Rodriguez’s.

While sitting with his Uncle Duncan, Tyler remembers how his father planned for them to go live at Keyhouse if anything ever happened to him. Hill’s script is an economy of language. Every panel moves the story along and provides information as well as emotion. Rodriguez makes them all beautiful to look at.

Then the story plunges back to the day of the murders, when the teen killers were inside the Locke summer home. The next few pages are full of tension, suspense, and thrill-a-second pacing that had me flipping pages like a madman. The story turns chilling, then cuts off again, leaving me hanging once more. You know that Tyler survives, but you don’t know if anyone else does.

The next sequence introduces Keyhouse, and the layout of the grounds, the fact that it’s on a peninsula cut off from civilization, is at once intriguing. I know that the distance away from a populated area is going to be trouble.

Once the exploration of the house begins, which I was dying to see, Hill moves us back to the past again. The graphic panels Rodriguez presents had me once more hanging on as what happened that day of the killings is finally played out. It’s brutal and vicious, but that’s the only way it could have happened.

The true weirdness descends on the story in the next few pages. Bode is off exploring the weird house all on his own when he has an out-of-body-experience. And we learn that Sam Lesser, one of the teen killers, is still alive in juvenile lockup. Not only that, but he’s talking to a mysterious entity he can see in a sink full of water.

I’m totally jacked about this series. I think it’s going to be great. I can’t believe Hill decided to do it as a comic book instead of a novel, but in an interview I read he said he’d just always envisioned it as a comic book.

I love Rodriguez’s art, so that’s a bonus in addition to a great, macabre story with plenty of mystery and suspense. But the waiting over the next five months is going to test me to my limits. I expect I’m going to be daydreaming – or having nightmares – about Keyhouse and what’s really going on for some time now. If you’re a comics fan or a horror fan or a Joe Hill fan, you gotta check this one out.

The Black Book of Secrets by F. E. Higgins has one of the most intriguing premises I’ve seen in a juvenile novel, or an adult novel, in a long time. A quiet man of questionable means moves into a neighborhood where everyone is being bullied by a man who owns everything worth owning. The quiet man, Joe Zabbidou, opens a pawnshop and starts buying what is basically worthless junk from the poor people who live there. Then, shortly after acquiring a young, homeless thief as his apprentice, Joe begins buying the darkest secrets of anyone who will sell them to him during the midnight hour.

I read about the book in a forthcoming announcement and wanted to think about it before I just purchased it. I was in Minnesota over the holidays and stopped in at a bookstore. The Black Book of Secrets sat on the NEW ARRIVALS shelves. Immediately fascinated, I picked up a copy.

The packaging is as compelling and intriguing as the story’s premise. The covers, front and back, are a flat black with the illustration and the back cover copy on them. My eye didn’t catch the designs worked into the book until I felt them. The most eye-catching part of the whole package, though, was the black gilt that framed the pages all the way around. I’ve never seen a book like that. The treatment made the book feel almost…dangerous. And certain foreboding.

I was mesmerized, really. Whether the trade dress (publishing term for how a book looks) was really that good or I was just a soft touch, I don’t know. But the book’s designer is fantastic. The only real bright spot on the book’s cover is that curious and brightly colored frog.

When I opened the book, I found the inside was just as different as the outside. The book’s generous margins, clear and easy to read font, and the thin, almost fragile feel, of the pages made me want to turn them.

I read the opening chapter, a short but very intense five pages, and was instantly gripped by poor Ludlow Fitch’s predicament. Ludlow lives in the City, but it can’t be any other city than 19th century London, and the mean, downtrodden existence he leads is properly Dickensian. His lowlife parents have taken Ludlow to a foul dentist to sell the teeth right out of his head. They strap him into the dentist’s chair and the dentist, Dr. Gumbroot – another nice, Dickensian touch, grabs a pair of pliers and latches onto one of Ludlow’s teeth. In that scene alone, I was as hooked as Ludlow.

I picked the book up. Due to the work load I’ve got, I couldn’t get back to it until yesterday. I started it to take a few minutes at lunch. Instead, I ended up captivated and read the entire novel. At 260 pages, it’s fairly short by today’s standards.

But I was swept away through the dirty streets of that neighborhood, got to know all the broken dreams and lost hopes of the people that came to Joe Zabbidou’s pawnshop to sell their darkest secrets, and became even more curious about why Joe was buying them. I also discovered that our hero, Ludlow Fitch, wasn’t the most reliable person Joe could have trusted.

