Finally Detective D.D Warren has managed to fit a date into her job obsessed life. But as she’s only thinking of one thing, and wondering how fast she can get there, she’s summoned to a brutal crime scene where evidence points to a man killing his entire family, and then himself. Only it’s not a simple as it seems. The suspect has thrown in a monkey wrench and killed each victim with a different MO. Something that Warren has never encountered before. As she digs her heels into the case, not 48 hours later tragedy strikes again, as another family is killed in nearly the exact fashion.

Danielle loves her job on the pediatric psych ward, and she’s good at it. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps her from going crazy. But as the anniversary of her family’s brutal killing creeps closer, she’s finding it harder than ever to hang on to her sanity. She can’t seem to stop replaying that night in her mind’s eye, causing her to falter at her job, something she can’t afford to do or children die. Just when she thinks she can’t handle anything else, there are the two mass murders that eerily hit too close to home and send the police calling.

Victoria is just trying to stay alive. But it’s hard when every time she turns around, her eight year old son is trying to kill her. But what she doesn’t know is that the day he puts her in the hospital, is the day that reveals her son might be the missing link the police need to bring a mass killer to light.

The more I read Gardner’s D.D Warren series, the more I wonder why she’s the fixture of a series in the first place. Warren is not well developed. In this fourth installment, all we seem to know is that she’s a workaholic detective that puts job first and everything else last. Live to Tell is told through the eyes of three different women, our heroine, Danielle and Victoria, where it jumps from each’s perspective, loads up suspects at a whim and teases at the heat that could flare between some of the characters. The plot is good, you never get lost and you’re kept guessing. It’s definitely one of Gardner’s better books, her passion for the story clearly present, and perhaps the hard-to-take subject matter (especially if you’re a parent) might make this her best yet.

I keep wondering however, will we ever get to what makes Warren tick?

Say what you will about Brian Keene, but the man has made an impact in horror fiction. Since his Bram Stoker award winning debut novel The Rising landed on bookshelves in 2004 (credited by no less than the New York times as instrumental in kicking off the zombie craze), Keene has attained a dark prose Grand Poobah status in the eyes of genre fans around the globe. With no less than eleven novels since The Rising, assorted short stories, comic book gigs, and a free ongoing serial published through his website, Keene is practically a one-man publishing industry.

Unfortunately for Keene’s latest, A Gathering of Crows has proven to be sparse and unimaginative, devoid of any tangible characterization or depth. And while layered nuance may not be what horror fans want out of the author, I can’t imagine that a bland narrative overrun with wooden dialogue is high on the list either.

Set in a small town in West Virginia, A Gathering of Crows brings back Levi Stozfus, an ex-Amish Hebraic witch featured in Keene’s book Ghost Walk. On his way to Virginia and stopping only for the night in Brinkley Springs, Levi inconveniently finds himself trapped within the borders of the forgettable hamlet as five demonic entities lay siege to the citizenry, ripping apart anyone and everyone they find.

A Gathering of Crows’ whisper thin plot seems more like an appendix for Keene’s burgeoning Labyrinth universe than a stand-alone novel. Filled with alternate earth timelines under attack by The Thirteen (evil forces sworn to destroy God’s creation), the Labyrinth is the Lovecraftian mythos Keene has constructed connecting his various books and the assorted cosmic horrors within. The inter-dimensional conflicts continually spill over into physical reality, unleashing zombies, giant worms, ghouls, and now soul-consuming revenants manifested in a murder of crows.

While I am not one to necessarily share advice with bestselling authors (and let’s face it, a book like A Gathering of Crows is red meat to his ravenous readers), Keene could potentially profit more from abbreviating his enormous literary output and focusing on developing stories that operate on more than the primal nihilistic levels that he has explored ad infinitum. The notion that these cataclysmic events are happening simply due to vengeful antics of The Thirteen creates a redundancy of back-story that grows tiresome novel after novel. While Lovecraft was able to loosely connect his pantheon of dark tales with the backbone of the celebrated Cthulhu Mythos, it must be noted that the legendary writer’s body of work manifested primarily in the short form and, in all honesty, should not credibly be compared with Keene’s (even though I just did).

