Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: Skip Ferderber

ONE LONDON DAY by C.C. Humphreys – Technothrillers, Serial Killers, Contemporary Urban Fiction

A good thriller should be like the best-boxed chocolate sampler: the ones that not only offer you a great variety of tastes but allow you to sample and resample the chocolates you’ve discovered.

C.C. Humphreys’ noir thriller One London Day resembles that box of chocolates. The story takes you from delicious to delicious bits, round and round, until you have sampled everything and everyone once, twice, or even three times until you understand the full impact of this brilliantly dark – based on a true story thriller.

It begins, deceptively, with Mr. Phipps, who has a taste for the dark side of life. He’s a handsomely compensated and frequently used assassin. The first victim on this day will be Joseph Severin, a well-heeled real estate manager, married, and prominent member of London’s Jewish community. Severin keeps a double set of books in handwritten form—no computers, please—for a financial group which calls itself the Shadows, a name picked from comic books. The Shadows, a well-to-do collection of white-collar men, fund various illegal enterprises, the details of which Severin cleverly encodes in his books. When the Shadows discover Severin dabbling in their investments, it becomes clear; the bookkeeper knows too much. The Shadows move Severin from the credit side of the ledger to the debit side, so to speak. Goodbye, Mr. Severin.

Meanwhile, Severin meets a stunning woman named Lottie.

She’s a beautiful, sexy, for-hire pianist, and Severin impulsively offers a month’s free rent in one of his unoccupied flats. Of course, the offer comes with fringe benefits if only Severin can get over the fact that he’s about to break his marriage vows.

Lottie, of course, has her own story. She’s been dating a rising young black actor, Patrick, whom she loves. But Patrick loves kinky sex and arranges for a Russian hooker, Sonya, to join him and Lottie for a delicious threesome. Despite the pleasures of the moment, Lottie can’t stop thinking about Severin.

Sonya’s a highly paid hooker in London who needs to raise enough money for her daughter’s much-needed operation back in Moscow. She’s almost raised enough money to leave the escort business altogether and take care of her daughter.

Enter Bernard, who lost his wife and hires Sonja to hold and comfort him, not for sex. There’s somewhat of a complication here because Bernard is a member of the Shadows. Sebastien, another one of the Shadows, also craves an evening with Sonya.

The Shadows want Mr. Severin removed, but they need to recover Severin’s incriminating accounting books. Enter Mr. Phipps, who must collect the books that seem to have wound up with Lottie. However, recovering the books may not be as easy as he thinks.

C.C. Humphreys develops his story like a game of Mousetrap, requiring readers to pay close attention to every detail.

Characters and plot points circle, again and again, each time adding to a fuller picture of what happened on this one day. Greed and comeuppance play out in today’s London from someone who knows it well. Humphreys’ craftsmanship is unmistakable.

Read One London Day if you enjoy present-day noir thrillers. Read it if you enjoy well-crafted writing. Read it if you want a few hours of fun entertainment. But above all, just read it. You won’t be disappointed.

October 15, 2021
The SIGHTLESS CITY by Noah Lemelson – Gaslamp Fantasy, Steampunk Fiction, Post-Apocaliptic Sci-fi

The city of Huile burns with trouble in Noah Lemelson’s dieselpunk novel The Sightless City.

Four years ago, the United Confederacy of the Citizens Resurgence defeated the Principate in a devastating war. Marcel Talwar lost his leg to that conflict but became a national hero for saving Huile. Now he’s settled down to work as a private detective. However, the schematics to a strange device throw his temporary calm into disarray.

Marcel relentlessly investigates the true nature of the documents and the death of their owner. His investigation robs him of all certainty, forcing him to question what he once thought he knew about his world, his role in the revolution. Especially troubling is his friendship with Lazarus Roache, a fellow hero and now the richest, most powerful man in town.

As a dieselpunk novel, The Sightless City embraces a more 20^th Century feel of industrialization than Victorian steampunk.

