First Stone by Gary Ballard

Forensic psychologist Dr. Jack Carter wakes from a semi-catatonic state in a mental hospital with no memory of the previous year. His wife, Sarah, has disappeared, and as the last human being to see her alive, Jack is the prime suspect in her disappearance. Without a body and with no physical evidence to prove foul play, the lead investigator and Jack's friend, Bill West, must continue to search for the truth even if it means fingering Jack for the crime. When a serial killer in West Virginia's coal country claims to have killed Sarah Carter, Bill and Jack rush to the crime scene. What they find is a deeply disturbed man with no memory of his crimes or of taking credit for Sarah's death. As Jack tries to decipher the mysterious series of runic symbols the killer carved into his slaughter house, he unlocks a deeper cosmic mystery that goes beyond anything he could imagine.

First Stone is the first novella in Gary Ballard's Stepping Stone Cycle, a "modern interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos." Naturally, I'm curious about all things Lovecraft, including new tales by authors playing in the Master's non-Euclidean sandbox. Of course, should anyone defile that sandbox, I would feel compelled to warn everyone to stay away. Fortunately, that isn't the case here.

The novella opens with Carter waking from his semi-catatonic state. As a nice touch, Ballard has Carter re-discovering his senses and the world around him. He questions the words we attach to objects, the length of time, and his own body. There are elements of knowledge still functioning within his brain, but we don't know if these are all a priori nuggets or the undisturbed bedrock of memory. Either way, slipping back into one's body isn't as simple as getting back on a bike after years away.

A good chunk of Lovecraft's work involved the protagonist setting off on an investigation to uncover the truth to a bizarre circumstance. In this regard, Ballard follows a similar path. His protagonist is a forensic psychologist, a solid choice for going out to crime scenes and dealing with those whose minds may have been damaged by things that dwell in the dark.

Ballard invests a good deal of time developing his characters, and it pays off. You really get to know Carter and root for him to find the answers to Sarah's disappearance. His friendship with Bill plays easy. And Ballard develops the small town West Virginia characters, too. It would've been easy to let them be two-dimensional stereotypes, but Ballard invests in their backgrounds to make their personal stories real.

While Ballard is playing in Lovecraft's sandbox, he doesn't play with his toys in quite the same way. Ballard sticks with his own writing style. Yes, he teases you with a survivor's testimony, has you listen to some preaching about the unfathomable darkness, and flaunts mysterious objects. The obligatory fhtagn and R'lyeh utterances are thrown in, too, but the story flows like a crime drama rather than cosmic horror. It's an interesting twist on presenting Cthulhu Mythos fiction and might serve as a bridge for psychological thriller fans to get a glimpse of the Old Ones.

Like quest fantasies and space opera epics, this isn't a tale that will be wrapped up right away. Patience is the key here. Ballard explains that he's writing the novellas like episodes in a TV series. Short-term mysteries are solved in each novella and clues to the overarching plot (What happened to Sarah Carter?) will be provided as the mystery deepens, but to get it all you'll have to read all of season one (Episode Two was recently released).

All in all, it's an entertaining and quick read. I'm left wondering just how far Ballard intends to go with this series and if he'll deliver the goods at the end of the season. I got the feeling that he was holding back, not wanting to give too much away so soon. But like many a good writer, he dangles the line out far enough to hook you in.

Blackened Cottage by A.E. Richards

A young woman is haunted by a past she can't remember. She feels threatened by her father and his lascivious friend. In her efforts to elude the pair and track down her brother, a third man hunts her for his own depredations.

Set in England in 1875, the story has a definite Gothic feel to it. Richards is adept at illustrating the scene. The "Blackened Cottage" where Lisbeth, our protagonist, lives evokes fear with every creaking floorboard. The air she breathes threatens to smother her in gloom.

Richards doesn't hold back with her descriptive narrative. Every adversity that Lisbeth faces is given its due in highly detailed prose. She gets credit for her inventive metaphors. Here are three brief selections that jumped out at me:

There is no response but the wind’s drunken slur.
I whisper with the breath of a mosquito's wings...
His nails scrape my skull like a wolf scraping soil for bones.