With regard to A Gathering of Crows, those who like this sort of thing will find this to be the sort of thing they like. Keene is somewhat of a name brand in the horror market, making him to some extent review proof. Ultimately, his fans will read him no matter what, and Leisure Fiction will continue to pump out his material. His next book, Entombed, already scheduled to drop in February, is a return to Keene’s zombie wheelhouse, and hopefully a homecoming for the sheer narrative velocity and character development of The Rising.

Now this was a lovely book I was glad to be given a sample review copy of after meeting the publisher from Greece (Jemma Press) on the first day of the World Horror Convention earlier in the year in Brighton UK. Only 50 copies were ever printed in English so I feel honoured to have one and the they are looking for a UK, US publisher if anyone is interested.

I was translated into English and that gives it a different feel too many US or UK writers. With classic 1930’s vampires from the silver screen of a bygone day of horror at its core and full of a wealth of film knowledge that beggars belief.

Yet there is a story here, a modern day take on the classic Dracula story, with wild twists and turns that you might not dare to expect.

This was something completely off the radar and it punched with a hidden horseshoe hidden in its horror boxing glove sometimes.

Some of the facts and lines spoken could do with an English eye before publication, one line about Bristols (a slang term for breasts that died out circa 1979 in the UK) and the word jello instead of jelly in one line raised both my eyebrows in amusement. Plus the police coming from Scotland Yard, hasn’t been true for many a long decade.

Yet these are mere translation kinks and did not impact on my enjoyment of the story and I hope to see more of Jemma Press in the years to come.

Blurb:

Lucian Samuels, an eminent horror movie collector, is found brutally murdered in his London home – right next to the body of his killer, who it turns out, was already dead when he committed the crime. Samuels’ collection is a cornucopia of infamous macabre films that are not supposed to exist, and those that choose to watch them risk madness and a gruesome death.

A plane lands at Heathrow Airport, yet its passengers and crew have been massacred in mid-flight. And all around London, the dead are starting to rise...

When paranormal investigator Pandora Ormand is drawn into the mystery that connects these events, she finds herself in a labyrinth of secrets and terrors. As the body count rises at an alarming rate, sinister forces are gathering around a prenatural evil that threatens to change reality itself into a nightmare out of the haunted screens of horror films.

“Siren was a little different for me,” confides John Everson regarding his most recent novel. “I didn’t want to do vampires. I didn’t want to do zombies.” A cursory glance at retail bookshelves over the past several years does indeed bear the burden of tiresome and predictable subject matter. Without the endless variations on undead adventures and flesh eating apocalypse epics, genre choices have proven somewhat anemic.

“I started thinking about what hadn’t already been done a million times before,” Everson continues. “And then I thought of the siren, which has a solid mythological base, and has never really been the subject of a horror novel as a lead character.”

The siren, originating in Greek mythology and popularized in Homer’s Odyssey, were alluring supernatural creatures who led sailors to their death with their seductive and irresistible music. “During my research, I came across an old painting of the sirens laying nude on a pile of human carcasses. I thought that this was a really good basis for a horror novel.”

Everson, who won the Bram Stoker Award for his debut novel Covenant, has always had an attraction to the darker side of the universe. “I was a sci-fi kid, so I watched a lot of Outer Limits and the Twilight Zone. When I started writing, everything I did ended up being short stories with a nasty twist at the end. So I started focusing more and more on horror.”

“Throughout the nineties I published short fiction in all sorts of magazines,” Everson continues. “I love the short form. You can do one in the afternoon and feel a great sense of accomplishment. There’s closure, it’s done, and then I can go watch a movie.” Despite fifteen years of working primarily in short stories, however, Everson made a splash in the publishing world with the previous mentioned Covenant, its sequel Sacrifice, the Argento influenced The 13th (“A result of sitting on my ass and watching Italian horror movies for six months”), and now Siren.

“I think I’m becoming more of a novelist now,” he asserts. “When you’re working on a novel, it’s six months of slogging through. Of course, at the end, you’ve got a novel that could be on shelves for years. I’d have to really work to do a 2,000 word story again.”

Unfortunately, while it benefits from a premise ripe with potential, Everson’s latest work reads like one of his short stories uncomfortably stretched to a 300-page novel. The tale finds itself trapped in a repetitive loop of a man’s erotic midnight encounters on the beach with the Siren, peppered with the standard gory deaths of random, underdeveloped supporting players (both modern and historic).