I’m torn over calling this a children’s book or an adult one. I think it plays equally well for both. The novel offers a compelling story with rich characters and a unique time and place that still stands apart from 19th century England in the same way that Joseph Delaney’s The Last Apprentice books do. In some ways it breaks the tenets of juvenile books because it spends so much time with the adult characters. But it never discusses anything inappropriate about their lives or motivations that the 9-12 year olds won’t understand.

The building sense of mystery and dread is fantastic, but I have to admit that when everything was said and done, I was somewhat disappointed. After all the tension that was raised, I really expected more at the end. Still, everything made sense and it satisfied.

This is F. E. Higgins’s first book, but that doesn’t show. Her writing is spare and lean, and not overly descriptive. The narrative pacing is well done – it obviously kept me glued to the book and turning pages till I reached the end, and I’m not always an easy audience. She writes with authority and confidence, and I liked her characters quite a lot because they were so real.

One of the best parts of the book was being a voyeur and listening to the secrets those townspeople came to tell. Each one of them seemed almost like an Edgar Allan Poe short story, filled with twists and turns and surprises.

I don’t know yet if the book is going to be a series, but it could. Each Black Book of Secrets could be about a different place, with different secrets. Given the nature of people’s curiosity about other people’s secrets, I think this is a hook that would make a series work for a while. If Higgins can keep up this kind of quality, I’d definitely read another book or two about Joe and Ludlow.

Higgins does have a second book coming out in March 2008. It’s called The Bone Magician and sports a blood-red cover with a skull. I’ll be picking that one up when it comes out.

Chasing the Dead is a sleek bullet of a suspense/horror novel. I know that both of those genres exist independently of each other, but sometimes have elements of the other within them, but this book is first one, then the other in a blend like I haven’t seen before.

I picked the book up because the cover caught my eye. I couldn’t help wondering who was driving that car at night down such a desolate road with the forest all around. From the provocative title, I knew whoever it was couldn’t be out day-tripping – primarily because it’s night. I was also attracted by the brevity of the book. At 250 pages with a generous font instead of tiny type, I knew I could probably get through it in an hour or two. So I added it to the stack I was getting.

At home, still curious, I opened the cover and intended to read a chapter or so just to get the feel of it. I do that a lot and let my subconscious choose the order of the books I read when I don’t have a definite plan.

However, I had definite plans. I’ve got an immense TBR pile. But I read the prologue and remained curious. After all, a prologue doesn’t necessarily tell you how a book is going to read.

On the first page of Chapter 1, I met Susan Young, newly divorced and still not sure why, who’s about to close a major real estate deal, and is just trying to get home to her young daughter through the late-evening traffic. Within six pages, she arrives home and finds her daughter and the nanny aren’t home.

Then she gets the phone call.

The voice of a man she doesn’t know informs her that she has a beautiful daughter, then proceeds to describe her. I was hooked. As a parent, having my child in the hands of a madman would be terrifying.

By the end of the next two chapters, just ten short pages away and I’m suddenly 15% of the way through the novel, Susan is forced to obey the machinations of the evil man who holds the life of her child in his hands.

I was totally stuck at this point. For a first-time author, Schreiber really knows how to keep a reader turning pages. I finally gave up and settled back to just follow the book through to the end. I had no choice. I was held completely in thrall.

In just a few more short chapters, Susan is commanded to dig up a grave. By hand. During the confusion, she inadvertently left the shovel she was told she had to bring. By the time she gets back to her SUV, there’s another body waiting for her that turns her world upside down again.

Schreiber’s story moves relentlessly, till the anticipation becomes an adrenaline-laced blur. The twists and turns come faster and faster, and I can’t really remember when the story jumped from suspense to out-and-out Stephen King style horror because the dread inside me continued to come from the same place. The dread grew larger and larger, though, because what Susan faced seemed to grow exponentially as well.

Although Chasing the Dead isn’t going to change your life or even stay with you long after you finish it, the novel will definitely take you to the darker places of your mind and root around in old fears resurrected from childhood. It’s a fun, fast read that will keep you nailed to the pages as you try to stay up with the whipsaw of obstacles Susan faces as she struggles to save her child.

Now I’ve gotta pick up Schreiber’s new book, Eat the Dead, that just hit the bookshelves. And when I read it, I’m gonna do it at night just for that extra adrenaline spike. I’ll make sure the doors are all locked and the windows are closed first.

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.

  At Amazon

Joseph Delaney’s The Last Apprentice series has shot to the top of my must-buy list. I originally bought the two books in hardback because of the covers. The images are stark and somber, kind of spooky actually. More than that, they intrigued me, made me wonder what kind of world was trapped within the pages.