Darkness saturates the world with unimaginable cruelties of forced labor camps and grim images of factories pumping out clouds of dark smoke – and people too terrified to ask what goes on within those walls. Magic joins this industrial world, where cities once floated above the earth, where “Engineers” have the “Knack” to refashion metal and other dense materials with their minds, and a mysterious red substance pumped out of the earth, called sangleum, serves as the city’s lifeblood and its source of wealth. Other darker powers include a drug derivative that can turn people into drones, subject to the commands of a single man.

Amongst this dense and complex world, Marcel’s investigation keeps the story centered, as he discovers the secrets of the documents while navigating industry and magic.

In the search for truth, Marcel meets Sylvaine, an Engineer who discovers that her Knack allows her to repair machines and build bombs with her mind. Many more characters boast strange tools and powers. The monk Kayip has long been at war with Roache, wielding a bracelet that can, by his thoughts, transforms into a broadsword or collapse back around his wrist. Meanwhile, the evil Verus keeps a patch over one eye, concealing not an eye socket but a window into an unimaginable dark universe.

Lemelson’s world-building hits the mark for an intricate and complex storyline.

Beginning a revolution will change everyone’s life. The battle sprawls, thanks in no small part to Marcel, Sylvaine, and Kayip, who form a partnership to bring down the malignant forces that enslave the city’s factory workers. Marcel’s investigation leads to a detailed, engaging dystopian novel.

Those who love their dieselpunk with a dark and gritty edge will find immersion in a world very different and yet just a few steps away from our own in The Sightless City. This title won 1st Place in the CIBA 2019 OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction.

October 4, 2021
The KURDISH CONNECTION, Bedlam Series #1 by Randall Krzak – Military Thriller, Terrorism Thriller, Political Thriller

International writer Randall Krzak addresses one of the world’s saddest ongoing tragedies in The Kurdish Connection, a thriller about the plight of the Kurdish people and a desperate plan to free them from their fate.

In a world awash with refugees, perhaps no greater tragedy exists than the ongoing fate of the Kurds of the Middle East, roughly 30 million sect members spread between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Connected by language, religion, and history, this group has no country to call their own. The Kurds have been the subject of several attempts by international agreements to help them create a haven, the most recent in northern Iraq’s no-fly zone. Meanwhile, all four host countries have ruthlessly suppressed Kurdish hopes and dreams politically and especially militarily.

Among the most vicious suppression efforts were those of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who used deadly sarin nerve gas against them, most notably in the village of Halabja, in which up to 5,000 Kurds perished and another 10,000 were wounded.

The Kurdish Connection takes us deep inside that struggle.

Two young Iraqi Kurds, Dersim and Ismet, scavengers by trade and refugees from Halabja with searing memories from their youth of Saddam’s gas attack, accidentally stumble on a large cache of sarin gas canisters leftover by Saddam’s army. The pair are stunned by the possibilities of what can be done with it. They, in turn, make their finding known to a group of Kurdish mullahs who find themselves torn by the possibilities of how the weapons can be used.

Eventually, they agree that the sarin gas might help them free a powerful mullah named Muhammed Baziyan, imprisoned for many years under tight security by the Turks. The Kurds believe that this one man could be the leader to pull them together and unite them as a single voice.

Meanwhile, half a world away, a new international counterterrorism group called Bedlam assembles in Washington D.C. to explore a rumor from on-the-ground intelligence that an Iraqi sarin gas cache exists. Its goal becomes a frantic effort to locate the canisters, disable or destroy them, and stop them from falling into the wrong hands.

With few intelligence assets on the ground, Bedlam assigns their operatives to travel to Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Using various identities such as amateur archeologists, members of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders), and cultural tourists, they use their limited information plus sophisticated chemical detectors to try and locate the deadly cache.

At the same time, the mullahs make plans to use the gas to disrupt Turkish military forces and other pressure tactics, including kidnapping foreigners to show the world some of the brutal tactics used by military forces against Kurds. In the most recently reported event, they want to show the world how Syrian troops viciously put down a peaceful Kurdish demonstration over bakery prices, which the Syrian government claimed was an attack instigated by the Kurds.

