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.

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.

Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman

Tess Monaghan lost her job as a reporter when her newspaper downsized. Since then she's spent a lot of time feeling bad about the loss of her career, but has made no real effort to find another one. She pays her bills by working part time at her aunt's bookstore and doing free-lance research for an uncle who works as a mid-level state bureaucrat. The rest of her life is as much of a disaster as her career. She has few friends and her love life consists of the occasional booty call with an ex-boyfriend, who's cheating on his current girlfriend with Tess. The only real structure in Tess' life is her commitment to rowing every morning on the Patapsco river.

One day friend and fellow rower Darryl Paxton, aka Rock, asks for Tess' help tailing his fiance Ava. She's a lawyer with a prestigious local firm but Rock fears that her job isn't the only thing occupying her time. Tess feels bad about taking money from a friend, but she needs it to pay her bills and he's determined to pursue the investigation so she agrees to take the job. Tess soon has reason to believe that Rock's suspicions were correct and Ava is sleeping with her boss, Michael Abramowich. In an attempt to be kind Tess offers Ava a chance to come clean on her own, but instead of admitting to having an affair she tells Rock that Abramowich is sexually harassing her.

Abramowich has only been with the firm for a short time. Before that he had a private practice doing criminal defense. He was famous for his tacky commercials, which made him a running joke all over Baltimore. Numerous people had reason to hate him, but when he's murdered Darryl is the prime suspect and is soon under arrest. Tess' testimony could seriously hurt him at trial so his lawyer makes her part of his defense team so that her work will be covered by lawyer-client privilege. She's supposed to do only what she's told, but she can't stop herself from digging into Abramowich's past in an attempt to save her friend from going to prison.


This book had the obvious signs of being a first novel. The mystery was interesting, but the pacing was uneven and some parts of the plot didn't fully hang together. Worse, this was one of those frustrating books where the plot is driven by the failure of any of the characters to ask the obvious question about the crime. In this case the question was, "Why would a prestigious law firm with a high-end client base hire a man whose commercials are a local joke?" As a former reporter Tess should know what to ask about a story, so her failure to do so didn't exactly fill me with confidence in her future as an investigator.

I also found it somewhat difficult to sympathize with Rock because he was written in an inconsistent way that made it difficult to know who he was. He's presented as a big dumb jock—--too dumb to realize that his fiance is a lying user. Tess even compares him to Lenny from Of Mice & Men. The problem with that is that Rock's day job is as a medical researcher at John's Hopkins. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but that would have taken too much time away from rowing so he stuck with research. Not exactly a job for a dim bulb.

I also found Tess somewhat difficult to like. She lost her job two years ago and is still just drifting. If she were making an effort to figure out her future it would be different, but she's basically just living off the generosity of her family and feeling sorry for herself. I also hated that her relationship with her ex-boyfriend was such a cliché. He's the standard lousy guy she can't, or at least doesn't, resist who's cheating on his girlfriend with her. I'm not a fan of cheaters, so that lost Tess some major points.

Grade: C-

Will I read the next book in the series?: No. I didn't like this one well enough to add it to my list of series to follow.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden – Wizard
Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations.Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.No Love Potions, Endless Purses, orOther Entertainment.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresdon is the only openly practicing in wizard Chicago. In addition to his private investigation business he also serves as a consult for the Chicago PD's Special Investigation unit. Business has been bad and Harry is behind on his rent, so he's grateful when Lt. Karrin Murphy requests his help with a gruesome double murder. When he arrives at the scene Harry quickly realizes that money is the least of his worries. Someone has violated the First Law of Magic by using it to kill. In order to find out who did it Harry will need to figure out how it was done. Unfortunately, in order to do that Harry will have to research very dark magic which could violate his probation with the White Council. If that happens Harry could lose far more than his lease.

For years people have been telling me how good the Dresden Files series is, but somehow I never got around to trying it. Now that I finally have I see why people kept recommending the books. Storm Front is an excellent series start. The world building is good. Most of the elements will be familiar to readers of urban fantasy, but they're used effectively. Butcher creates a picture of how magic works in Dresden's world without burying the story in details. The mystery is also solid, but not particularly original.

The strength of the story is the characters, especially Harry. The story is told in the first person so we see everyone, including Harry, from Harry's point of view. He sees himself as the magical equivilent of a computer geek, good at his job, but out of his depth in most social situations and somewhat inept at taking care of himself. For me one of the most interesting things about the story was comparing Harry's self-image with the way that other characters react to him. The fact that other characters not only respect Harry's talents but seem to fear them, hints that there is more to Harry than he gives himself credit for.

Grade: A-

Will I read the next book in the series? Yes, definitely.

Crazy Hot by Tara Janzen

This is the first in the Steele Street series.

Regan McKinney followed in her grandfather's footsteps and became a paleontologist, but instead of working in the field with him she leads a very quiet life working in a museum. Her routine is disrupted when her grandfather goes missing and no one will believe that there's a problem. Everyone thinks he has gone off on a dig and simply forgotten to check in. Regan knows that his memory is going, but doesn't believe that he would stay out of touch for so long. He raised Regan and her sister Nikki after their parents were killed and he is very aware that they worry if he is out of touch. Regan checks his date book and finds a notation about a meeting in a small desert town so she decides to drive out and see if someone there knows her grandfather's whereabouts.