So I bought the first one, put it on the shelf and told myself I’d get around to it when I got ready to read to my son Chandler. We read all the time for his Accelerated Reader program. Unfortunately, Delaney’s books haven’t made that list, though I intend to push for it at his school because I’m plenty willing to read the stories again. This time to him.

But after buying the second book a few months later, I realized I’d made a considerable investment on books that I didn’t know anything about. There wasn’t even much in the way of reviews on them. So, late one night, I cracked the first one open. It’s even reviewed here, so you can find out what I thought. And now, less than a week later, I’ve read the second one. Couldn’t stop myself. I know there’s a third book in the works (and I’m dying to know which Delaney explores first, more of the Spook’s background, more of Mam’s background, or more of this ever-growing world they all inhabit) but I don’t know how long I’m going to have to wait on it.

But to the second book…

What you need to know is this (if you don’t want to go looking for my review of the first book): Tom Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son in an England countryside that exists some three or four hundred years ago. As such, there’s not much in the way of inheritance for him. The farm goes to the old son, his brother Jack in this case. And his father found apprenticeships for the rest of his sons.

Tom ended up with Old Gregory, the Spook. As a spook, Tom has been assigned to a venerable trade: chasing off ghosts, boggarts, and witches. He’s been trained to dig pits, cover the insides with mixtures of iron, salt, and glue to trap the supernatural creatures, and cover it all with specially crafted stone slabs marked with warnings to keep people away, or from releasing the beasties they’ve gone to the trouble of imprisoning.

The Last Apprentice: Curse of the Bane takes place about six months after the first book. It opens up with thirteen-year-old Tom called to a church to rescue the priest there from a powerful Ripper, a kind of boggart, that’s feasting on the man’s blood. The Spook is at home sick. Even worse, it’s the Spook’s brother who is the priest who’s being fed on.

The first chapter is a whirlwind of action, drawing us straightaway into the world of the Spook. Told in first-person, we hear Tom’s voice, his fears and his struggles, up close and immediate. He succeeds in his endeavor, but there is a price.

Later, after the Spook has recovered, they journey to Priestown for the priest’s funeral. Before they leave, the Spook tells Tom about an evil that dwells in the catacombs beneath Priestown. It’s called the Bane, and the Spook fought it twenty years ago, barely escaping with his life. Legend says that the Little People, the Serengeti, imprisoned the Bane beneath the town, but that its power continues to grow. It’s even said that the Bane can now control the thoughts of the priests that live in the church above it.

The Spook vows to attempt once again to banish the Bane while he’s there.

But the matter becomes even more complicated when the Quisitor arrives in Priestown at the same time they’re there. The Quisitor has been assigned to rid the countryside of witches and those who traffic with Darkness. The Spook is at the top of the Quisitor’s list.

Tom quickly learns that the Quisitor is an arrogant bully who uses his power for his own good. Sometimes the Quisitor will accuse people of witchery and have them thrown off their lands just so he can acquire it and sell it for profit.

When he first sees the Quisitor, Tom feels sorry for the captives bound in an iron cage who have been brought to Priestown to be tried as witches. Even more shocking, Alice – the young witch who befriended Tom in the first book – is one of the captives. Tom feels like they have to rescue her, but the Spook forbids it.

Unfortunately, the Quisitor soon learns that the Spook is in the area and goes looking for him, quickly finding him after getting the local priest to take Tom into custody. After Tom’s escape, he has a close brush with the Bane and ends up having to save his master and Alice.

Once the traps are sprung, Tom goes into motion. But it’s not the action that truly draws the attention, though that is extremely well done. It’s the characterization that drives the story. We get to find out more about the Spook’s early life, and more about the mystery that surrounds Tom’s mam, who deliberately had seven sons by a seventh son so that he could take up the Spook trade and gave him knowledge she never gave any of her other children.

The atmosphere of the book is chilling and compelling. When you’re in the catacombs with Tom, you’re going to have to fight the urge to look over your shoulder the whole time. And you won’t be able to read quickly enough. Every time you think you’ve reached a safe place to take leave of Tom, the Spook, or Alice for a little while, you’re going to find that a twist in the plot has put them all at risk and at odds again.

I love these characters, how they fit together even though by their natures they shouldn’t. And I love the murky, musty, dangerous world they inhabit.

Delaney has created a page-turning experience both times out. And these are his first two books. I can’t imagine what he’s going to learn as he goes along, but I’ll be picking up the books as they come out.

Even though both books are stand-alones, with no cliffhangers in them, you’re going to be drawn to the story of the characters, wanting to know more and more as you go. I can’t wait.