The mullahs’ overall plan is to instigate several near-simultaneous attacks in Turkey to draw out Turkish military forces and disguise their main effort, to free the mullah Baziyan from his well-guarded Turkish prison. Using sarin gas to kill Turkish troops seems like a good plan, but no one wishes to harm civilians. Not everyone agrees with the deployment of sarin gas.

The action is set against the exotic, fairytale-like landscape of Capadoccia, Turkey, with its soaring natural towers, and Gobekli Tepi, an archeological dig of an ancient temple built 6,000 years before Stonehenge. Equipped with sophisticated chemical detectors, built James Bond-like into their gear, the Bedlam teams ready themselves for their mission. A further refinement of Bedlam’s plans is to substitute phony sarin containers for their more dangerous counterparts.

Randall Krzak delivers an exciting cat-and-mouse game between the Bedlam team, suspicious Kurds, and equally suspicious Turkish government spies.

The Kurdish Connection soars in the detailed accounts of towns and villages, the people there, and even the weaponry and vehicles used. Readers will find themselves in the middle of the action as the Kurds successfully bomb a Turkish oil field, terrorize a soccer stadium, and stage a murderous assault on the prison where the mullah is kept. Krzak takes us into the dank caves and sewers where the Bedlam teams go to locate and sabotage the horrific sarin canisters from being used by anyone.

Above all, The Kurdish Connection offers readers a compassionate look at one of the world’s most intractable social conflicts, wrapped in the pages of a thriller that will keep readers glued to its pages until the final sentence. The Kurdish Connection is the first book in Krzak’s Bedlam series. Please read our reviews of the following books by clicking on their titles: Dangerous Alliance and Carnage in Singapore.

September 23, 2021
A HAND of VENGEANCE (Call of Vengeance Book 4) by John Stafford – Occult Fiction, Espionage Thriller, Metaphysical Fiction

In A Hand of Vengeance, the fourth volume in John Stafford’s Vengeance series, the Darkness stops at nothing to destroy Brady, the boy who can call the angels, and continue its never-ending war against The Holy Mother and Her forces of good on earth.

More of an action novel and less of a polemic than previous novels in the series (A Prayer of Vengeance – Book 1, A Sword of Vengeance – Book 2, and A Song of Vengeance – Book 3) the book begins in 1983 with the intended assassination of Pope John II by four girl assassins trained by Gudren Himmler, daughter of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, introduced in the previous book and an actual historical figure. Without intervention, the nefarious plan might just succeed.

The Darkness is just getting started, including the murder of Mother Theresa in India come to fruition. Fans of the series will find the fates of key figures of great interest include Brady’s grandfather, Giovanni, the Vatican’s Father Anthony, and Brady’s young daughter Grace, whose special powers become increasingly crucial to the saga. Equally riveting revelations include how the forces of Good influenced global decisions and influenced cultural icons, including the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Evil moves on to assassinations.

Among the more chilling developments, a facility in India tortures innocent orphan girls. The workers extract the girls’ blood at the peak of their terror to produce a human blood-based “fountain of youth” elixir consumed by rich and powerful people worldwide. Dining on the flesh of young children is also a featured meal for Darkness followers.

With time, 20-something Brady leads the worldwide fight against the Darkness, with the Vatican and several nations backing his efforts. The latest mission ll takes them to London to interrogate Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz’s (a.k.a. Gudrun Himmler’s) right-hand man. Then the team travels to Paris, where they destroy a chateau where trafficked children died in front of audiences for their “elixir.” One more battle between the Light and Darkness emerges in Calcutta, India, but this one does not leave the forces of Good untouched. The consequences are monumental, the loss of lives for the Light inconsolable. This time, Brady and the Light will not save everyone, but a new family emerges with Brady’s powers to carry on the war against evil.

Stafford weaves historical events into his storytelling.