Quinn Younger is a former juvenile delinquent who made good. He went to college and then joined the Air Force, became a fighter pilot and was decorated for heroism. Now he works for an ultra-secret special ops group called SDF, which operates out of a garage in Denver. After being wounded during an investigation Quinn has been sent to the desert to hide out from the arms dealer who wants to kill him. Kid, another member of SDF, has been sent along to act as his back up.

When Quinn sees Regan he recognizes her immediately. One summer her grandfather took in a group of troubled boys as part of a juvenile court diversion program and used them as assistants on his dig. Quinn was one of those boys and it turned his life around. Regan was also part of the dig's crew and Quinn developed a crush on her. He has never forgotten the time he walked into her tent and accidentally saw her topless.

Bad guys follow Regan to town and Quinn & Kid quickly realize that her grandfather really is in trouble. They also realize that Regan & Nikki could be in danger from whoever is looking for him. Kid is sent to guard Nikki while Quinn and Regan try to figure out where her grandfather is and what his disappearance has to do with the shipment of dinosaur bones SDF found during their investigation. Attraction quickly heats up for both couples.

Pros:

Janzen has a fun, punchy writing style that keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace.

The involvement of the dinosaur bones gave the plot a bit of something that wasn't just the same old same old.

Quinn & Regan are both interesting and basically likable.


Cons:

The sex, while hot, is sort of ridiculous. Quinn & Regan get busy for the first time on the hood of Quinn's muscle car while it's idling. A car hood gets pretty hot when the engine is running so I couldn't figure out quite how that would work. I also couldn't stop thinking about how much gas those things burn and how environmentally irresponsible it was not to turn the car off. That is not the sort of thing I want to be thinking during a sex scene. It also made me wonder if it was setting things up for Quinn & Regan to run out of gas at some critical point later in the story (see Chekhov's gun). That was sort of distracting until they made it to SDF HQ and I realized that it wasn't going to happen.

The ridiculous didn't stop there. Doing it in the elevator at the SDF HQ made a bit more sense than the car hood, but when they had sex in a warehouse while hiding from the bad guys I sort of threw up my hands. That's one of my least favorite tropes because it's just nuts. Adrenaline can certainly make a person horny, but for folks who don't have a death wish that reaction normally doesn't kick in until the danger has passed.

The other major problem was Nikki. I did not like her at all. She's an artist and her attitude is that she's entitled to do pretty much anything if it helps her art. There's a guy that Nikki likes to use as a model. He is interested in Regan, but she doesn't return that interest. As payment for his modeling Nikki secretly takes salacious pictures of Regan and gives them to the guy. In other words she basically pimps out the sister who sacrificed to help raise her after their parents died. Nice.

And she's an equal opportunity user. When Kid shows up Nikki & the model are working. Her art is very sexual and she knows that it's making Kid a bit uncomfortable. She takes advantage of an unguarded moment to take his picture to use in a later art project, even though Kid has already expressly refused to model for her. When she & Kid get together he doesn't know that she did this and she doesn't tell him.

For me, taking away someone's ability to give informed consent is one of the worst things you can do, so I didn't buy the book's presentation of Nikki as a good kid who is just a little spoiled. Needless to say I had no interest in seeing Kid & Nikki get together, but the book spends almost as much time on them as on Quinn & Regan.

Grade: C-

Will I read the next book in the series?: Probably not. There are 5 more books in the Steele Street series and 4 books and counting in the follow-up Steele Street-Loose series. I don't think I liked this well enough to wade into that many books.

The Inside Ring by Michael Lawson

This is the first book in a series featuring Joe De Marco, a lawyer and trouble-shooter for the Speaker of the House.

Joe DeMarco works as a fix-it man for the Speaker of the House. He describes his job as taking care of "little stuff" causing problems for members of Congress, like kids on drugs and cheating spouses. He doesn't do anything illegal, he's strictly focused on trying to prevent scandal. After an assassination attempt on the President the Speaker sends Joe to help the Director of Homeland Security, Andy Banks.

A few days before the assassination attempt Banks received a note warning that him to cancel the Presidents trip because the inner ring of security had been compromised. Banks showed the note to the head of the Secret Service, but the two men decided that it was a hoax and ignored it. After the shooting Banks is filled with guilt, but doesn't want to admit what happened and destroy his career if the arrival of the note really was just a coincidence. He needs someone discrete to look into the situation and that's were Joe comes in. He's soon in way over his head, following clues from DC to the deep south.


I decided to try this series because Joe's rather unusual job sounded interesting and the reviews I saw were positive. Unfortunately the book didn't work for me nearly as well as it did for those reviewers. The main plot in a thriller is almost always highly improbable. That's the nature of the genre and I'm fine with that. However, for me that means that all the other details need to feel real in order to keep the story grounded and prevent it from collapsing under the weight of its own ridiculousness. In this story Joe felt real, but nothing else did. That ended up making it too difficult for me to suspend disbelief when the convoluted nature of the assassination plot was revealed.

In the end I was very glad that I had gotten the book from the library. If I had paid for it I would have been very disappointed.

Grade: C-

Will I try another book in this series?: I'm not sure. I did find Joe interesting and series often improve after the first book. If I can get the second book from the library I may give it shot.