The story is primarily told from Lisbeth's point of view. Not only does she provide the narrative but we also get to read her diary entries and letters to her absent mother, who left the family for reasons unknown (part of Lisbeth's memory loss). To add to the drama, Richards also offers diary entries from the father and wicked confessions from the third man. By doing so, Richards helps the reader bond with Lisbeth and sympathize with her plight. There really are men after her.

While I believe the intent was to maintain tension, I found a lot of passages that repeated character intentions and internal monologues. The third man's confessions and the father's diary entries say much of the same thing with different wording. Lisbeth dwells on her fate at the hands of one man or another and revisits her revulsion with each encounter.

As this is "a psychological thriller with a twist", you'll have to look hard to find the clues that Richards gives the reader. Other than one obvious clue, they're hard to find and Richards throws a couple red herrings at the reader to mislead us. Once the truth was revealed, I went back and re-read some sections from objective voices. I have to say that Richards pushed the limit here. Even with the clarity afforded by the reveal, there are certain sentences which cross the line. I can't say anything more without spoiling it.

As for the technicals, there were many dialogue punctuation errors, primarily involving commas. Spelling typos were minimal. There was also one historical inaccuracy. At one point, Lisbeth talks about a distance in meters, but the metric system hadn't been adopted outside of the scientific community in England at the time. However, Richards used miles to show the distance between towns. I think most readers will overlook these things.

In summary, Blackened Cottage is a solid debut from A.E. Richards. Her descriptive narrative underscores her attention to detail, helping readers get lost in the dreary winter of 19th century England. Characters are vivid too. While the red herrings thrown at the reader are the size of bluefin tuna, Richards holds true to the plot and her protagonist. Fans of psychological thrillers who don't mind a trip back to the 19th century, or Victorian era historical romance readers looking for something different, will enjoy this book.

Blackened Cottage is available for the Kindle on Amazon UK and US.

Shooting an Albatross

Revenge takes a generation to come to fruition in Shooting an Albatross, Lundin's above average first horror thriller. One day the lonely life of a ninety-something Floyd Akerly is interrupted when he receives a stranger into his home, thinking that the man is there to keep him company and listen to his stories. But the uninvited visitor with an unusual interest in events that took place over six decades in the past has a different agenda. Only Floyd's careful recollection of the past prevents the stranger from carrying out his plan right away.

As Floyd begins tell of the events that transpired during the late summer of 1943 in Hollywood, what emerges is a story of Floyd's jealousy and humiliation that eventually leads to a murder. In 1943, the PGA Golf tour is suspended because of the War, but that does not stop an admiral and an Army general from descending on Hollywood's' El Rancho Golf Course to settle a bet through a game of golf. Because neither man can play, each partners up with a serviceman who can play golf. Evan Wilkins is chosen by the Army general and taken out of the normal Army chain of command, a move that annoys his commanding officer, Major Floyd Akerly. He becomes upset by Even's unexpected entry into the world of Hollywood's power elite and his relationship with a mogul's beautiful daughter, Amanda. The relationship between the young Amanda and the serviceman deepens into true love. The two end up kissing, an act witnessed by Floyd. In a fit of madness, jealous Akerly decides to sabotage Evan's chances of winning the game in hopes of destroying the private. But Floyd's plan backfires and he loses everything. Demoted to private, Akerly decides on taking the life of a man he blames for everything.

Shooting an Albatross is a smart horror novel that excavates the darkness that dwells in the hearts of men with assured sophistication. Floyd is not portrayed as a caricature, as evil characters often are in fiction; rather, Floyd Akerly is shown to be a man who does not seem to be able to feel or love. He is attracted to external manifestations and pursues them with external means, and in his path he leaves destruction and maimed lives. In a way, he is a tragic character because he unknowingly creates evil as he tries to fulfill his desires, for if he were able to perceive the inner lives of others, he would probably not act as he had. But we all must face the fruits of what we sow, and so Floyd Akerly comes to face in his latter years the man that he created. Lundin's plot in Albatross is of literary quality, and Albatross is a study in the nature of evil, deliberating on its origin and tracking its progress through human lives as it leaves a trail of destruction and suffering, moving from one generation to another, from one life into another, like a terrible infestation poisoning all that it touches.

Available on Amazon.