While alternate history plays a role in every Vengeance book, this latest book sees events from the assassination attempt on President Reagan to the near-fatal bombing of Margaret Thatcher as chess pieces in the war of the Darkness against the Light. While reading previous novels would offer a greater understanding of the events in this book, readers who come across this stand-alone novel and crave militant Catholic occult fiction will find it a good read all on its own.

August 23, 2021
CARNAGE in SINGAPORE (The Bedlam Series Book 3) by Randall Krzak – Global Thriller, Political Thriller, Political Suspense

Carnage in Singapore, the third volume in Randall Krzak’s Bedlam counterterrorism thriller series, takes the team to the Far East for action against Muslim terrorists with a ripped-from-the-headlines plot to destroy Western influence by any means.

The terrorists’ idea unfolds as simple, even ingenious. Terrify residents and non-Muslims in major cities such as Jakarta and Singapore with a series of spectacular bombings designed to kill as many people as possible. Follow up with kidnapping ambassadors from Great Britain, Australia, and the United States – with such ruthlessness that Western-leaning nations will cease repression of Muslims, curtail training police and soldiers who hunt Muslim terrorists, and end support for anti-terrorism activities around the world.

The plot grows into actionable items among different Indonesian terrorist groups working together – if somewhat uneasily – with a common goal.

Their scheme calls for launching near-simultaneous multiple attacks against unsuspecting citizens, destroying the illusion of safety in daily life. By making the attacks in this way, they cripple the police and other civic services. The first strike uses rockets launched from a small obscure offshore island. The rockets explode in a crowded grandstand watching a Formula One Grand Prix auto race in Singapore. Other sites bombed or strafed include an amusement park, a traffic-laden bridge, and a Chinese cathedral.

All schemes execute without a hitch. All hit their targets with devastating accuracy. Hundreds are either lost or become hostages. Next comes the kidnapping of the ambassadors.

Some Indonesian groups come under suspicion. The ruthless Detachment 88 interrogates the suspects, but their brutality yields dead suspects instead of interrogated suspects.

Into the melee comes Bedlam Charlie, an international team of anti-terrorist experts trained in all phases of investigation and apprehension. Their mission? Simple – to stop the bombings and free various prisoners in the attacks. They must deal with a mélange of bad investigations and spies within the police ranks who thwart their moves and even place team members in mortal danger.

The political motives behind the governments involved in deploying Bedlam Charlie don’t lack complexity. Will the Indonesian police accept their help? Will the governments behind Bedlam Charlie allow the team to get involved and risk the political outfall if they fail?

The terrorists come well-armed and tactically highly skilled, able to break through even the most sophisticated protection schemes to kidnap their high-profile targets.

Naming real sites as the intended targets of the terrorist attacks helps to separate this book from several others of this genre.

If a novel about terrorism in New York City named the Marriott Hotel on Times Square, Nathan’s Hot Dogs, and Yankee Stadium as successful targets, the gut-level effect here would be similar. The fictional terrorists’ logic matches actual attacks on cities and nations around the world including our own.

The novel also explores the aspirations and the politics within the terrorists’ ranks. Various factions and individuals find themselves looking for their own moment of glory as they both complete their missions and compete for attention.

Thriller fans will devour Krzak’s modern us-against-them take on storytelling. Of course, what makes Carnage in Singapore such a strong novel is its plausibility. It’s terrifying and terrific at the same time – and definitely holds its own among modern thriller authors of today. Randall Krzak took home 1st Place for Carnage in Singapore in the 2019 CIBAs Global Thrillers Book Awards.

Read our review for Dangerous Alliance, here.

August 14, 2021
DANGEROUS ALLIANCE Randall Krzak – Political Thriller, Action/Adventure, Thriller/Suspense

Dangerous Alliance, the second volume in Randall Krzak’s Bedlam counterterrorism thriller series, takes the team to the Middle East to disrupt an unholy alliance between North Korea and Somali pirates to hijack oil tankers in exchange for weapons.

Talk about a thriller ripped from the headlines!