“Siren also centers on dealing with the loss of a child,” Everson reveals. “This subplot definitely came from being a new father, which makes this book very important to me.” It is through this secondary narrative involving the drowning death of the protagonist’s teenage son where the novel actually shines. The palpable sorrow and guilt from his loss inexorably drags hero Evan into the blackest depths as surely as any wanton Siren. The author’s rendering of a father lost in his pain is brilliant in its emotional agony, a poignant through line that is unfortunately dampened by the ultimate revelation of the truth behind his son’s death.

Despite any weaknesses affiliated with Siren, Everson’s immediate writing future promises to be productive with the March release of his fifth novel, The Pumpkin Man (“The jumping off point for the book is a short story I published in Doorways Magazine several years ago”), as well as continued publishing efforts with his own label, Dark Arts Books. “We’re now on our sixth title,” he shares. “Our whole modus operandi is to put together collections of four authors, usually an established author, a couple of cult status writers, and a newbie. We want to introduce people to other authors.”

“The market for small press stinks,” Everson discloses. “But we’re still breaking even on every title, making people a little bit of money.”

No matter the literary pursuit, Everson plans on remaining firmly within the boundaries of horror. “Horror gets to the root of what it is to be human,” he explains. “We are all driven in a large part by our fears and obsessions. We’ll always have horror stories, we’ll always be wondering if there’s something beyond…unseen. And that’s what the horror genre is all about.”

What is it about werewolves? In the early-80’s, some of the first cinematic horrors I was exposed to was An American Werewolf in London and The Howling. We could spend hours debating which was the better film (coughthehowlingcough), but this is a lit review, not a fanboy forum on Aint It Cool News. I simply draw attention to these movies in order to illustrate how lycanthropes have really never grabbed the pop culture imagination since John Landis and Joe Dante’s cinematic one-two punch of 1981. Yes, books have been written, and yes, there have been other movies produced, however the werewolf often stands envious of the attention granted to its genre cousins the vampire and zombies.

This lack of adequate attention to the werewolf mythos is unfortunate, if only due to the fact that David Wellington’s stellar novel Frostbite probably won’t receive the proper consideration it deserves. After redefining both the walking dead and the undead with Monster Island and 13 Bullets respectively (in addition to their sequels), the author has turned his razor sharp prose to the criminally underrepresented lupines.

Set in the vast Northwest Territories of Canada, Frostbite wastes little time as it plummets into a world of survival, redemption, and forgiveness. Chey, the protagonist, is resolute in her determination to track down the man/wolf who ripped her father to pieces before her adolescent eyes, setting the young heroine on an emotionally aimless course through life. That is until she is offered an opportunity for revenge.

As is often the case with Wellington’s stories, the plot of Frostbite, while superbly effective, is incidental next to the intense characterization of not only Chey, but also Powell, the alpha wolf who has spent more than a lifetime searching for a place to veil himself from the world. It is through them that the author deconstructs the typical Manichean good versus evil dynamic of the werewolf, and reveals the devastating toll that the curse takes on its victims.

As for the rendering of the actual werewolves, they are a uniquely supernatural creature manifesting in a type of spiritual transformation, emerging as a separate conscious being with all the fury and power of nature’s wrath thrown in for good measure. Rather than the oft utilized trope of the werewolf representing the primal state of man, these wolves simply stand alone, with a remorseless desire to be free, to be forever wolf. More akin to the prehistoric dire wolf, Wellington imbues his creations with an intelligence and ferocity that overtakes the humanity of the cursed whenever the moon rises.

Frostbite is breakneck in its pace, frenetic even in its more casual moments as the constant ticking clock of nightfall is ever present for the cast. Furthermore, the narrative perspective of the fully transformed wolf is breathtaking in its descriptive palate, cognizant, yet predatory and instinctual in its fragmented style.

The first in a series (Overwinter premiers in September), Wellington has successfully laid the groundwork for an epic werewolf legend. Mythological in its scope while grounded in an organic reality that provides depth and weight to the proceedings, Frostbite is an exhilarating, gruesome, and enthralling literary creature feature for modern horror fans.

