Applewood
Brendan P. Myers
By Light Unseen Media, My 15 2011, $13.00
ISBN: 9781935303190
In Grantham, Massachusetts, Sergeant Lombard of the local police department controls the homicide scene until State Police Captain Jenkins arrives to take over the investigation. A teen taking a leak in the woods found the corpse of a young Caucasian male whose neck was ripped open, but little blood is in the vicinity.
Lombard knows the vicious attack denotes the return of the beast after a quarter of a century of dormancy. He contacts his high school friend Dugan to come home to the decaying Applewood neighborhood so they can once again fight the evil that came to town during the Civil War when the Grantham regiment fought in Georgia.
This is an engaging atmospheric horror thriller that hooks the reader with the opening corpse and never slows down until the final cemetery confrontation. Overall the story line is fast-paced though flashbacks to Dugan’s early teen days and 1861 detract from the speed but enhance the sense of inevitable gloom and doom. Dugan is a unique protagonist who lost the ability to dream during his first encounter with evil while the malevolent one is a super vile beast. Readers will appreciate a trip to central Massachusetts as Brendan P. Myers provides an exhilarating deadly tour.
Harriet Klausner