Once again, in severe straits because of the maniacal rule of its dictatorship, North Korea finds itself running out of oil. It turns to its “friends” throughout the world—Russia, China, and Iran—but it finds that those friendships have limitations. Shipping oil to North Korea is one. Desperate for answers, the country’s Dear Leader turns to one of its own, an ambassador, and threatens him with the decimation of his family unless he comes up with an answer. Pushed to the limit, the ambassador comes up with a wild but plausible scheme: hire Somali pirates to snatch oil tankers sailing from the Red Sea through the treacherous Gulf of Aden. The ships get repainted, their transponders turned off, and countries friendly to North Korea allow the purloined oil to reach its final destination.

As world events demonstrate, stopping the Somalians is no easy task. But an international intelligence group headquartered in London, calling itself Bedlam, plans to dispatch members of its elite, multinational strike force to the Middle East to fight the pirates and restore order to that part of the world. Neither Bedlam nor the North Koreans know each other’s plans add to the certain knowledge that the two forces will clash in a major confrontation.

That’s one of the threads in this multilayered fully engaging novel, the second in the Bedlam series of thriller novels.

Two other stories run parallel to the North Korean oil hijacking. One involves Soo, the North Korean ambassador, his aide Kim, and their attempts to stay alive by fulfilling the Dear Leader’s wishes knowing that they face certain death if they fail to do his bidding. And the North Korean leader doesn’t help things, changing the nature of the offer to the Somalian pirates at the last moment and ultimately cheating the pirates when and if they actually receive the promised weapons.

The other story follows the Somali pirates as they plan and execute their schemes to secure the tankers. Part of their plan involves creating bloody diversions to keep police forces engaged in fighting acts of local terrorism and focusing less on the pirates’ activities in the waters off East Africa. Their diversionary attack on the Somalian capital of Mogadishu is fierce, well-executed, and gripping reading as the pirates race from site to site, blowing up key structures in the city to keep police attention on terrorism, not on piracy on the high seas. Things, however, do not go smoothly. Diversions go tragically wrong, leading a few to suspect a traitor among them.

The theme of “Who can you trust?” hangs heavily over the actions of the North Koreans, the Somalis, and the forces of Bedlam itself. A few significant characters turn out not to be who readers think they are—don’t even try to guess who they are—and the twists add an extra layer to the tension of this well-crafted novel.

Krzak’s unique knowledge of this world shines throughout this book. The missions undertaken by both good and bad guys feel authentic; the locations feel real, the political and social conditions reflect the author’s obvious understanding of these worlds. The story doesn’t rely on distractions such as one single character to follow; i.e., no James Bond, no George Smiley, or a love affair, a hot-blooded night between the sheets to offset the action. Dangerous Alliance relies on solid storytelling with events so plausibly terrifying that readers may not be able to sleep – for weeks.

If you like your action hot, if you enjoy thrillers with some relationship to the real world, if you enjoy well-written complex stories with some good twists and turns, Dangerous Alliance deserves a place on your reading list. This title won 1st Place in the 2018 CIBAs, Global Thrillers Awards.

August 6, 2021
A SONG of VENGEANCE (Call of Vengeance Book 3) by John Stafford – Global Thriller, Christian Suspense/Thriller, Supernatural Thriller

A Song of Vengeance: A Novel (Call of Vengeance book 3) by John Stafford begins right on the tail of where A Sword of Vengeance left off. In this novel, much like the two before, Stafford displays his talent for weaving in real-world individuals into his Global Thriller tale.

Reeling from the damage inflicted on the Forces of Darkness by Brady, the young American master of The Light and his compatriots, the Evil One seeks revenge. It is now 1980. The Temple Mount in Israel, now consecrated with Christ’s blood after Brady’s successful mission, literally vaporizes any soldier of the Darkness who enters its doors. At a meeting at the Temple Mount, Iranian loyalists—in this telling, Iran seems to be the headquarters of the Devil on Earth—receive instructions by the Darkness to hunt down Brady, capture or kill his wife, Michelle, and kidnap her unborn baby.