It has been 15 years since Christopher Moore introduced us to Jody and Flood, the titular characters of the delightful novel Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story. Since then, we have become acquainted with a motley supporting cast of characters, including an Emperor of San Francisco and his loyal canines, a raucous group of corner store employees tagged the Animals, a Hot Topic Goth girl with nosferatu dreams, a nefarious blue skinned Las Vegas stripper, a sadistic vampire Lord, and a pair of detectives who constantly find themselves way in over their well intentioned heads. So when Moore adds a giant vampire cat into the mix, suffice to say it seems perfectly fitting.

Picking up right after the events of the second novel You Suck, Moore leans on the narration of the returning Abby Normal, a love struck vampire wannabe with delusions of dark poetic grandeur, to bring the reader up to speed. And while it is Normal’s somewhat annoying, often hilarious commentary that opens and concludes Bite Me, the story is still effectively that of Jody and Tommy’s passionate, albeit troubled relationship. Throughout the trilogy Moore has effectively mined the pitfalls of falling in love (Bloodsucking Fiends), finding balance and compromise in a committed relationship (You Suck), and now, with Bite Me, the author explores the uncertainty and heartache that can result when two people who love each other want different things in life, and the difficult choices they must make as a result.

Honestly, the plot of the book is thin to nonexistent, which is pretty much par for the course with Moore’s vampire series. Chet, the previously mentioned feline bloodsucker, is running riot throughout San Francisco while building an unstoppable undead cat army, and it falls on everyone involved to stop the encroaching menace. While there is a little more to it than that (a feral Tommy, a crispy Jody, and a rat tail on Abby), the focus of Bite Me is more concerned with bringing to a conclusion the intimate journey of our vampire lovers.

Lest you assume that Moore has decided to cash in on the schmaltzy pseudo-Harlequin romance of the Twilight series, rest assured that Bite Me provides its share of blood, action, and signature bawdy humor that the “authorguy” is known for. Not to mention a fun cameo or two of other characters from the Mooreverse, including an entirely unexpected Rastafarian (hint, hint) spin on Bram Stoker’s Renfield.

A pleasant return to form after the abysmal Fool, Moore’s Bite Me is perverse, touching, and hilarious, often all within the same page, a fitting conclusion to an epic tale of undead love, hot monkey sex, and frozen turkey bowling.

You have undoubtedly seen the faces and stories: The mother who suddenly drowns her two children in the bathtub. The dedicated father who shoots his family before turning the gun on himself. We ask how such seemingly well-adjusted people could suddenly turn so violent and so heinous as to brutally murder those they hold most dear? We reassure ourselves that we could never harm the ones we love, that we are above such societal aberrations. What would happen to our world, however, if half of the population did exactly that?

Hater, written by David Moody, throws society into a chaotic tailspin after violent assaults by ordinary citizens, tagged Haters by the media, skyrocket. No rhyme or reason can explain who will suddenly attack, or who the victims will be. Before long, nobody can be trusted, and civil unrest quickly spreads in a riveting tale that is part 28 Days Later, part The Crazies.

Moody personalizes the rapidly deepening paranoia by primarily focusing on the first person narration of Danny McCoyne, an everyday schlub struggling to support his young family with a monotonous, low paying city job (his daily routine is only slightly less horrific than the Haters). As the violent attacks spread, McCoyne holes up inside his home with one eye on the frustratingly vague news reports and the other on every potentially suspicious action of his wife, kids, and father-in-law.

The looming division within McCoyne’s family is reflected in society at large. From gays vs. straights, liberals vs. conservatives, and religious fundamentalists vs. everyone else, we are growing increasingly wary and antagonistic of anyone who does not think exactly as we do. Moody simply upgrades these ideological clashes into physical attacks, highlighting the danger society is faced with when nuance and empathy are exchanged for a strict black and white, us versus them worldview.

While based in the U.K., Hater has presciently tapped into the current political and cultural zeitgeist in the United States. Abhorrent rhetoric, while always existing in American society, has reached a critical mass coupled with mainstream legitimacy as of late. While aggressive lines have already been drawn symbolically in our culture, one must wonder how long we can keep the logical next step at bay.

Without spoiling the fun, it must be noted that Hater takes a sudden sharp turn part way through the novel, forcing the reader back on his heels and elevating the story from clever horror fare to an ingenious psychological and spiritual metaphor. However, at the risk of leaving too many clues, a deeper discussion on the importance of the twist will have to wait for the upcoming Dog Blood (book two) review.

