Monday, September 24, 2012

The Devil of Echo Lake, by Douglas Wynne. JournalStone, 2012




Billy Moon is a rock star, an idol to Goths around the world in the late 1990s. The producer who made him a star, Trevor Rail, holds a contract that requires Moon to create one more album for him. Rail is a creepy dude that no one likes and who scares most people. Moon thinks Rail might just be the devil himself. And now Rail has called in his chip, and takes Moon to a secluded compound in the mountains, with a studio in an old church, to force him to write and record a new album in record time.

Moon is willing, but his mind is not all on the music. He’s dealing with the sudden death of his father, and strange things are happening in the church, which serves as Moon as living quarters as well as studio. Legend has it the church is haunted, and it’s starting to look like it’s true. Rail doesn’t believe it, though; he makes a point of telling others that Moon is under stress and unbalanced. But Moon isn’t the only one seeing and hearing odd things; Jake Campbell, fresh out of college assistant sound man, is witnessing it, too, as well as the terror that is crazy man Rail.

This is very well done horror. Part psychological and part supernatural, it isn’t until the end that the reader gets to see where the boundaries of each are. Tension is sustained throughout the book, and the end is unexpected. I hope this book gets picked up by Amazon and other distributors so more people can enjoy it. Right now it seems to only be available from the publisher, JournalStone  http://journal-store.com/fiction/the-devil-of-echo-lake/

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