One of those at the meeting is a young Imam named Rouhani. Current events fans will recognize the name as the powerful former President of Iran. Also attending is the Banker, a treacherous Vatican priest who controls funds purloined from the Holy See used to fund Darkness missions across the globe.

A new agent of the Darkness emerges.

Meet Gudren Himmler, daughter of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, a historical figure who assisted Nazis on the run after World War II. In this book, she connects Nazis and anti-Israel Arabs. Among her many activities, she accuses Saudi Arabia of desecrating Mecca, which she hopes will bring about the fall of the Saudi family and its ties to the United States. She explains this to an Arab who will deliver her messages to the appropriate people and whose lover, unfortunately, winds up being a barbecued lunch for Gudren and her guest.

Such are some of the forces of evil arrayed against Brady and his friends. In this newest volume, quite literally, the Devil is in the details.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Brady and company now live on a fortified farm, with detailed plans for their protection that include both military-like fortifications as well as assistance from their Heavenly protectors.

For the first time in the series, Brady’s grandfather, Giovanni, one of the many ongoing characters in the series, helps Brady understand his role as the leader of the anti-Darkness forces. Giovanni spells out the historical war between the forces of good and evil. He directs Brady’s attention to recovering mystical stones that fell from heaven at the same time the angels fell. The quest for the stones becomes the main adventure in the remainder of the book. As the men ready for their journey, the Army of Darkness cooks up plans of their own.

In contrast to the Darkness followers, Stafford develops Brady’s circle of supporters with strength, mission, and clear focus of purpose.

Brady’s family expands as other people join their Catholic family, including growing support from the Mighty Men of King David, an Israeli militant group. The daughter of its commanding officer has now married one of Brady’s brothers. Marriages and details of rich family life take the edge off some of the novel’s more violent passages. There’s even a surprise visit at one of the weddings from a VIP. Since this is a Catholic-themed book, it’s not hard to guess who shows up.

All the books in the series relay credible details, whether in the construction of Brady’s fortified farm, military-style attacks by the forces of both good and evil, or acts of vitriolic violence by the Darkness. As the Devil wages war on human society and uses major historical events and figures to do his vile deeds, readers will be relieved to know that the Evil One may have met his match. Fans of Paranormal Global Thrillers will surely devour this series. Start at the beginning with A Prayer of Vengeance.

July 26, 2021
A SWORD OF VENGEANCE: A Novel (Call of Vengeance Book 2) by John Stafford – Dark Fantasy / Horror, Men’s Adventure Books, Thriller / Suspense

In the second volume of the Call of Vengeance series, author John Stafford takes the fight overseas in A Sword of Vengeance.

Brady, the young American hero of the first volume, A Prayer of Vengeance (see our review), continues his crusade to decimate The Beast, the Evil One, the darkness, whatever your favorite term, wherever it exists. Along with his three brothers, his girlfriend, and an ever-expanding crew of like-minded supporters, they take on Beelzebub in Israel’s Temple Mount and France.

This time, in 1980, the book leaps into revisionist history as Pope John Paul supports an attack by Brady and his companions on the evil spirit that has taken over the Islamic Imam of the Temple Mount. By freeing the most sacred building of the world’s three major religions of its evil, in coordination with the Vatican, Brady makes it possible for the Pope to convene a most secret meeting of the Council of Cardinals, telling them that he is casting out the Devil from the Vatican along with those who waver from the faith with an Act of Consecretion to the Sacred Heart.

Simultaneously, the Dome of the Rock, housed within the Temple Mount and supposedly the place where Mohammed ascended into Heaven, will be consecrated with holy water containing the blood of Jesus, casting out The Angel of the Fallen from the sacred spot.

While these acts will mean much more to Catholic readers, the planning surrounding these events reads more like a combination of graphic thriller and supernatural thriller in one. Brady and his three brothers, his girlfriend Michelle, and some additional crew members find themselves on a luxury yacht at the beginning of the book, bonding with the Mighty Men of King David, an Israeli military group of 40 men led by a general and his daughter. They enjoy a great food-filled celebration with each other, capped by seeing Brady, infused by the light, elevating into the air so they can see for themselves the miracle of who he is: the man who talks to the angels.

