Wednesday, October 21, 2009

2009 TBR Challenge for October: The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

October Challenge: Horror

It's April 1941 SS Officer Erich Kaempffer is a man on his way up. He's preparing to begin a plum assignment setting up a new death camp in Ploiesti, Romania. After serving for a year at Auschwitz he feels confident that he's the right man to increase efficiency by building the new camp and he's looking forward to the task.

Unfortunatley for Officer Kaempffer he has made enemies on his quick rise through the ranks of the SS and there are those who would love to see him fail. As a result he is given a mission to complete before going to Ploiesti. He must take two squads of his einsatzkommandos and check on an Army unit sent to guard an isolated pass in the Transylvanian alps. The unit was sent to occupy an ancient stone structure overlooking the pass, which the locals refer to as the Keep. It should have been a routine, even boring, assignment but within a week of their arrival their leader, Captain Klaus Woermann, sent a disturbing message to headquarters. It read only:

Request immediate relocation.
Something is murdering my men.

Kaempffer has a negative history with the Army officer and looks forward to succeeding where Woermann has apparently failed. However, when he arrives at the Keep he finds that something is indeed killing the men and it does not seem to be human. Rumors are running rampant that the killer is a vampire. The already desperate situation is made worse by the fact that the two officers are barely able to tolerate each other and there is almost no concrete information available about the history of the Keep.

The local innkeeper finally suggests that they bring in Professor Theodor Cuza, a scholar who has spent time at the Keep and knows the history of the region. Woermann enjoys the irony of the fact that their only hope is a Jewish professor, but he worries about what Kaempffer will do if Cuza is unable to provide the answers they need. He's especially concerned about the fact that Cuza is in such poor health that his daughter Magda must travel with him. The Keep is a military barracks and even under the best of circumstances it's no place for a lone woman. Tensions are already incredibly high in the Keep and the two newest residents may make the complex situation impossible to control.

Unbeknownst to the people at the Keep there is one more player in the unfolding drama. A man with red hair and blue eyes knows what has awakened in the Keep. He'll travel thousands of miles to meet the destiny he knows awaits him, and possibly more that he does not expect. The question is whether he'll arrive before it's too late to prevent the evil from spreading beyond the pass.



I went through a Steven King phase in high school, but since then I've read very little horror, so I initially thought about selecting a random book from my TBR for this month. Then I remembered that I'd gotten several recommendations over the years for F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series and decided to finally give it a try. The Repairman Jack books are an offshot of a series known as The Adversary Cycle, and The Keep is the first book in that series so I decided to start there.

I felt that The Keep did what I think a good horror novel should do. It created atmosphere, suspense and a sense of the creepy and made me want to keep reading to find out what would happen. I liked the idea of 20th Century evil pitted against much older evil and the ways that evil finds to manipulate the humans for it's own purposes. Unfortunatley some of the characterization wasn't as good as I would have liked. A couple of the key characters fell flat and there's a romantic subplot that didn't work as well as it needed to. One other thing worth noting is that the body count remains fairly low until near the end of the book. That was fine with me since I don't like a lot of blood and gore, but I know some horror fans don't agree and would likely find this disappointing.

Grade: B

Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I found this book interesting enough to be curious about where the story goes next. Also, the next book in The Adversary Cycle is The Tomb, which is where Repairman Jack makes his first appearance.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Nameless by Debra Webb

When Vivian Grace seventeen she was kidnapped by a serial killer known as "Nameless" and was forced to kill him in order to escape. She has worked hard to get past that experience and to make a life for herself protecting other victims. She's now a rookie FBI agent determined to succeed at her job and advance in the Bureau. She already feels somewhat thwarted in that ambition because her mentor arranged to have her sent to the Birmingham field office instead of the higher profile assignment she requested. He's concerned that a Vivian's past makes her too vulnerable to work high profile cases, but there's nothing he can do to protect her when a local kidnapping turns into exactly the kind of high pressure case he'd hoped to shield Vivian from. In spite of his wishes, and her own nightmares, Vivian is determined to save the kidnapped child. To do that she reaches out for help from an agency legend.

FBI agent Ryan McBride focused all his attention on his work as a hostage negotiator. He had a perfect record, working on the most difficult cases, until a kidnapping went horribly wrong and the young victim was killed. As a result McBride was made the scapegoat for his boss' mistake and lost his job. His response was to go to Key West and crawl into a bottle and three years later he still hasn't crawled back out. When Vivian shows up on his doorstep his first impulse is to send her away, but when he hears the details of the case he's unable to resist returning to the job he was never quite able to let go. Soon he and Vivian find themselves drawn into a puzzle created by a psychopath determined to play on both their pasts to win a game where he's the only one who knows the rules.