While the journey of Hater from self-published phenomenon to pet production project of genre powerhouse Guillermo del Toro could easily outshine the power of the story, Moody has managed to invest in his novel a message of modern importance that should continue to resonate for years.

Billed as the world’s first digi-novel (it’s not, see the far superior Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman), Level 26: Dark Origins is a horribly flawed attempt at immersing the reader in a world that, ironically, doesn’t always involve reading. The creative offspring of co-author Zuiker (best known for creating the hit television show CSI), Level 26 provides access to a website where the reader can watch video “cyber-bridges” intended to deepen the novel’s experience. Unfortunately, it is the actual experience of reading the book that proves wanting.

The novel focuses on the hunt for Squweegel, the latex and butter (yes, butter) covered serial murderer who has the distinct honor of being the worlds fist Level 26 killer (based on a ratings system that previously topped out at 25…duh). Always a step ahead of the authorities, it falls on the shoulders of ex-detective Steve Dark, a previous victim of Squweegel’s murderous predilections, to slay the monster once and for all. While it would be nice to gush over Level 26’s original spin on well-worn serial killer plot devices, unfortunately the story is about as uncomplicated as it sounds.

To be fair, co-author Swierczynski does an amazing job of moving a story along that seems doggedly determined to mine every overused uncatchable killer convention ever put to film or print. A preternaturally skilled, resourceful, and devastatingly clever serial killer? Check. An emotionally scarred super detective with a mysterious connection to said killer? Check. Religious imagery elevating the villain to Thomas Harris levels of bombastic flare? Check. And long diatribes about the hunter and the hunted simply being two sides of the same coin? Check. Swierczynski’s brisk pace helps somewhat in obfuscating these glaring stereotypes, however Zuiker seems to have more of a passion for the gimmick of splicing television production with seventh grade level literary plot devices.

According to the website, the “cyber-bridges take the experience to the next level, immersing you in the action and putting you inside the minds of a twisted serial killer and the man sent to take him down.” Regrettably, Zuiker fails to grasp that an imaginative and dense story is what immerses readers generally looking to escape the force-fed nature of the visual medium. I couldn’t shake the paranoid feeling that there was a Pied Piper at work here, leading unsuspecting victims into a world of visual passivity through a well-publicized novel (an inverted Reading Rainbow perhaps?)

Unfortunately, as is the norm these days, Level 26: Dark Origins is only the first in a series that seeks to expand the interactivity by opening future novel plots to reader suggestions. Next up is Dark Prophecy, with the Level 26 website already raving over how well the cyber-bridges are coming together in post-production, with barely any mention of the actual book.

Ah, listen to that piper play…

Author David Wellington has managed to craft what few people have even attempted over the last decade: an exciting and fresh literary vampire series that is neither romantic nor youth driven. With nary a sparkle in sight, Wellington’s vampires are bloodthirsty and brilliant, the new apex predator on the planet. As grotesque in their appearance as they are in their ethics, these nearly invulnerable monsters don’t want to so much suck your blood as rip your head off and gulp down what gushes forth.

From 13 Bullets, the first novel in the series, through 99 Coffins and Vampire Zero, Wellington has thrust his lesbian-cop-heroine Laura Caxton into a ferocious and sadistic milieu of politics, personal sacrifice, justice, and the supernatural. In the latest entry, 23 Hours, Caxton is forced to sacrifice everything, including her freedom, as a consequence of her violent campaign against the vampires.

Buried deep within Pennsylvania’s Marcy State Correctional Institution, Caxton not only has to contend with other prisoners who would covet the opportunity to kill a former cop, she must also survive Justina Malvern, the world’s oldest and most cunning vampire. Equally enraged and fascinated by her long-term adversary, Malvern overruns the correctional facility, giving Caxton twenty-three hours to either become a vampire or die.

Aside from the action and intensity that Wellington brings to the table, what sets this series apart, particularly in this most recent outing, is the level of realism within which the horror manifests itself. Caxton’s incarceration feels genuine, conveyed with a lean prose that paints a grim and gritty veracity. Personally, this is as close to prison (or Wellington’s vampires for that matter) that I would like to get without a visitor’s badge and some heavily armed guards. However, for the sake of an excellent read, the author’s authenticity sets the stage for one of the better vampire novels in quite some time.