But before the storm, there is a coupling to celebrate.

A joyous union among the team comes as a surprise to all involved. Nevertheless, family and friends have managed to remain hidden on the yacht before the nuptials. The wedding procession preceding the landing in Israel and the possibility of death all make the bonding aboard the yacht so special.

Backed by the Israelis, Brady and company make their way into the Temple Mount in a military-style operation and perform their miracle, but not without tragedy. But Brady uses his unique talents given him by the Mother of God to save a life, taking unto himself the wounds suffered by another.

Brady roots out evil in the church, as well.

Brady must face one more assignment overseas: to release dozens of children captured by an evil sect of the Church. Corrupt priests and nuns capture children and allow unspeakable evil to be done to them in an annual bacchanal at a chateau outside Paris. With the same religious fervor, Brady takes on the task. The house’s defense by Iranian shooters hidden in the bushes causes considerable damage to the would-be rescuers, including people near and dear to Brady and his people. In the world of this series, Iranians do the Devil’s work.

As in the first book, the evil fought here may repulse some people. The descriptions, in some instances, are uncomfortably vivid. Yet, the writer believes that the need to portray the good properly must be accompanied by a strong showing of the evil that must be cast out forcibly and by any/every means necessary from the world. Readers will find these books well-written and intriguing additions to the supernatural thriller genre – but quite graphic.

July 12, 2021
A PRAYER of VENGEANCE (Call of Vengeance Book 1) by John Stafford – Christian Supernatural Thriller, Catholic Horror Novel, Dark Fantasy Thriller

The Beast watched gleefully on that sad Good Friday, watched with grim satisfaction as the Son of God died.

And so was a little boy who witnessed the grieving mother, her tears and pain beyond description, her sorrow etching deeply on his own soul. He promised himself and God that he would vanquish the evil that killed her son. “I will never let this happen again,” the boy said to the woman, and she touched his face with her hand and said, “And so it shall be.”

The boy gave the Beast the sign of death, the acknowledgment that Roman soldiers gave to an enemy in battle. The Beast accepted the challenge and thus began the struggle between good and evil, the Light and the dark, that would last unto the present day.

This story, or fable, is at the heart of A Prayer of Vengeance by John Stafford.

The first of a four-book series opens in 1976 and takes the epic struggle of good versus evil at face value. It tells the story of a teenage boy in the 20th Century, a linear descendant of that boy. He witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion and inherited vast powers to fight the Darkness in his hometown of Beavercreek, Ohio.

Readers expecting a soft-edged Sunday sermon approach to the eternal battle between good and evil will not find it here. Instead, the book begins with as vile a depiction imaginable of a young girl’s rape, disfigurement, and death by Ray and his buddies, the embodiment of the Darkness living on earth.

Enter Brady, the counterpoint to Ray.

Brady enters the scene as an all-American high school teenager the students and faculty all but worship. Everyone wants him as a friend. The high school coach wants him for his football team. Yet Brady is in training for something else that he dare not tell another living soul.

It takes a while before Brady reveals his unique powers. When he calls the Light, he elevates above the earth with arms spread in a Christ-like manner and protects those who need protecting. Brady heals the sick and the wounded by allowing their injuries to flow into him, onto him.

When his high school friends plan a long-standing prank, painting a nearby train bridge with the school’s colors before a big football game, Brady understands the danger awaiting them from unanticipated trains and assumes the critical role in getting the bridge painted. When a train inevitably shows up, Brady brings forth the Light and protects a classmate from certain death. No one there remembers afterward precisely what happened. Such is Brady’s power to do good and yet defend himself and those he loves from his enormous powers.

Brady learned to call the Light at age five.

At 13, he was additionally schooled by his grandfather, who taught him the prayer of vengeance, recited when the Light was called forth. Once he called on the Light, the Darkness, the Beast’s presence followed. Brady would then absorb the damage done by the Darkness, and the victim’s healing would take place.