This is yet another suspense novel that devotes a chunk of the book to the killer's POV. I would have been much happier without that, but it all in all it wasn't too bad and the rest of the story was interesting enough that I was still able to enjoy the book. The disgraced former agent out to redeem himself and the former victim looking to prove herself are both common character in suspense novels so both Ryan and Vivian could easily have come across as tired cliches, but I found them both interesting.

I think that was partially because the situation had more layers and shades of gray than are sometimes present in this kind of book. For example, the bureaucracy wasn't painted as all bad and the rogue hero as all good. It's made clear that Ryan's former boss screwed him over, but it's also clear that he made that easy to do by pushing too hard and breaking too many rules. Vivian's boss is a a jerk, but he's genuinely dedicated to his job and doesn't allow his reservations about Ryan to interfere. Even Vivian's mentor isn't all bad. He does manipulate her career for his own selfish reasons,but he's also right about her needing to deal more effectively with her past. The only thing that really disappointed me was the ending, which hinged on tying several thread of the story together in a way that was far too convenient for my tastes.


Grade: B-

Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley

In the 1920's Italian playwright Galeazzo D'Ascanio wrote a play called Il Prezzo for his mistress, the beautiful English actress Celia Sands. Il Prezzo was expected to be D'Ascanio's dramatic masterpiece but it was never performed because Celia disappeared the night before it was scheduled to open.

Decades later Galeazzo's grandson, Alessandro 'Alex' D'Ascanio, has decided to finally stage Il Prezzo. Working through the family Trust he's restoring Il Piacere, his grandfather's estate on Lake Garda, and intends to have the play performed at the outdoor theater on the grounds. He believes he has found exactly the right lead---a struggling young English actress named Celia Sands.
The role could be her big break, but Celia is reluctant to accept a job that's offered to her only because of her name. Her mentor Rupert has been hired to direct Il Prezzo and he persuades her that the opportunity is too good to pass up. The two of them go to Italy and take up residence at Il Piacere along with the rest of the cast. Rehearsals go well and everyone involved soon has high hopes for the opening. However, events soon seem to be mirroring the first attempt to stage Il Prezzo and Celia begins to fear that someone or something doesn't want to the play to open.


I think that I expected this to have a stronger romantic element than it did. Celia and Alex do have an attraction, but it's not center stage in the story. Once I adjusted to that I was able to enjoy the book for what it is---an involving Gothic puzzle. The pace is fairly slow, but the story never seemed to drag and it held my attention all the way to the end.

Grade: B+

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Firestorm by Iris Johansen

When Kerry Murphy was a young girl a house fire killed her mother and left her in a coma for two years. Her experience gave her the ability to telepathically sense fires, and connect with fire victims. Her used her talent to become a firefighter, but after a friend died in a fire she was no longer able to bear the responsibility of fighting them day to day. She now works as an arson investigator and uses her dog Sam as a cover for her unique talent. She's proud of the life she's built for herself and considers herself at ease with her talent, but she has few close relationships and suffers from horrible nightmares.

Brad Silver has problems of his own. He saw his brother, a U.S. Senator, and sister-in-law burned alive in their limousine. They were the victims of a madman named James Trask. Trask had been the head of a secret government research project to create controlled firestorms. It wasn't until the project was canceled that anyone realized that Trask had become obsessed with his creation and by then it was too late to stop him. He's now an out of control pyromaniac, using his invention to blackmail the President. Trask has vowed that he won't stop killing government officials until his demands are met.

Like Kerry, Brad has special abilities. Unlike Kerry his skills don't center around fire. Instead Brad is able to act as a “controller” for others psychics. He feels that with his help Kerry could make a connection with Trask and help locate him before anyone else is killed. Kerry doesn't agree. He tells her that in exchange he can help her finally get over the loss of her mother. Kerry values her independence and wants nothing to do with Silver or any other psychics, so she initially refuses. However, when she inadvertently makes a connection with Trask he becomes obsessed with her and attacks her brother and his pregnant wife. In order to protect her family Kerry changes her mind and agrees to partner with Silver and the two of them race to stop Trask before he strikes again.


This was a psychological thriller with paranormal elements. On the positive side, the premise of this book was interesting and I basically liked the characters and their interaction. The one thing I did think was odd was the way Kerry kept giving Brad a hard time for being prickly. Considering what her personality was like I felt like that was a definite case of the pot calling the kettle black and that Silver should have called her on it.

On the negative side a fairly large chunk of the book was devoted to Trask's POV and I'm tired of that. These days it seems like almost every suspense and mystery book I read spends almost as much time inside the killer's head as that of the main character(s) and I'm over it. I have much more interest in how the mystery is solved than in getting the details of yet another fictional version of homicidal craziness.

Grade: B-

Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I'm interested enough in Kerry & Silver to try the next book.