While not a fan of the author’s zombie trilogy (Monster Island, Monster Nation, Monster Planet), Wellington has succeeded at carving out a solid genre niche for himself with the Laura Caxton series, while joining a small list of horror writers breathing new life into the vampire mythos. With Frostbite, Wellington’s current take on the werewolf legend, one only hopes for equivalent success.

I have to admit, I have a tendency to trumpet my love of the zombie sub-genre on the grounds that the walking dead are often a wonderful metaphor for larger social ills. George Romero tackled out of control consumerism with his seminal film Dawn of the Dead, while Max Brooks addressed global relations in his superior novel World War Z. The truth of the matter, however, is that while social commentary is a mainstay in zombie fiction, a walking dead novel without the appropriate amounts of carnage is nothing more than a rose without petals. In other words, entirely useless.

Feed, the first book in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy, is a distinctly bloodless zombie novel that leans heavily on addressing issues of new and traditional media, terrorism, and a little political cynicism thrown in for good measure. Interesting subjects, especially when mixed into a post-post-apocalyptic society where the zombie holocaust is 25 years old, parts of the world are still off limits due to the walking dead, and the population is divided between isolating themselves from any potential danger versus attempting to reclaim some semblance of real life. Unfortunately, Feed is a 599-page zombie novel with very little focus on the zombies.

Despite its shortcomings, Feed does provide some brief moments of fascinating futurist thinking with regard to how society would operate in a world recovering from an undead onslaught. From the advanced blood testing technology (manufactured by Apple, of course), to the restrictions on pet ownership (animals of a certain size run the risk of zombification), to the abolition of the death penalty (who needs one more zombie in the world?), Grant has obviously done her due diligence in attempting to create a fully fleshed-out near future that feels genuine and tangible. However, her overly redundant focus on safety procedures overstays its welcome within the first two chapters, dragging Feed into tedious monotony.

Ultimately, Feed never succeeds at creating any suspense, fear, or even acceptable violence that one would expect in a zombie novel. By focusing on the political machinations at play within the story at the expense of any substantial undead action, Grant seems to be dragging out the well worn trope that humans are the true monsters in the world (been there, read that). Perhaps Grant will amp up the horror in Deadline, book two of the trilogy due out in 2011. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I even care to find out.

In the quiet solitude of upstate New York, retired NYPD detective David Gurney should be enjoying his new found time with his wife Madeleine. Instead he seems unable to let go, spending nearly every moment working on a photo-art project where he gazes into the eyes of killers. One day he receives a call from an old college acquaintance, seems he’s been receiving threatening letters from a stranger who has the uncanny ability to guess what he’s thinking.
Though having been pleaded to help, Gurney is more and more intrigued as the communications escalate and people start losing their lives. When the game gets the better of him, Gurney finds himself matching wits with a cop hating psycho, who’s determined to see them all die.

This book is very slow to start, with nearly 100 pages before the plot amps up, but soon wanes as veteran police officers gather to discuss the case. A tedious conversation about guns, silencers, evidence collection and autopsy results ensues, boring me to the point of tears, causing me to skim a majority of the next couple chapters, and essentially stopping an otherwise engaging mystery in it’s tracks.

The storyline, the character development, the main course that provides an exceptional thriller are all there, but the stop and go for characters to tell each other things that go without saying, things they should just know, is simply too distracting, causing the puzzle to lose it’s shock value. And just when I thought that it might redeem itself in the end with the revelation that the poetic psycho is someone close to our clever detective, I was left with the same old same old.

I’ll have forgotten it in…wait, what was that?

I’m Stephen King fan of old, or I’m just old really and nowadays a 690 page tome by him fills me with fear, before I’ve usually even opened the book and read a page. Long unwieldy books like Rose Madder, Desperation Lisey’s Story, proves the point that less is sometimes more.

Yet Duma Key surprised me, for the story was clear and precise: this book was about loss in every sense of the word and the main character Edgar Freemantle was one of the best and most well-round leads King has created for years.

Maybe it rings true after tragedies, one sometimes has to reinvent themselves to survive, or maybe ordinary worries fade away once death and your own mortality stares you in the face.