Once the reader understands Brady’s unique powers and accepts this more muscular version of Catholicism, the inevitable wars between Darkness and light ramp up; even as more people disappear at the hands of Ray and his predators, more people are attracted to Brady and become part of his circle of guardians. The ultimate goal? To destroy the Darkness once and for all.

Catholic horror describes A Call of Vengeance just right.

Catholic readers are in for a polemic as well as a religious-themed supernatural thriller. The author clearly intends it to be such. Non-Catholic readers will find a large cast of characters, several of which are clearly set up for sequels by the end of the book.

This book is clearly not for everyone. The atrocities in the first chapter alone may keep readers from proceeding further. Yet, those whose reading interests embrace the supernatural in its many forms will find A Prayer of Vengeance a bracing reading adventure.

June 21, 2021
CRUDE INTENT: An Alex Sheridan Thriller by Elizabeth Jeffett – Romantic Thriller, Thriller and Suspense, Mystery Thriller

Elizabeth Jeffett delivers a hot, steamy second book in the Alex Sheridan Thrillers, Crude Intent.

Alex Sheridan, the androgynously-named heroine of Crude Intent, just about has it all: a gorgeous body and face, millions of dollars, and a business acumen enabling her to match wits and wiles in the male-dominated oil wildcatting business. And let’s not forget the cadre of powerful and sexy men who love her.

It would be more “all” except for the close people around her who keep getting brutally murdered. The scheming competitors and/or psychopaths who work hard at ruining her life and nearly succeeding, and the dangerous circumstances that almost end her life several times even when the intentional murderers fail.

In this second book, Alex Sheridan has survived more than her fair share of trauma.

The grisly murder of her previous business partner, Christine Welbourne, weighs on Alex. The steamy affair with oil worker Colt Forrester that began in the first novel, Silent Partners, continues. But when a fire breaks out at one of her fracking wells outside Denver, polluting the air and threatening to burn down pristine forest lands surrounding the installation, all hell breaks loose as fracking opponents launch media-friendly protests. TV coverage is everywhere, and business opponents can smell an excellent opportunity to leverage the disaster as a means of acquiring Alex’s valuable oil leases and putting her out of business.

Then comes the terrible news.

Colt Forrester is missing and might be a murder victim. With the very public knowledge of their rocky affair, Alex becomes the prime suspect in Colt’s suspected death.

This is only the beginning of Alex’s troubles in this fast-paced, romantic thriller. The sheriff and the district attorney investigating the case come after her. A giant competitor uses many operatives inside and outside the law to bring Alex down. The press, sensing a newsworthy scandal, start to portray Alex as a villain in her oil well fire disaster. Critical suspicious characters emerge at different times in the chess-like game against her.

Elizabeth Jeffett takes time to develop Alex into a believable hero.

Losing Colt and the murder of her partner Christine take their own substantial toll on her emotions as she fights against the seen and unseen forces moving against her. It is up to a loyal cadre of friends and associates, as well as a new love interest, Angus “Bull” Hawthorn, a Red Adaire-like oil well firefighter, to help keep her together in the series of disastrous revelations that threaten to destroy her. Yet Alex is no shrinking violet. As calamity after calamity engulfs her, she still finds the guts to vigorously confront the forces arrayed against her and uses her formidable personal and professional powers in the good fight to save her empire.

A subtle but interesting sidelight of the book is its well-researched focus on the fracking industry, the powerful but controversial method of extracting oil from oil shale that has helped the U.S. become a leading exporter of crude in the 21st Century. While most contemporary books portray fracking as an environmental villain, this book takes a somewhat neutral approach to the practice.

Not every strand wraps up at the end of Crude Intent. A third book is in the offing, according to an endpaper in the novel. Unlike many books designed as a series, this novel can be read from start to finish as a complete experience. Readers wanting to know what happened to certain storylines left as cliffhangers in this volume will still find satisfaction in the many unexpected twists and turns in this swift-paced engaging novel.

April 29, 2021