This was King back at his cleverest and more subtle best

Blurb

When Edgar Freemantle moves to Duma Key to escape his past, he doesn't expect to find much there. But Duma Key and its mysteries have been waiting for him. The shells beneath his house are whispering to him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had. Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. Even though he has lost an arm. And the hand he uses is the one he lost ...

After successfully syphoning millions out of Wennerstrom’s personal assets, brokenhearted Lisbeth Salander has spent the last year island hopping, reinventing her physique and keeping her mind busy deciphering mathematical equations. But when she finally returns to Stockholm, she cannot resist hacking into ex-lover Mikael Blomkvist’s computer to see what he’s been up to.
Her interest is quickly peaked when she finds several files relating to a grand scale publishing project concerning sex trafficking, and where she finds reference to an individual from her dark past, that she thought she’d never have to face again.

Though he thought of Lisbeth often over the last year, she was after all instrumental in his take down of Wennerstrom, Kalle Blomkvist was only half surprised to find her fighting off a large man near her home. She managed to get away but left behind her book bag and keys in the struggle, which he took with him. Little did he know then, that her keys would be the answer to a country wide man-hunt for Salander, who was suddenly the prime suspect in a triple homicide.
After Salander goes underground, keeping one step ahead of authorities, and convinced of her innocence, Blomkvist conducts his own investigation, riddle with biker gangs, rogue agents, Swedish Sapo and Soviet GRU. The real answers become clearer when he interviews a man by the name of Bjorck, but so does the threat to Salander’s life.

I am always leery of the mid-way point in a trilogy, for I’m usually always propping my eyelids open with toothpicks as the author takes me on a sterile journey of facts and character points. I was however thoroughly impressed with Book 2 of the Millennium series. Larsson dove right in with death and mayhem. And though we get a deeper sense of what drives Salander, her past taking the lead, Larsson weaved an intricate puzzle where past and present go head to head in an explosive showdown that will leave you breathless and cursing.

Ironically Salander could have avoided the entire scenerio, if she could just stop hacking. What is that saying? Curiosity killed the cat…but that cat did have nine lives.

Audrey Lucas, after years of hardship and misery, is finally looking for a fresh start. She’s just received a promotion at work, she’s left her boyfriend and is looking for a fantastic place on the Upper West Side. When she spots an ad in the paper for a place at The Breviary, one of the last architectural treasure left in the city, for a mere $999 a month,($999 = $666 upside down, just thought I’d point that out) it just seems to good to be true. Yet, she’s simply compelled to take it, regardless of the strange weeknight parties on the other floors, the odd older tenants that seem to spy on her constantly, and the relentless dark visions that demand she build a door.
As she’s losing her sanity and struggles with her dark childhood, Audrey tries to determine why The Breviary has such control over her, and whether or not she’ll be able to escape its grasp before the unthinkable is unleashed.

There is simply no better feeling than discovering a new voice in a genre that has often become redundant and disappointing.
With an unnerving tale of unraveling dementia and past sins, reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, Lagan has given me hope that the horror can survive and still be entertaining and unusual. This was a creative perspective on losing your mind, and what a red ant infestation really means.

Audrey's Door was this year's Bram Stoker Award Winner for Best Achievement in a Novel.

Timeless is an entrancing tale of time travel, love, and vengeance. Alexandra Kane falls desperately in love with a man she believes is perfect, only to discover he has lied to her all along. When Lance Reed finally comes clean, he fears he has lost the most important thing in his life. As the two struggle to regain trust and their relationship, Alexandra prepares to travel back in time, along with her friend, Dr. Andrew Rowe. However, her trip does not go as planned when a hateful woman ruins the mission.

The book was sensual and romantic. The last half of the book, packed with thrills, follows Alexandra as she travels through time and faces one obstacle after another. There are several emotionally charged scenes that will have you flipping the pages, anxious to see what happens. The story ends with the perfect set-up for a sequel, so don’t expect a happily-ever-after. The downside is that the editing could have been better. There was a bit of head hopping in the beginning of the book, along with run-on sentences, missing commas, incorrect words, etc .throughout the book. The story itself was good enough that even with those issues, I would read it again.

Samantha McHargue has created a tale of romance and suspense that is both entertaining and satisfying. I can only hope there will be a sequel.